Sr. Staff Cloud Engineer (Cloud Strategy & Innovation)

Capital One•McLean, VA

19d

About The Position

Capital One is seeking a Sr. Staff Cloud Engineer to drive cloud infrastructure strategy within Cloud Foundations, which delivers scalable, secure, flexible infrastructure supporting the company’s applications and critical systems. The role focuses on cloud connectivity, automated cloud landing zones, and cloud platform management, with responsibility for shaping strategy alongside senior leaders and executing it with stakeholders across the enterprise. The engineer will establish technical vision and strategy, guide implementation quality, and serve as an authority on non-functional system characteristics such as performance, scalability, and operability. The position combines hands-on technical work and innovation with mentoring, strategic leadership, and cross-divisional influence. It also involves modernizing monolithic systems into microservices and event-driven platforms, setting platform and API direction, and leading responsible use of AI and automation to improve cloud platform and engineering workflow scalability, reliability, and efficiency.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or a related quantitative field, such as Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, or Engineering.
At least 9 years of experience in software engineering.
At least 6 years of experience in cloud engineering.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering.
12+ years of coding experience with at least one of Java, Scala, Python, Go, or Node.js.
8+ years of experience with public cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or OCI.
8+ years of experience in CI/CD orchestration, Infrastructure-as-Code frameworks such as Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, or Crossplane, and automated governance using Policy-as-Code DSLs such as OPA.
One or more active certifications related to cloud infrastructure management or security.
Experience optimizing complex, high-scale distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, including Kubernetes and serverless.
Experience designing and supporting cloud networking, security, and identity integrations.
Experience troubleshooting and supporting production cloud environments.
Experience influencing technology strategy at the portfolio or business-unit level.
Experience managing multi-team engineering organizations or leading strategic technical programs spanning multiple domains.
Experience defining and tracking engineering OKRs aligned to business outcomes.
Experience shaping organization design and talent strategy to scale engineering capabilities.
Experience with strategic and executive-level communication to influence technology decisions.
Experience across the full system development lifecycle, from conception through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
Experience acting as a leader of leaders and driving professional development within technical teams.
Expertise in strategic application of agentic AI coding tools to solve systemic development challenges.
Experience with risk management and operational excellence in high-risk/high-severity incident environments.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving their professional development.
Experience leading cross-domain architectural reviews or establishing coding and design standards.

Responsibilities

Articulate and evangelize a technical vision for the domain.
Break down complex problems into practical, operational solutions.
Ensure the quality of technical design and implementation.
Serve as an expert on non-functional system characteristics, including performance, scalability, and operability.
Continue learning and share advanced technical knowledge with the community.
Manage several projects simultaneously and prioritize time to maximize impact.
Mentor and coach the technology community, strengthening engineering and product expertise.
Drive modernization of monolithic systems into microservice architectures and event-driven platforms.
Collaborate with senior engineering and architecture leaders to define long-term platform strategy and API standards.
Contribute hands-on technical work and innovation while mentoring and elevating peers and junior engineers.
Lead cross-divisional projects that promote technological best practices and enhancements.
Lead responsible adoption of emerging AI and automation capabilities to improve cloud platforms and engineering workflows.
Drive cloud infrastructure strategy, including cloud connectivity, automated cloud landing zones, and cloud platform management.
Partner with senior leaders and enterprise stakeholders to define and execute cloud strategy.

Benefits

Comprehensive health, financial, and other benefits supporting total well-being.
Eligibility to earn performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonuses and/or long-term incentives.

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