Data Science PhD Intern

Job Description

Data Science PhD Internship – 2026

Join Capital One as a Data Scientist intern and become part of a high-performing team leveraging cutting-edge computing technologies to make a real impact on people’s financial lives. You’ll contribute from day one, continuously learning, engaging in diverse experiences, and building strong relationships across the company. This internship offers a unique opportunity to apply groundbreaking techniques to solve financial services challenges, with potential focus areas including machine learning, deep learning, or quantitative initiatives enterprise-wide.

Key Role Details:

• Program Duration: This is a full-time, paid internship program spanning ten weeks from June through August 2026.
• Location Requirement: Participation requires you to be located in the continental United States with in-person attendance at your assigned location for the duration of the program, in accordance with Capital One’s hybrid working model.
• Full-Time Opportunity: Interns will be evaluated for a full-time position with their team, and successful candidates will work with their manager to identify a start date upon graduation.
• Employment Authorization: This is a limited-time internship position, and Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this specific internship position. However, a full-time Data Science role (for which you may be considered upon completion of the internship, subject to business needs) is eligible for employer immigration sponsorship.

On Any Given Day, You Might:

• Evaluate open-source and internally-developed modeling and analytics tools using real business data.
• Integrate internal data with external data sources and APIs to discover and implement actionable insights.
• Design and craft data science models to communicate solutions to customers and company leadership.

We’d Love to Find Someone Who Is:

• Intellectually Curious: You ask why, you explore, and you are excited to imagine and create new ideas by inventing self-adaptive models or tapping into unstructured data sources. You love mining data for insights into behaviors, intent, and sentiment.
• A Builder: You are passionate about delivering better experiences and better products to our customers and have a deep sense of ownership for your craft.
• An Experimental Scientist: You love putting on your lab coat and trying new things, new combinations of tools, techniques, and feature engineering approaches, even if you sometimes fail.
• A Communicator: You seek to connect with teammates and business partners to share technical ideas that resonate with audience needs across verbal and written channels.

If you’re interested in a long-term career at Capital One, this Data Science internship could be a great way to begin your journey!

Basic Qualifications:

• Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining a PhD in one of the following quantitative fields with an expectation that the required degree will be obtained by August 2028 or earlier:
  • Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field.
• Must be continuing in the same course of study of your PhD degree following completion of the internship.
• At least 6 months of experience or academic work using open-source programming languages for data analysis.
• At least 6 months of experience or academic work using machine learning techniques.
• At least 6 months of experience with either Python, R, or SQL.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience or academic work in inferential statistics.
• Experience or academic work with relational databases.
• Experience or academic work with large-scale data analysis.

Salary Information (Annualized for PhD Intern):

The following are the annualized full-time salaries for the Data Science PhD Intern role, by location:

• Cambridge, MA: $174,000
• Chicago, IL: $158,000
• McLean, VA: $174,000
• New York, NY: $190,000
• Plano, TX: $158,000
• Richmond, VA: $158,000
• San Francisco, CA: $190,000
• San Jose, CA: $190,000

Please note: Salaries for candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location. The actual annualized salary amount offered will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

Benefits:

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial, and other benefits that support your total well-being. Eligibility varies based on employment status and management level. More details are available on the Capital One Careers website.

Application & Equal Opportunity:

• This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.
• No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
• Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace.
• Capital One will consider qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries.

Accommodation & Support:

• If you require an accommodation to apply for a position, please contact Capital One Recruiting at 1-800-304-9102 or via email at RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com. All information provided will be kept confidential.
• For technical support or questions about Capital One’s recruiting process, please send an email to Careers@capitalone.com.

Disclaimer:

Capital One does not provide, endorse, nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products, services, educational tools, or other information available through this site. Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities; positions posted in Canada are for Capital One Canada, in the United Kingdom for Capital One Europe, and in the Philippines for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).