Capitol builds intelligence infrastructure for companies overwhelmed by data but starved for clarity. Today, 80% of enterprise AI projects fail because outputs aren’t accurate, attributable, or usable. Capitol AI works with companies in high-stakes industries to turn information into intelligence that drives decisions with model-agnostic, purpose-built infrastructure.

Capitol is building a different future - one where institutions, creators, and analysts stay in control of their knowledge, their IP, and their value. We deliver a model-agnostic platform that turns complexity into decision-grade insight. We don’t believe the future should be dictated by a handful of closed models. We enforce attribution, minimize hallucinations, and preserve temporal accuracy - giving companies trusted answers they can act on.

Our Vision

Agentic AI for every enterprise - model agnostic, embedded, governed, and decision-grade - built to power action and impact at scale.

Vice President of Engineering

Capitol AI | Washington, DC (On-site/Hybrid)

Summary 

We are seeking an exceptional Vice President of Engineering to lead our technical strategy and engineering team. This senior leadership position will be responsible for scaling our AI infrastructure, enhancing our product capabilities, and building a world-class engineering organization. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in Python development, AI orchestration, and experience with large language models (LLMs), combined with proven leadership in tech startups.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for our engineering team, establishing best practices, architectural standards, and development processes
• Oversee the integration and optimization of LLMs within our platform
• Recruit, mentor, and retain top engineering talent
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence
• Drive technical decisions that balance speed, quality, and scalability
• Establish and monitor engineering KPIs to ensure timely delivery of high-quality products
• Partner with product and design teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Stay at the forefront of AI and ML advancements, identifying opportunities to enhance our platform

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years in leadership roles
• Expert-level proficiency in Python and software architecture
• Extensive experience with AI orchestration, LLMs, and generative AI technologies
• Proven track record of building and scaling engineering teams at fast-growing startups
• Strong background in cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Experience with microservices architecture and distributed systems
• Exceptional problem-solving skills and technical judgment
• Outstanding communication abilities across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred
• Experience with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with modern frontend technologies (React, TypeScript)
• Must be able to obtain a security clearance

Leadership Qualities

• Strategic vision with the ability to translate business goals into technical roadmaps
• Hands-on technical leader who can dive deep while maintaining a high-level perspective
• Strong work ethic with exceptional attention to detail
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous startup environment
• Excellent interpersonal skills and team-building capabilities
• Track record of delivering complex technical projects on time and within budget

Location

This position is based in our Washington, DC headquarters. While we prefer on-site/hybrid candidates, we will consider exceptional remote candidates.

About Us

Capitol AI is agentic AI that partners with owners of large proprietary data sets (such as Politico Pro) to enable deeper insights from unstructured data and unlock new revenue opportunities with their clients in a highly efficient and impactful way.

Capitol has an in-house LLM orchestration layer with a generation pipeline that includes our own implementation of function calling, RAG, and chain of thought reasoning. We also have our own fine-tuning pipeline for function-specific small models. Our backend is python, our cloud is managed in terraform, our application CRUD is Clojure (LISP fans welcome) and our frontend is React.