As Capital One reduces the size of the Discover workforce this year, it’s particularly focused on jettisoning employees listed as an “application engineer,” according to plans the bank shared with Illinois and local state officials this year.
In a Feb. 25 letter to those officials, Capital One provided a table chart with the types of roles that it plans to cut, starting next month. The bank’s shrinking of the workforce comes about a year after Capital One completed the acquisition of Discover last May after announcing the $35 billion deal in February 2024.
Application engineers are targeted for the biggest cut. In the largest cut, the bank plans to get rid of 124 such engineers by May 4, according to the table. The second-biggest cut will nix another 54 senior associate application engineers, and the third-largest reduction will eliminate 38 employees principal application engineers, both by the same May date.
Application engineers at Discover are essentially software developers who work in a wide variety of technology capacities, from financial functions to legacy system programming to cloud computing.
The bank didn’t provide any rationale for the types of job cuts it’s making, and a Capital One spokesperson declined to comment on why those application engineer roles were being eliminated.
The spokesperson noted that the bank has job openings as well. “We encourage all associates, including those impacted by a role elimination, to apply for any roles for which they are interested and qualified,” the spokesperson said by email.
The increased use of artificial intelligence across the economy has been seen as potentially a means for companies to perform software coding more efficiently. For instance, the payments company Block, which owns merchant processor Square as well as the digital wallet Cash App, said in February that it plans to cut 40% of its workforce, citing AI advances.
Capital One has also openly talked about how it will use AI in its operations, including with respect to IT. In a post on its website late last year, the bank noted that AI is part of a “fundamental transformation in how we work with data.”
“The integration of AI into our workflows will only accelerate with time, making these tools a necessity for staying competitive,” Capital One’s senior manager for solutions architecture in software, Jason Baer, said in the Nov. 5 post. “The data professional of tomorrow won't be defined by their ability to manually process data, but by their skill in leveraging intelligent systems to unlock unprecedented value.”
Capital One’s of 1,139 Discover jobs on a “permanent” basis surfaced in March, with the reductions happening in phased “separation dates,” also including June 1, July 1 and Sept. 1, but with most of the cuts by the May date, according to the letter and table. The notice by the company is required by the state.
Nearly half of the reductions, 532, will happen at the one-time Discover headquarters in Riverwoods, Illinois, facility while 69 of the cuts will affect Illinois residents who work remotely, and the remaining 538 are employees who work outside the state and report to that Discover facility, according to the letter.
Among other significant categories of Discover jobs being cut are those employees who focus on risk assessment. Capital One said it would eliminate 26 principal risk specialists and another 26 risk managers.
The spokesperson also declined to comment on how many jobs will remain at the Riverwoods location after the cuts.
