Director, Applied Research

Thomson Reuters•New York, NY

3d•$198,200 - $368,000•Remote

About The Position

Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking an experienced scientist with a strong product mindset to lead a high-performing team developing transformative solutions for tax, audit, and accounting professionals. TR Labs experiments, builds, and delivers applied research and innovation, working closely with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of customer needs and technical feasibility. The team is designing the next generation of agentic AI for tax & accounting professionals, creating new workflows to address fundamental industry challenges. This role is part of the R&D team for Thomson Reuters’ portfolio of tax products, including Checkpoint, CoCounsel Tax, and OneSource.

Requirements

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field or Master's with a strong science background and relevant publication record
10+ years of hands-on industry experience building AI/ML systems for commercial applications (not research-only experience)
Recent, direct hands-on experience developing LLM-based and agentic AI systems for production, non-trivial use cases
5+ years of experience managing and developing high-performing applied science or ML teams
Demonstrated success in product- or customer-facing roles, with business and customer impact as the primary measure of success
Technical depth in AI/ML sufficient to provide effective challenge, expand on team ideas, and support high-quality technical decision-making

Nice To Haves

Technical depth in information retrieval and NLP, with experience in complex vertical domains — taxonomy induction, document understanding, agentic search, knowledge graphs, or neuro-symbolic approaches
Experience with AI agent evaluation, language model training with verifiable rewards, and synthetic data generation
Publications at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, KDD, or equivalent
Experience building AI solutions for tax, legal, audit, or accounting domains
Track record of growth at top-tier technology companies or high-growth startups

Responsibilities

Lead and develop a high-performing applied science team working on agentic AI for tax and accounting professionals
Drive the design and delivery of AI features that meaningfully reimagine customer workflows in high-stakes, accuracy-critical settings
Serve as a strategic thought partner to Labs leadership, product leadership, and key business stakeholders on long-term AI strategy, partnerships, and capability roadmap
Influence product strategy through deep technical knowledge combined with insight from usage data, quality metrics, and customer feedback
Continuously improve ways of working across R&D and product engineering in a fast-paced, tightly embedded delivery cycle
Engage domain and subject matter experts in concept development and design workshops
Foster a team culture of innovation, rigour, collaboration, and continuous learning

Benefits

Flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year
Flexible vacation
Two company-wide Mental Health Days off
Access to the Headspace app
Retirement savings
Tuition reimbursement
Employee incentive programs
Resources for mental, physical, and wellbeing
Two paid volunteer days off annually
Market competitive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs
Competitive 401k plan with company match
Competitive vacation, sick and safe paid time off
Paid holidays (including two company mental health days off)
Parental leave
Sabbatical leave
Optional hospital, accident and sickness insurance paid 100% by the employee
Optional life and AD&D insurance paid 100% by the employee
Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts
Fitness reimbursement
Access to Employee Assistance Program
Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit paid 100% by employee
Access to 529 Plan
Commuter benefits
Adoption & Surrogacy Assistance
Access to Employee Stock Purchase Plan