Lead Applied Scientist

Thomson Reuters • Eagan, MN

1d

About The Position

This posting is for proactive recruitment purposes and may be used to fill current openings or future vacancies within our organization. Are you excited about working at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting? Thomson Reuters Labs in Canada is seeking scientists with a passion for solving problems using state-of-the-art natural language processing, information retrieval, and generative AI. What does Thomson Reuters Labs do? We experiment, we build, we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research in natural language processing and informational retrieval. We innovate collaboratively with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of user needs and technical feasibility. Our team in Labs Legal Tech is designing the next generation of Legal Technology globally. We drive AI innovation for Thomson Reuters’ LegalTech Products and features, including CoCounsel Core , CoCounsel Drafting , Practical Law , HighQ , Legal Tracker , Document Intelligence , Contract Express , Due Diligence , and others . About the Role Lead Applied Scientists are experts in NLP / IR / ML / GenAI, responsible for the design and delivery of AI solutions that enhance Thomson Reuters' products. They leverage information retrieval techniques, prompting workflows, model training and evaluation design to build and optimize solutions. Their work ensures AI technologies are effectively aligned with business objectives, driving product innovation and value. As a Lead Applied Scientist , you will work with a cross functional team at the intersection of product, science, and engineering to: Lead an applied research team throughout the full product development life cycle from ideation and PoC through to production scaling and feedback driven iteration. Be fully accountable for all research deliverables in your projects, Lead and drive stakeholder engagement with other functions (Product, Engineering, SMEs, Design), Develop in-depth knowledge of customer problems and data, Maintain scientific and technical expertise in one or more relevant areas as demonstrated through product deliverables, published research, and intellectual property, Identify state of the art technology relevant to TR products and leverage them to create value for TR customers, Provide input to the business and Labs leadership on long-term AI strategy, Mentor and coach scientists and engineers on best practices and fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning.

Requirements

• PhD in a relevant discipline or master’s plus a comparable level of experience
• 7+ years of hands-on experience building NLP / IR systems for commercial applications
• Experience writing production code and ensuring well-managed software delivery
• Demonstrable experience translating complex problems into successful AI applications
• Professional experience scaling yourself and leading through others, in an applied research setting
• Outstanding communication, problem-solving, and analysis skills
• Staying up to date with the latest research and emerging tech for generative AI for NLP and IR
• Experience collaborating with Product, Engineering and other business stakeholders in an agile manner to demonstrate value and iterate with customer feedback.
• Solid understanding of classic ML techniques used for NLP problems
• Solid understanding of DL approaches used for NLP tasks such as transformer-based models
• Working understanding of inner workings of large language models
• Experience working on text heavy NLP projects
• Practical experience in curating and optimizing data sets for evaluation of ML and LLM-based solutions including AutoEval methods
• Practical experience using generative AI technologies (prompt engineering, in-context learning, chain-of-thoughts, prompt optimization, auto-evaluation, function calling, controlled generation, etc.)
• Practical experience using RAG frameworks, pre-training/fine-tuning language models, and data curation/generation for training/fine-tuning language models
• Practical experience using agentic frameworks for building applications (PydanticAI, LangGraph, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, etc.)
• Proficiency in Python, Git, AWS, Azure for remote model development and deployment
• Experience building lightweight UIs, iterating on greenfield concepts, applying agile development practices and rapid prototyping.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience of working on legal AI systems and/or solutions interacting with long documents (e.g., for contract analysis, legal research, or drafting)
• Experience building applications for the legal domain, such as document review or document drafting
• Knowledge in legal (transactional or litigation), compliance or regulatory domains, law degree (J.D.), paralegal experience, etc.
• Publications at relevant venues such as ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, ICML, KDD or similar conferences and venues.
• Knowledge of MLOps and the end-to-end lifecycle of software applications involving AI models

Responsibilities

• Lead an applied research team throughout the full product development life cycle from ideation and PoC through to production scaling and feedback driven iteration.
• Be fully accountable for all research deliverables in your projects
• Lead and drive stakeholder engagement with other functions (Product, Engineering, SMEs, Design)
• Develop in-depth knowledge of customer problems and data
• Maintain scientific and technical expertise in one or more relevant areas as demonstrated through product deliverables, published research, and intellectual property
• Identify state of the art technology relevant to TR products and leverage them to create value for TR customers
• Provide input to the business and Labs leadership on long-term AI strategy
• Mentor and coach scientists and engineers on best practices and fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning.

Benefits

• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way is a set of supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities, whether caring for family, giving back to the community, or finding time to refresh and reset. This builds upon our flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year, empowering employees to achieve a better work-life balance.
• Career Development and Growth: By fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development, we prepare our talent to tackle tomorrow’s challenges and deliver real-world solutions. Our Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.
• Industry Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include flexible vacation, two company-wide Mental Health Days off, access to the Headspace app, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, employee incentive programs, and resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.
• Culture: Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.
• Social Impact: Make an impact in your community with our Social Impact Institute. We offer employees two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.
• Making a Real-World Impact: We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, and provide trusted, unbiased information to people all over the world.
• In the United States, Thomson Reuters offers a comprehensive benefits package to our employees. Our benefit package includes market competitive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs, as well as a competitive 401k plan with company match. In addition, Thomson Reuters offers market leading work life benefits with competitive vacation, sick and safe paid time off, paid holidays (including two company mental health days off), parental leave, sabbatical leave. These benefits meet or exceeds the requirements of paid time off in accordance with any applicable state or municipal laws. Finally, Thomson Reuters offers the following additional benefits: 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; Tuition Reimbursement; and access to Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree