Principal Scientist- Search

Thomson Reuters•United States of America, NY

8d•Hybrid

About The Position

This role is for a Principal Scientist focused on AI-powered search, discovery, and knowledge systems. The position involves defining and driving the technical vision, leading the development of key AI capabilities such as retrieval, ranking, semantic search, RAG, and agentic AI. The scientist will design and optimize retrieval architectures, establish evaluation frameworks, and partner with Product and Engineering teams to translate customer needs into scalable AI solutions. Additionally, the role includes providing technical leadership on AI strategy, roadmap planning, and investment decisions, as well as mentoring scientists and engineers and promoting best practices.

Requirements

A PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, or a related field.
8+ years of industry experience building and deploying production AI systems at scale.
Proven experience delivering search, retrieval, NLP, knowledge graph, recommendation, or Generative AI solutions.
A strong product mindset with the ability to translate complex customer problems into successful AI applications.
Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing technical strategy across research, engineering, and product organizations.
Outstanding communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
Deep hands-on experience in several of the following areas: Information Retrieval, Search Relevance, Semantic Search, Ranking, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
Experience with Large Language Models, Agentic AI frameworks, tool-using systems, and knowledge-based AI applications.
Experience with knowledge graphs, question answering, retrieval optimization, evaluation methodologies, and experimentation frameworks.
Production development using Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face, and modern MLOps practices.
A strong publication record in leading venues such as SIGIR, NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, WWW, RecSys, or comparable conferences.

Nice To Haves

Experience building enterprise search, discovery, or research-assistance platforms.
Experience within Legal, Tax & Accounting, Risk, Financial Services, Healthcare, or other complex professional domains.
Experience with hybrid search, vector databases, recommendation systems, knowledge graphs, and large-scale retrieval platforms.
Experience deploying and operating AI solutions using Azure ML, Azure AI Foundry, AWS SageMaker, or similar cloud platforms.
Experience mentoring scientists and leading large-scale AI initiatives.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the technical vision for AI-powered search, discovery, and knowledge systems.
Lead development of retrieval, ranking, semantic search, RAG, and agentic AI capabilities.
Design and optimize retrieval architectures using embeddings, reranking, hybrid search, knowledge graphs, and contextual retrieval techniques.
Establish evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for search quality, relevance, grounding, and answer quality.
Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams to translate customer needs into scalable AI solutions.
Provide technical leadership on AI strategy, roadmap planning, and investment decisions.
Mentor scientists and engineers while promoting best practices across the organization.

Benefits

Flexible hybrid working environment
Flex My Way policies
Work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year
Grow My Way programming
Skills-first approach
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 financial wellbeing
Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance
Two paid volunteer days off annually
Opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives
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
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