Senior Director, Applied Research

Thomson Reuters•New York, NY

About The Position

Senior Director, Applied Research Are you excited about working at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting? Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking an experienced scientist with strong product mindset to lead a high-performing team developing transformative solutions for tax, audit, and accounting professionals. About the role What does TR Labs do? We experiment, we build, we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research and innovation. We work closely with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of customer needs and technical feasibility. We partner closely with product engineering teams to deliver real value in high-stakes settings, where accuracy and verification are essential. Our team is designing the next generation of agentic AI for tax & accounting professionals around the globe. This is an opportunity to create entirely new workflows addressing fundamental challenges in the industry. TR has all the ingredients from annotated tax law to robust tax engines and end-to-end solutions for data management, filing, audit, and compliance. Come join the R&D team for Thomson Reuters’ portfolio of tax products, including Checkpoint, CoCounsel Tax, and OneSource. About You You hold a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related field or a Master's with equivalent depth, a strong science background, and a relevant publication record. You bring 10+ years of hands-on industry experience building AI/ML systems for commercial applications, with recent direct experience developing LLM-based and agentic systems in production. You have 5+ years leading and developing high-performing applied science or ML teams.

Requirements

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field or Master's with a strong science background and relevant publication record — required
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

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.

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