Staff Software Engineer, Search Control Plane

Thomson Reuters•Frisco, NY

19h•Hybrid

About The Position

The AI Enabled Software Engineering team is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to build and operate the foundation of Thomson Reuters’ next-generation search platform. The platform consolidates search systems across Thomson Reuters products and services and serves millions of end users, internal agents, and search teams. The role is responsible for designing and delivering a fully managed, scalable, reliable, customizable, sovereign, and self-service control plane that manages search systems throughout their lifecycle. This includes automating provisioning of Kubernetes workloads, Kafka messaging, ingestion pipelines, and query and ingestion data planes, with sovereignty and observability built in. The Staff Software Engineer owns the infrastructure behind search indexes, including provisioning, capacity planning, health, backup and restore, and operational support. The role defines interface standards, architecture, security controls, platform SLOs, and infrastructure practices; operates production systems through on-call and incident response; and works across teams to improve platform adoption and delivery. Staff Engineers define, build, deploy, and operate what they ship. The team ships to production frequently, treats delivery friction as an ongoing engineering priority, and uses AI-assisted development as the norm. The position also provides technical leadership: setting architectural principles and design patterns, leading cross-team projects, advising leadership on infrastructure and security decisions, partnering with client teams, and mentoring Senior and mid-level engineers. In the first 90 days, the engineer is expected to learn the platform and its operational gaps, build relationships with client teams and the retrieval owner, assume on-call ownership, and deliver high-impact improvements. In the first year, the engineer is expected to materially improve the control plane and developer experience, establish SLO coverage and capacity plans, deliver a major infrastructure initiative, and become a recognized technical authority for control plane and search infrastructure.

Requirements

At least 8 years of software engineering experience, with progression to staff-level scope, including ownership of a functional area and leadership of cross-functional projects.
A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Experience designing, building, and operating production platform or infrastructure services at scale, with strong distributed systems fundamentals.
Experience with a programming language such as Go, Java, or Python, or an equivalent language.
Hands-on cloud infrastructure experience; AWS is preferred.
Experience with Kubernetes or another container orchestrator and infrastructure as code.
Production experience operating a search engine such as Vespa, OpenSearch, or Elasticsearch, including capacity planning and index lifecycle management.
Operational rigor, including SLO definition, observability, on-call leadership, and learning from incidents.
Fluency with AI-assisted development tools.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing APIs consumed by multiple teams, including versioning, access control, and strong developer experience.
Experience with multi-tenant platform security, including identity integration, role-based access control, encryption, and customer-managed keys.
Production experience operating Kafka or another distributed messaging platform.
Experience building internal developer platforms where documentation and ease of adoption are treated as product concerns.
Experience with tracing and observability for non-deterministic or agentic workflows.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and own the control plane for creating, configuring, upgrading, promoting, and retiring search systems.
Automate provisioning of Kubernetes workloads, Kafka messaging, ingestion pipelines, and query and ingestion data-plane components.
Build lifecycle workflows for schema changes, reingestion, index switching, and rollback, with status indicating when an index is ready.
Implement tenant data isolation, enterprise identity, role-based access, and controls that keep customer data within required boundaries.
Design the configuration data model and persistence layer for system definitions, component registries, index lifecycle state, and audit history across tenants and regions.
Set platform interface standards, including versioned and backward-compatible contracts, documentation, and support for evaluation and experimentation workflows.
Own infrastructure behind Vespa and OpenSearch indexes, including provisioning, capacity planning, health, backup and restore, and the on-call path.
Set capacity budgets and limits for reindexing and backfills in partnership with the retrieval owner.
Own platform SLOs for availability, query latency, ingestion throughput, and document freshness; provide tracing and alerting across provisioning, ingestion, data-plane, and agentic retrieval paths.
Own cloud infrastructure as code across environments and the CI/CD pipeline, and reduce delivery friction so the team can ship safely and frequently.
Build security controls including least-privilege access, secrets management, encryption at rest and in transit, customer-managed keys, audit logging, and compliance.
Plan for cost and performance as tenants, content, and query traffic grow.
Participate in on-call, incident response, and post-mortems, and drive systemic fixes.
Set architectural principles and design patterns for the control plane and infrastructure, serving as a technical authority for other teams.
Lead cross-team projects, set priorities, and advise leadership on complex infrastructure and security decisions.
Partner with client teams to understand platform adoption experiences and incorporate findings into the roadmap.
Mentor Senior and mid-level engineers and help the team use AI-assisted development effectively.
Learn the platform’s infrastructure, index footprint, and operational posture; identify capacity, reliability, security, and developer-experience gaps.
Build relationships with key client teams and the retrieval owner, take on-call ownership, and deliver high-leverage near-term improvements.
Deliver a materially improved self-service control plane, establish end-to-end SLO coverage and capacity plans, and own a major infrastructure initiative.

Benefits

Flexible hybrid work environment for office-based roles.
Flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year.
Flexible vacation and paid time off, sick and safe time off, and paid holidays, including two company-wide mental health days.
Access to the Headspace app and Employee Assistance Program.
Retirement savings plan with company match.
Tuition reimbursement.
Employee incentive programs and employee stock purchase plan.
Health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance.
Parental leave and sabbatical leave.
Adoption and surrogacy assistance.
Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts.
Fitness reimbursement.
Commuter benefits.
Two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities for pro-bono consulting and ESG initiatives.
Optional hospital, accident and sickness insurance; optional life and AD&D insurance; and group legal and identity theft protection, paid by the employee.
Annual bonus may be available based on enterprise and individual performance.