AI Staff Software Engineer

Job Description

Are you passionate about transforming the future of legal research with AI? Join our Global Westlaw Engineering organization and help shape the next generation of intelligent legal research solutions.

The Global Westlaw Engineering organization builds and operates the technology that powers Westlaw, the world's leading legal research platform. Our teams develop innovative products and AI-driven solutions that help legal professionals find trusted answers, uncover insights, and make confident decisions faster. Working across engineering, AI, data, platform, and product disciplines, we deliver secure, scalable, and intelligent experiences for customers around the globe.

As an AI Staff Engineer, you will help define and build the AI foundation that powers the next generation of Westlaw experiences. You will work on cutting-edge technologies including agentic systems, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI platforms, and large-scale knowledge services, enabling teams across Westlaw to deliver intelligent, trustworthy, and high-performing solutions for legal professionals worldwide.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and architect AI-driven systems – Design and lead the implementation of enterprise-scale AI systems, including multi-component pipelines, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and knowledge graph–based architectures, and autonomous AI agents with multi-step reasoning; stay hands-on across the stack, from AI orchestration and RAG through API gateways, microservices, and modern web UIs.
• Drive innovation and technical strategy – Evaluate and drive adoption of emerging AI techniques; run proof-of-concept work and assess technical feasibility for new AI-driven features; stay current with AI research and translate insights into technical roadmaps; represent the organization at industry conferences and events.
• Provide senior technical leadership – Make architecture decisions and translate business requirements into scalable technical specifications; mentor senior and junior software engineers; champion MLOps and LLMOps practices and governance for the AI model lifecycle.
• Ensure quality, security, and operational excellence – Design and implement testing, monitoring, and observability for AI systems at scale; ensure compliance with ethical AI principles, security standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration and drive business value delivery – Partner with AI researchers, engineering leadership, design, and product to turn AI capabilities into customer-facing applications; set technical priorities and stay engaged through delivery so AI investments produce measurable business value; optimize performance for latency, cost, and user experience; influence product strategy through technical depth.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience (Master’s preferred).
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in senior or lead roles on AI/ML systems.
• A track record as a software engineer with AI expertise (not primarily a data scientist or researcher), with hands-on experience in generative AI, RAG, or LLM-based systems, covering discovery, architecture, agentic tools, evaluation, deployment, and metrics.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python or another object-oriented language, with strong backend service and API design skills.
• Solid understanding of ML principles, evaluation methodologies, and distributed systems, plus working experience with AI/ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Advanced experience with AWS and with Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform, and a record of integrating AI models into large-scale production systems through APIs, data pipelines, and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong technical leadership and mentoring experience as an individual contributor, with the communication skills to influence senior stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading technical direction for teams building agent-based systems or enterprise integrations with AI APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic).
• Advanced knowledge of vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, and information retrieval.
• Hands-on experience with knowledge graphs, including graph data modeling, ontologies and taxonomies, graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune), and combining graphs with LLMs through approaches such as GraphRAG and entity extraction.
• Domain expertise in legal, tax, accounting, or other regulated industries, or in large-scale search platforms.
• Successful AI product launches and experience scaling AI systems to enterprise customers.
• Experience with AI governance, model risk management, and regulatory compliance.
• Publications, patents, or speaking experience in AI/ML.

#LI-ES1

New Position: This position is open due to an existing vacancy to support our evolving business needs.

What’s in it For You?

• Hybrid Work Model: We’ve adopted a flexible hybrid working environment for our office-based roles while delivering a seamless experience that is digitally and physically connected.
• 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.

Our use of AI within the recruitment process Thomson Reuters utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our global recruitment process. Unless you opt-out, our AI system will assess the information provided by you and compare it to the requirements listed for the role, and present the result to our recruitment personnel for further review. The AI system acts as a supporting tool, but there is always a human making the decision if you will be considered for the role.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.Thomson Reuters complies with local laws that require upfront disclosure of the expected pay range for a position. The base compensation range varies across locations.

Eligible office location(s) for this role include one or more of the following: New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and/or Irvine, CA; McLean, VA; Washington, DC. The base compensation range for the role in any of those locations is $158,000 USD - $293,000 USD.
For any eligible US locations, unless otherwise noted, the base compensation range for this role is $137,100 USD - $254,700 USD.

Base pay is positioned within the range based on several factors including an individual’s knowledge, skills and experience with consideration given to internal equity. Base pay is one part of a comprehensive Total Reward program which also includes flexible and supportive benefits and other wellbeing programs.
This role may also be eligible for an Annual Bonus based on a combination of enterprise and individual performance.


About Us

Thomson Reuters informs the way forward by bringing together the trusted content and technology that people and organizations need to make the right decisions. We serve professionals across legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media. Our products combine highly specialized software and insights to empower professionals with the data, intelligence, and solutions needed to make informed decisions, and to help institutions in their pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency. Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is a world leading provider of trusted journalism and news.

We are powered by the talents of 26,000 employees across more than 70 countries, where everyone has a chance to contribute and grow professionally in flexible work environments. At a time when objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and transparency are under attack, we consider it our duty to pursue them. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.

As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, color, sex/gender, including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, citizen status, veteran status, or any other protected classification under applicable law. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer providing a drug-free workplace.

Thomson Reuters makes reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. If you reside in the United States and require an accommodation in the recruiting process, you may contact our Human Resources Department at [email protected]. Disability accommodations in the recruiting process may include things like a sign language interpreter, making interview rooms accessible, providing assistive technology, or other relevant accommodations. Please note this email is not intended for general recruitment questions and we will promptly respond to inquiries regarding accommodations. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com