Director, Applied Research

Are you excited about working at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting? Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking a Director of Applied Research with a passion for product development and the desire to build high-value, state-of-the-art information systems for legal professionals. 

 
What does Thomson Reuters Labs do? We experiment, we build, we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research in informational retrieval and natural language processing. We work closely with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of user need and technical feasibility. Our team is designing next generation search technology for Legal and Tax Professionals globally. We drive AI innovation for Thomson Reuters’ core research products, including Westlaw, Practical Law, and Checkpoint. 

 
About the Role

This leadership role has significant scope to influence product strategy and design the next generation of AI capabilities for Thomson Reuters’ flagship legal research products.  In this role, you will: 

• Design and develop AI features that reimagine the way legal research is done. 

• Inner source and scale solutions developed in Labs across the enterprise. 

• Inform the business and Labs leadership on long term AI strategy and partnerships. 

• Influence product strategy with high value insights around usage, quality, and feedback. 

• Oversee model governance activities and provide effective challenge. 

• Continuously improve ways of working with cross-functional teams including Product, UX, and Engineering.  

• Engage in concept development and design workshops with deep domain experts. 

• Inspire a team of highly intellectual individuals, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning. 

 
About You 

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in AI/ML, substantial experience building NLP applications for commercial products, demonstrated success leading high-performing teams, and the soft skills to bridge technical and business perspectives.  

Minimum qualifications 

• PhD in a relevant discipline or Master’s plus comparable experience 

• 10+ years hands-on building IR / NLP systems for commercial applications 

• 5+ years of management experience – coaching & developing high-performing teams 

• Experience designing and implementing solutions with large language models 

• Experience innovating state-of-the-art research to solve applied, real-world problems. 

• Outstanding communication and analytical skills 

Preferred qualifications 

• Experience building solutions for legal research (case law retrieval, citation analysis, document review or drafting, e.g.) 

• Experience designing taxonomies or knowledge graphs for complex domains.  

• Relevant publications at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, KDD, or similar. 

#LI-OR1

What's in it For You?
You will join our inclusive culture of world-class talent, where we are committed to your personal and professional growth through:

• Hybrid Work Model: We’ve adopted a flexible hybrid working environment (2-3 days a we