Associate Director, Engineering & Legal Technology

The Associate Director of Engineering, Legal Technology will provide technical leadership within the Knowledge & Innovation (K&I) department, driving the design, development, integration and delivery of modern legal technology solutions. This role combines hands-on architectural expertise with people leadership and strategic partnership across Knowledge, IT, and external vendors.

This role will lead engineering and solution architecture efforts across both custom-built and SaaS legal technology platforms, while serving as a subject matter expert (SME) for Search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and related AI-enabled knowledge systems.

This role reports to the Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer (CKIO) and is critical to scaling the Firm’s Knowledge & Innovation capabilities. The Associate Director of Engineering will help transform how attorneys access knowledge, leverage AI, and deliver value to clients—while ensuring solutions are robust, secure, and aligned with the Firm’s long-term strategy

Key Responsibilities

Engineering & Architecture Leadership

·       Lead engineering strategy and solution architecture for Knowledge & Innovation initiatives, ensuring scalability, security, and alignment with Firmwide technology standards.

·       Design and oversee integrations across SaaS platforms, internal systems, data sources, and AI / LLM services used in legal workflows.

·       Act as technical authority for evaluating, implementing, integrating and extending legal tech solutions (e.g., knowledge management, document intelligence, research, drafting, and workflow tools).

Search, RAG, and AI Enablement (SME)

·       Serve as a key subject matter expert for enterprise search, semantic search, vector databases, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures.

·       Provide input to document and data storage and organization approaches, to enable the most responsive and performant retrieval approaches

·       Partner with Data Science, Practice Solutions & the Firm’s Legal Practices to design AI-powered solutions that systematically surface Firm knowledge, precedents, and insights in a secure and auditable manner.

·       Help establish best practices for data ingestion, indexing, retrieval, grounding, and evaluation of AI-driven search and generative systems.

·       Conduct independent research to stay current on emerging retrieval techniques and their applicability to the Firm

Team Leadership & Delivery

·       Lead and mentor a small, high-performing engineering team supporting both custom development and SaaS configuration, integration and extension (focused on lawyer tools).

·       Work with IT to set technical direction, establish protocols, review designs and code, and ensure consistent engineering quality and documentation.

·       Manage delivery across multiple initiatives, balancing rapid experimentation with production-grade reliability.

Vendor & SaaS Enablement

·       Act as technical lead for vendor engagements, including solution viability, design reviews, integrations, and roadmap alignment.

·       Oversee customization, configuration, and extension of SaaS legal tech platforms through APIs, middleware, and automation.

·       Evaluate emerging legal technology and AI vendors in partnership with Practice Solutions, Data Science and Knowledge Management teams.

Qualifications & Experience

Required

·       Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

·       10+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, or platform engineering, with at least ~5 years in a technical leadership role.

·       Demonstrated experience designing and implementing search platforms, semantic search, or RAG-based systems.

·       Strong experience with cloud-based architectures, APIs, and modern development frameworks.

·       Proven ability to lead small engi