[Hiring] Director of Applied Research @Thomson Reuters

Role Description

As Director of Applied Research, you will define and drive the technical vision for AI-powered search, discovery, and knowledge systems that unlock value from Thomson Reuters' unique data assets. You will combine strategic leadership with hands-on technical depth, building a world-class team while directly contributing to cutting-edge IR research and production-grade solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Define Technical Vision & Strategy
  • Set the strategic direction for Information Retrieval research and innovation at Thomson Reuters, positioning TR as a leader in retrieval-based AI.
  • Establish the technical direction for retrieval, ranking, semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic retrieval system capabilities.
  • Design and optimize retrieval architectures leveraging embeddings, reranking, hybrid search, knowledge graphs, and contextual retrieval techniques.
  • Build evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for search quality, relevance, answer quality, and real-world business impact.
  • Contribute to the global TR Labs engineering strategy and methodology through adoption of emerging AI/ML technologies and industry best practices.
• Build & Lead a High-Performing Team
  • Hire, train, and manage a highly skilled team with expertise across cloud engineering, machine learning engineering, data engineering, and AI research.
  • Mentor scientists and engineers while establishing best practices for production AI development and deployment.
  • Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning across the global labs organization.
  • Develop team members' technical depth in information retrieval, NLP, generative AI, and large-scale AI systems.
• Drive Production AI Solutions
  • Lead development of enterprise-grade retrieval, ranking, NLP, and knowledge-based AI solutions that integrate with Thomson Reuters products.
  • Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams to translate customer needs and domain-specific challenges into scalable AI applications.
  • Establish robust channels between Labs research and product technology organizations, enabling effective transfer of innovation to production systems.
  • Apply modern development practices across the entire software development lifecycle—from experimentation to deployment to operational excellence.
  • Demonstrate proficiency in automation, system monitoring, MLOps, and cloud-native AI applications on AWS, Azure, or equivalent platforms.
• Drive Strategy & Business Impact
  • Proactively identify opportunities where Labs can improve the status quo or generate new business value through AI/ML innovation.
  • Influence the global project portfolio and investment decisions with your expertise in applied AI and domain knowledge.
  • Provide strategic input to product and modernization roadmaps, particularly in identifying and articulating AI-driven opportunities.
  • Translate complex customer problems in legal, tax, news, and corporate domains into successful AI solutions.
  • Continuously question why something needs to be done and for whom, maintaining a strong customer-centric mindset.
• Be a Trusted Advisor
  • Actively engage across cross-functional teams, sharing knowledge, valuing diverse ideas, and building relationships with technology and product leaders.
  • Communicate effectively—translating between research and engineering methodologies and languages.
  • Secure alignment and clear paths to market for AI-powered initiatives.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, or a closely related field.
• 8+ years of industry experience building and deploying production AI systems at scale.
• Proven track record of successfully taking machine learning and AI solutions from research to production-grade software with measurable business impact.
• A strong publication record in leading venues such as SIGIR, NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, WWW, or comparable conferences.

Requirements

• Demonstrated ability to build, mentor, and manage high-performing teams of engineers and scientists.
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing technical strategy across research, engineering, and product organizations.
• An entrepreneurial mindset with confidence in making independent decisions and driving initiatives forward.
• Exceptional communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.

Benefits

• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities.
• Career Development and Growth: Culture of continuous learning and skill development.
• Industry Competitive Benefits: Comprehensive benefit plans including flexible vacation, mental health days, retirement savings, and tuition reimbursement.
• Culture: Award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging.
• Social Impact: Opportunities for community involvement and pro-bono consulting projects.
• Making a Real-World Impact: Helping customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency.