Director of Applied Research

About Thomson Reuters Labs

We experiment, build and deliver. Thomson Reuters Labs work across all business segments to discover what new products, services, and AI-driven solutions we can create for our customers. With access to over 60,000 TBs of legal, regulatory, news, and tax data, we are building the next generation of AI-powered knowledge systems that transform how professionals access, discover, and act on information.

You will join the global labs leadership team as a key leader shaping the technical vision and culture of Thomson Reuters' IR and AI research initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

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.

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