Manager, Applied Research – Legal Tech

Are you excited about working at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting Thomson Reuters Labs in Canada is seeking scientists with a passion for solving problems using state-of-the-art information retrieval natural language processing and generative AI.

What does Thomson Reuters Labs do We experiment we build we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research in natural language processing and informational retrieval. We innovate collaboratively with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of user needs and technical feasibility. Our team in Labs Legal Tech is designing the next generation of Legal Technology globally. We drive AI innovation for Thomson Reuters LegalTech Products and features including CoCounsel Core CoCounsel Drafting Practical Law HighQ Legal Tracker Document Intelligence Contract Express Due Diligence and others.

About the Role:

As a Manager Applied Research in Labs you will be part of a global cross-functional team of experts. We hire specialists across a variety of AI research areas as well as Engineering and Design to drive the companys digital transformation. TR Labs is known for consistently delivering AI products that and serve Thomson Reuters customers in new and exciting ways. This opportunity combines hands-on project work as well as project and people leadership.

As a Manager of Applied Scientist you will:

Lead a high performing team of applied researchers throughout the full research and product development life cycle from ideation and PoC through to production scaling and feedback driven iteration

Contribute to hands-on delivery on important projects

Develop in-depth knowledge of customer problems workflows and data. Identify state of the art technology relevant to TR products and leverage them to create value for TR customers

Translate complex business problems into projects with clearly defined scope and objectives and be accountable for timely well-managed deliverables

Provide input and insights to the business and Labs leadership on long-term AI strategy

Share information value diverse ideas and partner effectively with colleagues in a cross-functional team

Build close relationships with internal project stakeholders and provide AI subject matter expertise

Mentor and coach scientists and engineers on best practices and fostering a culture of continuous learning innovation and collaboration

Maintain scientific and technical expertise in one or more relevant areas as demonstrated through product deliverables published research and creating intellectual property

Be a proactive communicator who is excited to share your work. You will be articulate and compelling in describing ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences. You will help lead the way in the adoption of AI across the enterprise.

About You:

Youre a fit for the role of Manager of Applied Scientist if your background includes:

PhD in a relevant discipline or masters plus a comparable level of experience

5 years of hands-on experience building NLP / IR systems for commercial applications

Demonstrable ability to mentor and coach colleagues as well as at least 2 years of line management experience

Solid software engineering skills for prototyping and ensuring well-managed software delivery

Demonstrable ability to connect cutting edge research to customer needs and creating well-structured research/project plans into working applications

Experience as a technical leader scoping prioritizing coordinating and guiding the work of others

Experience collaborating with Product Engineering and other business stakeholders in an agile manner to demonstrate value and iterate with customer feedback

Technical Qualifications:

Solid understanding of classic ML techniques used for NLP problems

Solid understanding of DL approaches used for NLP tasks such as transformer-based models

Working understanding of inner workings of large language models

Experience working on text heavy NLP projects

Practical experience using generative AI technologies (prompt engineering in-context learning chain-of-thoughts prompt optimization auto-evaluation function calling controlled generation etc.)

Practical experience using RAG frameworks pre-training/fine-tuning language models and data curation/generation for training/fine-tuning language models

Practical experience using agentic frameworks for building applications (LangGraph AutoGen Semantic Kernel etc.)

Proficiency in Python Git AWS Azure for remote model development and deployment

Experience building lightweight UIs iterating on greenfield concepts applying agile development practices and rapid prototyping

Preferred Qualifications:

Prior work on search and question answering from large corpora and/or long document summarization

Experience building applications for the legal domain such as document review or document drafting

Publications at relevant venues such as ACL EMNLP NAACL NeurIPS ICLR SIGIR ICML KDD or similar conferences and venues

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Whats in it For You

• Hybrid Work Model: Weve adopted a flexible hybrid working environment (2-3 days a week in the office depending on the role) 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 tomorrows 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.

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 $197600 - $366900. For any eligible US locations unless otherwise noted the base compensation range for this role is $171500 - $318500. This role may also be eligible for an Annual Bonus based on a combination of enterprise and individual performance. Base pay is positioned within the range based on several factors including an individuals 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.

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.

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.

We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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