Director, Applied Research
Director, Applied Research
Are you excited about working at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting? Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking an experienced scientist with strongproduct mindset to lead a high-performing team developing transformative solutions for tax, audit, and accounting professionals.
About the role
What does TR Labs do? We experiment, we build, we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research andinnovation. We work closely with product and domain experts to identifycompelling solutions at the intersection of customer needsand technical feasibility. We partner closely with product engineering teams to deliver real value in high-stakes settings,where accuracy and verificationare essential.
Our team is designing the nextgeneration of agentic AI for tax & accounting professionalsaround the globe.This isanopportunityto create entirely new workflows addressing fundamental challenges in the industry.TR has all the ingredients fromannotated tax lawtorobusttax engines andend-to-end solutions for data management, filing, audit, and compliance. Comejoin the R&Dteamfor Thomson Reuters’ portfolio of taxproducts, includingCheckpoint, CoCounselTax, and OneSource.
About You
You hold a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related field or a Master's with equivalent depth, a strong science background, and a relevant publication record. You bring 10+ years of hands-on industry experience building AI/ML systems for commercial applications, with recent direct experience developing LLM-based and agentic systems in production. You have 5+ years leading and developing high-performing applied science or ML teams.
What You'll Do
Lead and develop a high-performing applied science team working on agentic AI for tax and accounting professionals
Drive the design and delivery of AI features that meaningfully reimagine customer workflows in high-stakes, accuracy-critical settings
Serve as a strategic thought partner to Labs leadership, product leadership, and key business stakeholders on long-term AI strategy, partnerships, and capability roadmap
Influence product strategy through deep technical knowledge combined with insight from usage data, quality metrics, and customer feedback
Continuously improve ways of working across R&D and product engineering in a fast-paced, tightly embedded delivery cycle
Engage domain and subject matter experts in concept development and design workshops
Foster a team culture of innovation, rigour, collaboration, and continuous learning
Required Qualifications
PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field or Master's with a strong science background and relevant publication record - required
10+ years of hands-on industry experience building AI/ML systems for commercial applications - not research-only experience
Recent, direct hands-on experience developing LLM-based and agentic AI systems for production, non-trivial use cases
5+ years of experience managing and developing high-performing applied science or ML teams
Demonstrated success in product- or customer-facing roles, with business and customer impact as the primary measure of success
Technical depth in AI/ML sufficient to provide effective challenge, expand on team ideas, and support high-quality technical decision-making
Preferred Qualifications
Technical depth in information retrieval and NLP, with experience in complex vertical domains - taxonomy induction, document understanding, agentic search, knowledge graphs, or neuro-symbolic approaches
Experience with AI agent evaluation, language model training with verifiable rewards, and synthetic data generation
Publications at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, KDD, or equivalent
Experience building AI solutions for tax, legal, audit, or accounting domains
Track record of growth at top-tier technology companies or high-growth startups
What’s in it For You?
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 tomorrow’s 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.
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.
We are powered by the talents of 26,000 employees across more than 70 countries, where everyone has a chance to contribute and grow professionally in flexible work environments. At a time when objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and transparency are under attack, we consider it our duty to pursue them. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.
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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