Sr Director, Applied Research
Work Location Eligibility
This position is open to candidates based in the following locations:
Job details
Sr Director, Applied Research
Want to work at the forefront of applied research in an industry setting? Like the sound of a role that allows you to apply your findings and put your research into practice to shape the future of AI-driven products? Thomson Reuters Labs might be the place for you.
Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking an experienced applied scientist with strong product mindset to lead a high-performing team developing transformative solutions for tax, audit, and accounting professionals.
What does TR Labs do? We experiment, we build, we deliver. We support the organization and our customers through applied research and innovation. We work closely with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of customer needs and technical feasibility. We partner closely with product engineering teams to deliver real value in high-stakes settings, where accuracy and verifiability are essential.
Our team is designing the next generation of agentic AI for tax & accounting professionals around the globe. This is an opportunity to create entirely new workflows addressing fundamental challenges in the industry. TR has all the ingredients from annotated tax law to robust tax engines and end-to-end solutions for data management, filing, audit, and compliance. Come join the R&D team for Thomson Reuters’ portfolio of tax products, including Checkpoint, CoCounsel Tax, and OneSource.
About the Role
This role has significant scope to influence product strategy and design the next generation of AI capabilities for Thomson Reuters’ flagship tax products.
As Sr Director, Applied Research, you will:
Design and develop AI features that reimagine customer workflows
Inform the business and Labs leadership on long term AI strategy and partnerships.
Influence product strategy with high value insights around usage, quality, and customer feedback, as well as deep technical knowledge and experience building successful AI/ML products
Continuously improve ways of working with cross-functional teams, in a fast-paced tightly embedded R&D cycle
Engage subject matter experts in concept development and design workshops
Inspire a team of highly intellectual individuals, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
About You
The ideal candidate will have a strong background in AI/ML, substantial experience building language technology for commercial products, demonstrated success leading high-performing teams, and the soft skills to bridge both technical and business perspectives.
Minimum qualifications
PhD in Computer Science/ML or Master’s plus comparable experience
Demonstrable, hands-on experience building AI/ML systems for commercial applications
Demonstrable management experience – coaching & developing high-performing teams
Experience designing and implementing solutions with large language models
Experience innovating state-of-the-art solutions to solve challenging real-world problems
Outstanding communication and analytical skills
Preferred qualifications
Experience building solutions for information retrieval in complex vertical domains (e.g., involving taxonomy induction, document understanding, agentic search, knowledge graphs, and/or neuro-symbolic approaches)
Experience with AI agent evaluation, language model training with verifiable rewards, and/or synthetic data generation.
Relevant publications at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, KDD, or similar.
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What’s in it For You?
Hybrid Work Model: We’ve 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 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.
DISCLAIMER
The above information in this description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job.
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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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com
