Principal Scientist- Search

About You

You are a recognized AI leader with deep expertise in Information Retrieval, Search, NLP, and Generative AI. You have a track record of turning cutting-edge research into production solutions that deliver measurable customer value.

You hold a PhD in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, NLP, Information Retrieval, or a related field , with 8+ years of industry experience building and deploying AI systems at scale. You bring strong technical depth across retrieval, ranking, RAG, agentic systems, and knowledge-based AI, while also possessing the product mindset and leadership skills needed to influence strategy and drive business impact.

About the Role

In this position, you will:

Define and drive the technical vision for AI-powered search, discovery, and knowledge systems.

Lead development of retrieval, ranking, semantic search, RAG, and agentic AI capabilities.

Design and optimize retrieval architectures using embeddings, reranking, hybrid search, knowledge graphs, and contextual retrieval techniques.

Establish evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for search quality, relevance, grounding, and answer quality.

Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams to translate customer needs into scalable AI solutions.

Provide technical leadership on AI strategy, roadmap planning, and investment decisions.

Mentor scientists and engineers while promoting best practices across the organization.

About You

You're an ideal fit if you have:

A PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, or a related field.

8+ years of industry experience building and deploying production AI systems at scale.

Proven experience delivering search, retrieval, NLP, knowledge graph, recommendation, or Generative AI solutions.

A strong product mindset with the ability to translate complex customer problems into successful AI applications.

Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing technical strategy across research, engineering, and product organizations.

Outstanding communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.

Technical Expertise

You bring deep hands-on experience in several of the following areas:

Information Retrieval, Search Relevance, Semantic Search, Ranking, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

Large Language Models, Agentic AI frameworks, tool-using systems, and knowledge-based AI applications.

Knowledge graphs, question answering, retrieval optimization, evaluation methodologies, and experimentation frameworks.

Production development using Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face, and modern MLOps practices.

You also have a strong publication record in leading venues such as SIGIR, NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, WWW, RecSys , or comparable conferences, demonstrating your ability to advance state-of-the-art research and translate innovation into real-world business impact.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building enterprise search, discovery, or research-assistance platforms.
• Experience within Legal, Tax & Accounting, Risk, Financial Services, Healthcare, or other complex professional domains.
• Experience with hybrid search, vector databases, recommendation systems, knowledge graphs, and large-scale retrieval platforms.
• Experience deploying and operating AI solutions using Azure ML, Azure AI Foundry, AWS SageMaker, or similar cloud platforms.
• Experience mentoring scientists and leading large-scale AI initiatives.
• 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.
• 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 $212,100 USD - $393,900 USD.

Base pay is positioned within the range based on several factors including an individual’s 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.
This role may also be eligible for an Annual Bonus based on a combination of enterprise and individual performance.


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.

Thomson Reuters makes reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. If you reside in the United States and require an accommodation in the recruiting process, you may contact our Human Resources Department at  HR.Leave-Expert@thomsonreuters.com .

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com