SENIOR APPLIED SCIENTIST, NLP/IR/GENAI

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 natural language processing, information retrieval, 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.

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 (such as LangGraph, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, etc.) for building applications,
• 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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ABOUT THE ROLE

Senior Applied Scientists are experts in NLP / IR / ML / GenAI, responsible for the design and delivery of AI solutions that enhance Thomson Reuters’ products. They leverage information retrieval techniques, prompting workflows, model training and evaluation design to build and optimize solutions. Their work ensures AI technologies are effectively aligned with business objectives, driving product innovation and value.

As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will:

• Lead an applied research team throughout the full product development life cycle from ideation and PoC through to production scaling and feedback driven iteration.
• Be fully accountable for all research deliverables in your projects,
• Provide input to the business and Labs leadership on long-term AI strategy,
• Lead and drive stakeholder engagement with other functions (Product, Engineering, Design),
• Develop in-depth knowledge of customer problems and data,
• Maintain scientific and technical expertise in one or more relevant areas as demonstrated through product deliverables, published research, and intellectual property,
• Identify state of the art technology relevant to TR products and leverage them to create value for TR customers,
• Mentor and coach scientists and engineers on best practices and fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning.

You’re a fit for the role of Senior Applied Scientist if your background includes:

• PhD in a relevant discipline or master’s plus a comparable level of experience,
• 5+ years of hands-on experience building NLP / IR systems for commercial applications,
• Experience writing production code and ensuring well-managed software delivery,
• Demonstrable experience translating complex problems into successful AI applications,
• Professional experience scaling yourself and leading through others, in an applied research setting,
• Outstanding communication, problem-solving, and analysis skills,
• Experience collaborating with Product, Engineering and other business stakeholders in an agile manner to demonstrate value and iterate with customer feedback