Director of Applied Research

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in New York.

📋 Description

• Define and lead the technical vision and strategy for AI-driven search, discovery, and knowledge systems.

• Set a strategic direction for research and innovation in Information Retrieval.

• Establish the technical framework for retrieval, ranking, semantic search, RAG, and agentic retrieval capabilities.

• Design and refine retrieval architectures utilizing embeddings, reranking, hybrid search, knowledge graphs, and contextual retrieval.

• Develop evaluation frameworks and benchmarks to assess search quality, relevance, answer quality, and business impact.

• Contribute to the overarching engineering strategy and methodology of global Labs by leveraging emerging AI/ML technologies and best practices.

• Hire, train, mentor, and manage teams across cloud engineering, machine learning engineering, data engineering, and AI research.

• Establish and promote best practices for the development and deployment of production AI.

• Enhance team members’ technical expertise in information retrieval, NLP, generative AI, and large-scale AI systems.

• Lead the development of enterprise-level retrieval, ranking, NLP, and knowledge-based AI solutions that integrate with Thomson Reuters products.

• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to convert customer needs into scalable AI applications.

• Transition research innovations into production systems.

• Implement modern software development practices from experimentation to deployment and operational excellence.

• Spearhead automation, system monitoring, MLOps, and cloud-native AI applications.

• Identify opportunities for AI/ML innovation and new business value creation.

• Influence project portfolio and investment decisions.

• Provide strategic insights for product and modernization roadmaps.

• Convert customer challenges in legal, tax, news, and corporate sectors into effective AI solutions.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with technology and product leaders.

• Bridge the gap between research and engineering methodologies and languages.

• Ensure alignment and clear pathways to market for AI-powered initiatives.

⛳️ Requirements

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

• 8+ years of experience in the industry building and deploying large-scale production AI systems.

• Proven experience in transitioning machine learning and AI solutions from research to production-grade software with measurable business outcomes.

• Strong publication record in prestigious venues such as SIGIR, NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, WWW, or similar conferences.

• Ability to build, mentor, and lead high-performing teams of engineers and scientists.

• Experience in leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing technical strategies across research, engineering, and product teams.

• Entrepreneurial mindset with confidence in making independent decisions and driving initiatives.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.

• In-depth expertise in Information Retrieval, Search, Natural Language Processing, and Generative AI.

• Experience with semantic search, ranking algorithms, retrieval optimization, search relevance, and evaluation methodologies.

• Familiarity with designing and optimizing RAG systems, grounding techniques, and ensuring answer quality.

• Experience with agentic retrieval systems, tool-using retrieval agents, multi-step reasoning, and autonomous information discovery.

• Proficiency in NER, information extraction, question answering, and advanced language understanding.

• Experience with prompt engineering, fine-tuning, model evaluation, and deploying LLM applications in production.

• Skilled in designing, constructing, and utilizing knowledge graphs.

• Hands-on experience with Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face, and modern MLOps practices.

• Proficient in AWS, Azure, or comparable cloud platforms.

• Understanding of the SDLC with hands-on programming experience in Python, Java, TypeScript, or JavaScript.

• Preferred: experience with enterprise search, complex professional domains, hybrid search, vector databases, recommendation systems, Azure ML, Azure AI Foundry, AWS SageMaker, MLOps frameworks, containerization, DevOps, and working with geographically distributed teams.

🏝️ Benefits

• Flexible work arrangements, including the option to work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks each year.

• Grow My Way programming and support for skills-first development.

• Flexible vacation policy.

• Two company-wide Mental Health Days off.

• Access to the Headspace app.

• Retirement savings plans.

• Tuition reimbursement opportunities.

• Employee incentive programs.

• Resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.

• Two paid volunteer days off annually.

• Opportunities for pro-bono consulting and engagement in ESG initiatives.

• Comprehensive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs.

• 401(k) plan with company matching.

• Paid sick and safe time off.

• Paid holidays, including two designated mental health days.

• Parental leave options.

• Sabbatical leave available.

• Optional hospital, accident, and sickness insurance.

• Optional life and AD&D insurance coverage.

• Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts.

• Fitness reimbursement program.

• Employee Assistance Program.

• Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit.

• Access to a 529 Plan.

• Commuter benefits offered.

• Assistance for Adoption & Surrogacy.

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

• Eligibility for an Annual Bonus based on enterprise and individual performance.