Principal Software Engineer / Architect – AI

About the role

Thomson Reuters is hiring a Principal Software Engineer / Architect – AI for its CoCounsel Forward Deployed Engineering organization. This is a highly hands-on individual contributor role, close to the code, where you work directly with customers to solve complex business and technical problems, design and build production AI solutions and help shape how customer-driven innovation strengthens the CoCounsel product. It suits a Principal-level engineer who combines deep software architecture and AI expertise with strong hands-on engineering skills.

Key responsibilities

• Lead complex customer and technical engagements end to end, from discovery and architecture through production deployment, staying technically involved throughout.
• Design, build and deploy production AI solutions in enterprise and customer-owned environments, personally writing, reviewing and debugging production code.
• Set architectural direction across AI, distributed systems, integrations, security, reliability and deployment, and guide Senior and Staff engineers.
• Partner with customers, Product and Engineering to turn customer needs and emerging patterns into scalable product capabilities and help shape the CoCounsel roadmap.
• Turn field learnings into reusable architectures, technical standards, platform improvements and product direction.
• Influence technical strategy across Forward Deployed Engineering and related teams, evaluate new technologies, mentor engineers and advise senior leaders.
• Communicate complex technical decisions clearly to engineers, product leaders, executives and customers, including tradeoffs on security, reliability, scalability and business impact.

Required profile

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant technical leadership at Principal, Architect or senior individual-contributor level.
• Recent hands-on experience writing, reviewing and debugging production code, and experience leading complex technical initiatives or customer engagements.
• Experience mentoring, reviewing and directing Senior and Staff engineers.
• Preferred: experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, customer engineering or solutions engineering, and with large enterprise customers.

Required skills

• Significant experience with AI/ML, Generative AI or LLM-powered systems in production.
• Experience architecting AI solutions that integrate with enterprise or customer-owned infrastructure.
• Distributed systems, APIs, system integration, cloud architecture, scalability, reliability, security and production operations.
• Preferred: LLM, agentic AI, RAG, evaluation or other Generative AI systems; legal technology, financial services or regulated environments; familiarity with security, privacy and governance requirements for enterprise AI.

What we offer

• Flexible hybrid work model and flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year.
• Benefits including health, dental, vision, disability and life insurance, 401k with company match, vacation, paid holidays, parental and sabbatical leave, tuition reimbursement and mental health support.
• Base pay of $158,900 - $295,100 USD depending on location (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Irvine, McLean, VA, Washington DC); eligible for an annual bonus.