Lead Applied Scientist, Search - NLP/GenAI

Lead Applied Scientist, Search - NLP/GenAI

Location: Zug, Switzerland or London, UK

About the Role

As a Lead Applied Scientist, you will:

• Lead the design, build, test, and deployment of end-to-end AI solutions for complex document understanding tasks in the legal domain
• Direct the execution of large-scale projects including: advanced semantic chunking models for lengthy, non-uniformly structured legal documents with adjustable granularity; document enrichment systems with legal and customer-defined taxonomies; LLM-based knowledge graph construction pipelines that extract and link heterogeneous legal knowledge; and scalable synthetic data generation systems
• Serve as the technical lead and primary point of reference, ensuring full accountability for all research deliverables
• Partner with engineering to guarantee well-managed software delivery and reliability at scale across multiple product lines

Evaluate, Optimize & Advance Capabilities

• Design comprehensive evaluation strategies for both component-level and end-to-end quality, leveraging expert annotation and synthetic data
• Apply robust training methodologies that balance performance with latency requirements
• Lead knowledge distillation initiatives to compress large models into production-ready SLMs
• Maintain scientific and technical expertise through product deliverables, published research, and intellectual property contributions
• Inform Labs shared capabilities and research themes through novel approaches to challenging business problems

Drive Strategic Technical Direction

• Independently determine appropriate architectures for complex document understanding challenges, balancing accuracy, efficiency, and scalability
• Make critical technical decisions on semantic chunking strategies, document classification approaches, LLM-based knowledge extraction methods, and multi-document reasoning architectures
• Provide input to business stakeholders, mid-to-senior level leadership, and Labs leadership on long-term AI strategy
• Develop in-depth knowledge of TR customers and data infrastructure across multiple products to shape technical roadmaps

Align, Communicate & Lead

• Partner closely with Engineering and Product teams to translate complex legal document understanding challenges into scalable, production-ready solutions
• Engage stakeholders across multiple product lines to deeply understand use case requirements, shaping objectives that align document understanding capabilities with diverse business needs including next-generation search and deep legal research
• Mentor and coach team members with varied ML/NLP abilities, building technical capability across the organization

About You

You're a fit for the role of Lead Applied Scientist if you have:

• Education: PhD in Computer Science, AI, NLP, or a related field, or a Master's degree with equivalent research/industry experience
• Document Understanding Experience: Demonstrable hands-on experience building and deploying document understanding systems, information extraction pipelines, or knowledge graph construction using deep learning, LLMs, and NLP methods
• Problem-Solving: Proven ability to translate complex document understanding problems into innovative AI applications that balance accuracy and efficiency
• Leadership: Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, mentor team members, and influence without formal authority in an applied research setting
• Technical Skills: Strong programming skills (e.g., Python) and experience with modern deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, DeepSpeed)
• Publications: Publications at relevant venues such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, NeurIPS, SIGIR, or KDD

Technical Qualifications

• Document Understanding Fundamentals: Deep understanding of document layout analysis, semantic chunking approaches beyond fixed-size or paragraph-based methods, document classification handling hierarchical taxonomies, imbalanced multi-label classification, and adapting to domain-specific schemas
• Knowledge Extraction & Knowledge Graphs: Expertise in entity recognition and linking, relation extraction, citation parsing, and building graph representations from unstructured text
• LLM-Based Information Extraction: Expertise in few-shot and multi-task learning, post-training, and knowledge distillation
• Synthetic Data Generation: Solid understanding of synthetic data generation techniques for NLP, including query-answer generation with verification and scalable data augmentation for training specialized models
• Efficiency Optimization: Solid understanding of knowledge distillation, model compression, and designing SLM-based solutions that balance performance with computational constraints
• Deep Learning & Machine Learning: Solid understanding of DL/ML approaches used for NLP tasks
• Annotation & Evaluation: Experience designing annotation workflows, creating high-quality labeled datasets with clear guidelines, and developing evaluation frameworks for document understanding tasks

What's in it For You

• Hybrid Work Model: Flexible hybrid working environment for office-based roles with a seamless digitally and physically connected experience
• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities. Flexible work arrangements including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year
• Career Development and Growth: Culture of continuous learning and skill development with Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach to help you grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future
• Industry Competitive Benefits: Comprehensive benefit plans including 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, and work-life balance. Values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together
• Social Impact: Two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives

About Thomson Reuters

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.

As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business goals. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer providing a drug-free workplace. We make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law.

Disclaimer: The above information 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.