Lead Software Engineer, AI

Thomas Reuters; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to drive the development of AI-driven software for legal professionals. In this pivotal role, you will leverage your expertise in Python and cloud technologies to create intelligent backend services that enhance legal research products. Collaborating with top experts in AI and software development, you'll design robust systems that integrate cutting-edge AI capabilities. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to transformative solutions in the legal domain while enjoying a flexible hybrid work environment and a commitment to continuous learning and professional growth.

Benefits

Flexible Vacation

Mental Health Days

Tuition Reimbursement

Employee Incentive Programs

Work from Anywhere for 8 Weeks

Paid Volunteer Days

Comprehensive Benefit Plans

Retirement Savings

Access to Headspace App

Culture of Inclusion

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend development experience with strong Python skills.
• Experience with AI solutions and cloud services like AWS.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain backend services for AI-driven legal applications.
• Collaborate with AI engineers to build scalable and reliable systems.

Skills

Python

Backend Development

REST APIs

AI Technologies

AWS Cloud Services

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

Data Engineering

DevOps Best Practices

Communication Skills

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Tools

AWS

Terraform

CloudFormation

GitHub Actions

OpenSearch

Job description

Lead Software Engineer - AI, Westlaw

We are seeking an experienced Lead Software Engineer to join our fast-moving, forward-thinking group that is creating AI-driven software for legal professionals, and our flagship product, Westlaw. You will be developing and implementing cutting-edge solutions using Python, REST APIs, AI technologies, and AWS cloud infrastructure.

About the Role:

In this role as a Lead Software Engineer - AI, you will:

• Innovate, implement and operationalize in a fast-paced environment.
• Be part of a fast-moving, forward-thinking group that is creating AI-driven software for legal professionals. You’ll work with top AI and software development experts, leveraging cutting-edge technology to build intelligent and scalable systems. This role is for developing backend services for Legal Research products.
• Design and implement backend services that power generative AI agents and orchestration systems. This role requires both creativity and rigor to ensure our AI-driven solutions are performant, reliable, and adaptable to real-world use cases.
• Work closely with AI/ML engineers from TR Labs, frontend developers from Westlaw UI teams, product managers, and designers to build robust services that support generative AI experiences. Help to build out our core AI interfaces such as Conversations, Workspaces, Grid, and Knowledge Base.

Key Responsibilities:

Backend Development & AI Integration

• Develop and maintain backend services using Python, FastAPI, and PostgreSQL.
• Implement AI orchestration systems integrating LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other providers.
• Design APIs and backend logic for real-time AI interactions.
• Help to build our content services to automate many different AI-driven workflows across the legal professional domain.

Performance & Scalability

• Ensure backend systems are secure, scalable, and optimized for AI-driven applications.
• Monitor and enhance system performance across millions of documents and AI-driven interactions.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Work closely with AI researchers, engineers, and product teams to translate AI capabilities into real-world applications.
• Foster a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement, exploring new AI technologies and methodologies.

About You

You’re a fit for the role of Lead Software Engineer - AI, if your background includes:

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Related Field, or Equivalent Experience.
• 7+ years of hands-on software development experience in backend development, building scalable web services, and APIs.
• 3+ years of hands-on Python development with experience in FastAPI (Other API Tools Acceptable) and PostgreSQL (Other SQL Tools Acceptable).
• Expertise in AWS cloud services (Redis, DynamoDB, S3, SQS, Kinesis, KMS, IAM, Secret Manager, etc.) or similar cloud services.
• Experience managing infrastructure with Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar IaC tooling.
• Strong Data Engineering background and experience with Retrieval Systems leveraging tools like OpenSearch.
• Experience implementing modern DevOps best practices in production environments (CI/CD using GitHub Actions and AWS services (CodePipeline/CodeBuild)).
• Experience with LLMs, AI Solutions, and evaluation and understanding of agentic systems and workflow.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
• A pragmatic and curious mindset that drives you to find elegant solutions to complex problems.
• Strong communication skills that enable you to articulate technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor others and contribute to engineering culture.

What’s in it For You?

Join us to inform the way forward with the latest AI solutions and address real-world challenges in legal, tax, compliance, and news. Backed by our commitment to continuous learning and market-leading benefits, you’ll be prepared to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future. This includes:

• Industry-Leading 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.

• 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, and hybrid model, 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 skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.

• Culture: Globally recognized and award-winning reputation for inclusion, innovation, and customer-focus. Our eleven business resource groups nurture our culture of belonging across the diverse backgrounds and experiences represented across our global footprint.

• 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.

• 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.

Do you want to be part of a team helping re-invent the way knowledge professionals work? How about a team that works every day to create a more transparent, just and inclusive future? At Thomson Reuters, we’ve been doing just that for almost 160 years. Our industry-leading products and services include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world’s most global news services – Reuters. We help these professionals do their jobs better, creating more time for them to focus on the things that matter most: advising, advocating, negotiating, governing and informing.

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 that celebrate diversity and inclusion. 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.

Accessibility

As a global business, we rely on diversity of culture and thought to deliver on our 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/Affirmative Action Employer providing a drug-free workplace.

We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law.