Senior Software Engineer - AI (Materia AI)

Refinitiv; Toronto; On-site; CAD 100,000 - 145,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible vacation

Mental Health Days

Tuition reimbursement

Employee incentive programs

Job summary

A leading technology company in Toronto is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design and implement backend services for AI-native products. The ideal candidate has over 4 years of experience, strong skills in Python, FastAPI, and PostgreSQL. Responsibilities include building scalable APIs, collaborating with ML engineers, and connecting backend services to AI components. The role supports a hybrid work model, offers flexible benefits, and promotes a healthy work-life balance.

Qualifications

• Experience in building scalable APIs and microservices.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems and architecture.
• Strong debugging skills and experience in delivering production-grade systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend services for AI-native products.
• Build APIs and microservices supporting AI interactions.
• Connect backend services to LLM providers.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

AWS-based cloud services

Distributed systems

Debugging

Education

4+ years of backend engineering experience

Job description

# **Our Privacy Statement & Cookie Policy**This posting is for proactive recruitment purposes and may be used to fill current openings or future vacancies within our organization.**Senior Software Engineer – AI (Materia AI)**We’re building the next generation of AI‑powered systems for tax and accounting professionals, and we need a Senior Software Engineer who can architect high‑performance backend platforms that make real‑world AI possible. If you thrive in fast‑moving environments, love solving complex distributed‑systems challenges, and want to see your work directly power intelligent, production‑scale features, this role is for you.**About the Role**As a Senior Software Engineer – AI, you will design, build, and optimize backend services that power AI‑native experiences across our Materia‑inspired product ecosystem. You will play a key role in shaping the architecture, performance, and reliability of the systems that orchestrate LLM interactions, serve high‑traffic APIs, and process large‑scale content.**Own Backend Architecture for AI‑Native Products*** Design and implement backend services using **Python**, **FastAPI**, and **PostgreSQL**.* Build distributed systems that support real‑time AI interactions and high‑volume data flows.* Define architectural patterns, service boundaries, and system interfaces for our AI platform.**Engineer High‑Performance Services*** Build APIs and microservices supporting AI agents, orchestration engines, and content pipelines.* Optimize performance across concurrency, caching, throughput, and large‑scale document processing.* Ensure backend systems scale seamlessly under demanding compute and data workloads.**Integrate AI Components Into Production Systems*** Connect backend services to LLM providers such as **OpenAI** and **Anthropic**.* Implement orchestration logic, safe execution flows, request routing, and latency‑tuned real‑time AI capabilities.* Productionize AI components with robust error handling, guardrails, and observability.**Raise the Engineering Bar*** Lead architecture discussions, code reviews, and key technical decisions.* Champion engineering best practices in testing, resiliency, observability, and maintainability.* Support CI/CD pipelines, DevOps workflows, and cloud automation patterns.**Collaborate Across Product & AI Teams*** Work closely with ML engineers, product managers, and designers to translate requirements into scalable solutions.* Turn conceptual AI features into reliable backend capabilities used by thousands of professionals.**About You****Required Qualifications*** 4+ years of backend engineering experience building scalable APIs and microservices.* Strong proficiency in **Python**, **FastAPI**, **PostgreSQL**, and AWS-based cloud services.* Solid understanding of distributed systems, architecture, and data modeling.* Strong debugging skills and experience delivering production-grade systems.* Excellent communication and cross‑functional collaboration abilities.* Comfortable in fast‑paced, iterative environments with evolving requirements.* Curiosity about AI technologies and enthusiasm for integrating them into real systems.**Preferred Skills*** Experience with AI‑driven systems or agent architectures.* Familiarity with embeddings, vector search, or RAG-style retrieval systems.* Strong opinions on backend testing, automation, and operational quality.* Experience with modern LLM APIs or orchestration frameworks.#LI-SB1#LI-SB1* **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.* **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, 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 Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.* **Industry Competitive 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.* **Culture:** Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.* **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.* **Making a Real-World Impact:**We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, and provide trusted, unbiased information to people all over the world.Our use of AI within the recruitment process Thomson Reuters utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our global recruitment process. Unless you opt-out, our AI system will assess the information provided by you and compare it to the requirements listed for the role, and present the result to our recruitment personnel for further review. The AI system acts as a supporting tool, but there is always a human making the decision if you will be considered for the roleThomson Reuters complies with local laws that require upfront disclosure of the expected pay range for a position. The base compensation range varies across locations.For Ontario, Canada, the base compensation range for this role is $100,000 CAD - $145,000 CAD.Base pay is positioned within the range based on several factors including an individual’s knowledge, skills and experience with consideration given to internal equity. Base pay is one part of a comprehensive Total Reward program which also includes flexible and supportive benefits and other wellbeing programs.This role may also be eligible for an Annual Bonus based on a combination of enterprise and individual performance.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.As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business 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