Machine Learning Research Engineer (Foundational Research)

Thomson Reuters; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A global information provider is seeking a Machine Learning Research Engineer to join their innovative team. This role involves designing robust systems for training and evaluating large language models as well as collaborating with world-class researchers. Successful candidates will hold a relevant degree and have extensive experience in ML, AI, and software engineering practices. The position is based in Greater London and offers a competitive compensation package and hybrid work model.

Benefits

Competitive compensation and benefits

Flexible working environment

Learning and development opportunities

Social impact initiatives

Qualifications

• 3 years of hands-on experience building ML/NLP/AI systems.
• Demonstrated expertise in building production-quality code.
• Proficiency in modern AI development frameworks.
• Understanding of LLM training methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement robust scalable systems for training LLMs.
• Rapidly implement novel research ideas in LLM training.
• Build pipelines for synthetic data generation and automation.
• Collaborate with researchers to translate research into practice.
• Engage in sharing technical implementations and best practices.

Skills

Machine Learning

Python

AI

Natural Language Processing

Robotics

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or relevant discipline

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Jax

HuggingFace Transformers

Job description

Join a cutting‑edge research team working to deliver on the transformation promises of modern AI. We are seeking Machine Learning Research Engineers with the skills and drive to build and conduct experiments with advanced AI systems in an academic environment rich with high‑quality data from real‑world problems.

Foundational Research is the dedicated core Machine Learning research division of Thomson Reuters. We are focused on research and development with a particular focus on advanced algorithms and training techniques for Large Language Models (LLMs). We are expanding our strong foundation of research capabilities across different areas and are looking for engineers who participate in designing coding conducting experiments and translating findings into concrete deliverables.

Our focus areas are:

• LLM Training (Continued pretraining instruction tuning reinforcement learning distributed training efficient ML techniques)
• Post‑training techniques for planning reasoning & complex workflows (e.g. reasoning models LLMs knowledge graphs test time compute CoT pipelines tool use & API calling etc.)
• Data‑centric Machine Learning (Synthetic data curriculum learning learned data mixtures etc.)
• Evaluation (Benchmarking best practices humans / LLMs as a judge red teaming / adversarial testing hallucination detection etc.)

We work collaboratively with TR Labs (TRs applied research division) academic partners at world‑leading research institutions and subject matter experts with decades of experience. We experiment prototype test and deliver ideas in the pursuit of smarter and more valuable models trained on an unprecedented wealth of data and powered by state‑of‑the‑art technical infrastructure. Through our unique institutional experience we have access to an unprecedented number of subject matter experts involved in data collection testing and evaluation of trained models.

As an ML Research Engineer you will play a key part in a diverse global team of experts. We hire world‑leading specialists in ML / NLP / GenAI as well as Engineering to drive the company’s leading internal AI model development. You will have the opportunity to contribute to our proprietary AI model research & development through rapid prototyping scalable infrastructure and production‑quality implementations and to research papers in top tier academic conferences and journals.

About the role

In this opportunity as an ML Research Engineer you will :

• Build : You will design and implement robust scalable systems for training and evaluating large language models. You’ll build data pipelines for data‑centric research training infrastructure for instruction fine‑tuning (IFT) Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and reinforcement learning workflows evaluation frameworks for comprehensive model assessment and infrastructure for agentic workflows that enables researchers to iterate quickly and effectively.
• Innovate : You will work at the very cutting edge of AI Research at an institution with some of the richest data sources in the world. Through your work you will rapidly implement novel research ideas in LLM training evaluation agentic systems and data processing transforming them into production‑ready systems and research publications. You will contribute to advancing the state‑of‑the‑art in data‑centric ML by building tools that help us make the best use of our unprecedented data resources.
• Experiment and Develop : You are involved in the entire research & model development lifecycle brainstorming coding testing and delivering high‑quality implementations that support cutting‑edge research. You’ll build pipelines for synthetic data generation automated evaluation systems training workflows for various fine‑tuning approaches and agent‑based workflows that push the boundaries of what’s possible with LLMs.
• Collaborate : Working on a collaborative global team of research engineers and scientists both within Thomson Reuters and our academic partners at world‑leading universities. You’ll work closely with researchers to understand their needs and translate cutting‑edge research papers into practical scalable implementations.
• Communicate : Actively engage in sharing technical implementations and best practices with the wider team through code reviews documentation technical presentations and knowledge sharing sessions. Contribute to internal research discussions and stay current with the latest developments in LLM training evaluation agentic AI and data‑centric machine learning.

About you

You’re a fit for the role if your background includes :

Required qualifications

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or a relevant discipline (or equivalent practical experience)
• 3 years of hands‑on experience building ML / NLP / AI systems with strong software engineering practices
• Demonstrated expertise in building production‑quality code and data pipelines for ML systems
• Proficiency in modern AI development frameworks including : PyTorch Jax HuggingFace Transformers LLM APIs (litellm etc) and vLLM for building and deploying large‑scale AI applications
• Understanding of LLM training methodologies including instruction fine‑tuning preference optimization and reinforcement learning approaches
• Strong software engineering skills including version control testing CI / CD and code quality practices Hands‑on experience with experiment tracking and orchestration tools such as clearml Weights & Biases MLflow.
• Experience with distributed computing frameworks and large‑scale data processing (e.g. Ray Spark Dask)
• Excellent communication skills to collaborate with researchers and translate research ideas into robust implementations
• Self‑driven attitude with genuine curiosity about ML research developments
• Comfortable working in fast‑paced agile environments managing the uncertainty and ambiguity of genuinely novel research

Helpful qualifications

• Track record of ML impact in the form of releases publications or contributions to open source ML libraries or frameworks (especially in training evaluation data processing or agent systems)
• Experience building and maintaining ML training infrastructure and data pipelines at scale
• Extensive experience with LLM training techniques such as instruction fine‑tuning (IFT) Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) or other RLHF methods
• Hands‑on experience implementing and scaling supervised fine‑tuning preference learning and reinforcement learning pipelines for LLMs
• Experience building LLM evaluation frameworks benchmarking systems or automated testing pipelines
• Hands‑on experience with agentic workflows tool‑using AI systems or multi‑agent coordination (examples include : langgraph AutoGPT LLamaIndex)
• Experience with data‑centric ML approaches including synthetic data generation data curation or curriculum learning pipelines
• Experience training large‑scale models over distributed nodes with cloud tools such as AWS MS Azure or Google Cloud
• Hands‑on experience with MLOps experiment tracking and model deployment systems
• Strong interest in staying current with ML research literature and ability to quickly implement novel techniques from academic papers
• Familiarity with training optimization techniques such as mixed precision training gradient checkpointing and efficient attention mechanisms
• Knowledge of modern ML engineering practices (containerization orchestration monitoring)

You will enjoy

• Learning and development : On‑the‑job coaching and learning as well as the opportunity to work with cutting‑edge methods and technologies.
• Plenty of data compute and high‑impact problems : Our scientists and engineers get to explore large datasets and discover new capabilities and insights. Thomson Reuters is best known for the globally respected Reuters News agency but our company is also the leading source of information for legal corporate and tax & accounting professionals. We have over 60000 TBs worth of legal regulatory news and tax data. We also provide access to significant cloud computing resources for our researchers and engineers.
• Competitive compensation & benefits packages

Whats in it For You

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.

About Us

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 applicable law. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity 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. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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Key Skills: Robotics,Machine Learning,Python,AI,C / C++,OS Kernels,Research Experience,Matlab,Rust,Research & Development,Natural Language Processing,Tensorflow

Employment Type : Full-Time

Experience : years

Vacancy : 1