Principal Engineer, AI-Ready Platform Architect

PowerToFly; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible hybrid working environment

Career Development

Industry-Competitive Benefits

Social Impact initiatives

Job summary

PowerToFly is seeking a Principal Engineer for HighQ, the enterprise collaboration platform for the legal sector. This role focuses on technical leadership and the engineering direction across significant projects.

Ideal candidates have a strong background in Java and Python, and experience with complex software systems, AI integration, and delivering robust solutions in production environments. The role offers a hybrid work model and focuses on professional development and work-life balance.

Qualifications

• Track record of designing, building, and delivering complex software systems in production.
• Operate effectively as a senior individual contributor and drive results independently.
• Demonstrated ability to set architectural direction across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate and introduce new technologies that improve software delivery.
• Architect and design complex systems that are scalable and maintainable.
• Lead the engineering work behind HighQ's integration with modern AI platforms.

Skills

Proficiency in Java

Proficiency in Python

Software engineering fundamentals

Complex software design

AI/LLM integration patterns

Strong communication skills

Job description

Thomson Reuters is hiring a Principal Engineer for HighQ, our enterprise collaboration platform for the legal industry, used by leading law firms worldwide to deliver digital services to their clients.

This is a senior individual contributor role. The Principal Engineer sets technical direction across HighQ's most significant engineering work, owns outcomes from design through production, and is directly accountable for raising the engineering bar across the organisation. The role partners closely with directors, architects, and Staff engineers, and operates as a senior technical voice in decisions that span multiple teams.

About the role:

• Evaluate and introduce new technologies and engineering practices that improve how the organisation builds and delivers software.

• Architect and design complex systems that are scalable, performant, and maintainable.

• Take technical ideas from concept to production, aligned with business priorities and technical strategy.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams, raising the standard of work across the organisation.

• Contribute as a hands-on engineer. Write production code and review the work of others to hold the technical bar.

• Work with product, architecture, and engineering peers to turn business requirements into sound technical designs.

• Lead the engineering work behind HighQ's integration with modern AI and agent platforms, including the technical surfaces through which HighQ provides context and capability to AI systems.

• Drive reliability, scalability, and performance improvements on a platform serving demanding enterprise customers with significant data and workflow commitments.

About you:

• Track record of designing, building, and delivering complex software systems in production.

• Operates effectively as a senior individual contributor, drives results independently, and is accountable for outcomes.

• Proficiency in Java and Python coupled with broad fluency across modern backend ecosystems including containerised services, relational databases, and distributed systems patterns.

• Deep command of software engineering fundamentals and how they apply in practice.

• Demonstrated ability to set architectural direction across multiple teams and be accountable for the outcome.

• Experience driving reliability, scaling, or performance work in production systems.

• Familiarity with AI/LLM integration patterns, including the engineering practices that make AI features dependable in production (evals, monitoring, context management).

• Generates and advances technical ideas that produce meaningful business outcomes.

• Strong communicator. Articulates complex technical ideas clearly to engineering and non-engineering audiences alike.

#LI-LT1

What’s 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.

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. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.

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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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com.