Lead Software Engineer, AI

Thomson Reuters group; Eagan, Northern (MN, KY); Hybrid; USD 127,000 - 237,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Work Model

Annual Bonus

Mental Health Days

Job summary

Thomson Reuters is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to set technical direction for AI agent platforms, building scalable agent infrastructure and tooling with a focus on reliability and safety.

You will guide a senior team, architect production AI systems atop modern LLM APIs, and drive architecture decisions across multiple initiatives while ensuring production readiness and strong observability.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience architecting and shipping production software systems.
• Hands-on experience building AI/LLM-powered products or agentic systems.
• Direct experience with modern LLM APIs, agent frameworks/SDKs, or agent-to-tool integration.
• Strong backend fundamentals and distributed systems design.
• Experience with production reliability, observability, and incident response.
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and influence technical culture.
• Comfort operating with high autonomy on a fast-moving, senior-heavy team.

Responsibilities

• Set technical architecture and direction across top-priority initiatives, spanning core agent infrastructure, tooling, and reliability.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership across preferred workstreams.
• Architect and build production AI agent systems on top of LLM APIs and orchestration infrastructure.
• Design agent observability, evaluation pipelines, and drift detection to catch regressions before customers.
• Advance deployment practices for AI agents with progressive rollout and early quality signals.
• Drive cross-cutting design reviews (RFCs/ADRs) to keep systems coherent across parallel initiatives.
• Mentor and raise the technical bar for a senior engineering team using AI-native practices.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to translate priorities into concrete architecture.

Skills

AI/LLM systems

LLM APIs

Agent SDKs

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Observability

Mentoring

Autonomy in fast-moving teams

Job description

## Lead Software Engineer, AIApplyremote type: Hybridlocations: United States of America, Eagan, Minnesota: United States of America, Frisco, Texas: Canada, Toronto, Ontario: United States of America, Ann Arbor, Michigantime type: Full timeposted on: Posted Todaytime left to apply: End Date: September 29, 2026 (30+ days left to apply)job requisition id: JREQ202372**Lead Software Engineer, AI**What if the AI agents you architect today are empowering legal professionals at firms large and small to act more decisively, with sharper judgment and greater leverage, and the tools you use to build them are themselves AI-native, multiplying what you and your team can ship?Our agent platform team builds and ships using AI-native engineering practices: agentic coding tools that let a small, senior group move at a pace well beyond traditional engineering throughput. That's how this team can build the infrastructure, tooling, and observability that let our AI agents operate reliably at the scale this work demands, all at the same time. We're also in the middle of rethinking how we deploy and operate agents in production, pushing quality and safety checks earlier in the pipeline and raising our bar for release velocity and stability. As our Lead AI Engineer, you'll set technical direction across that portfolio, moving fluidly between the initiatives that matter most and shaping how a highly capable, senior team builds the next generation of legal AI agents.**About the Role** In this opportunity as a Lead AI Engineer, you will:* Set technical architecture and direction across the team's highest-priority initiatives, spanning core agent infrastructure, new internal tooling, and production reliability.* Provide hands-on technical leadership wherever it matters most, flexing across the team's highest-priority initiatives rather than being locked into a single fixed workstream.* Architect and build production AI agent systems on top of modern LLM APIs, agent SDKs, and orchestration/runtime infrastructure, designed to scale and integrate cleanly with existing platform services.* Design agent observability and evaluation practices (tracing, automated evals, and quality/drift detection) so regressions in agent behavior get caught before they reach customers.* Advance how the team deploys and operates AI agents in production, deepening practices like progressive/feature-flagged rollout and earlier-stage quality signals so releases get both faster and safer over time.* Drive cross-cutting design reviews and technical decisions\*\* (RFCs/ADRs) to keep new systems coherent as multiple initiatives move in parallel.* Mentor and raise the technical bar for a senior engineering team, including how they use AI-native, agentic development practices to multiply their own output.* Partner with product and engineering leadership to translate strategic priorities into concrete system architecture and sequencing decisions.**About You** You're a fit for the role of Lead AI Engineer if you have the following required qualifications:* Extensive experience architecting and shipping production software systems, including hands-on experience building AI/LLM-powered products or agentic systems (not solely classical ML/data science).* Direct experience building with modern LLM APIs, agent frameworks/SDKs, or agent-to-tool integration protocols.* A track record of setting technical direction across multiple concurrent initiatives, not just delivering one project end-to-end.* Strong backend engineering fundamentals, including distributed systems design, service architecture, and cloud infrastructure.* Experience designing for production reliability and observability: monitoring, evaluation pipelines, incident response, and quality regression detection.* Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers and influence technical culture and practices.* Comfort operating with high autonomy on a fast-moving, senior-heavy team that builds with AI-native/agentic engineering practices.**Additional preferred qualifications include:*** Experience leading architecture for developer-facing platforms, plugin/extension systems, or integration ecosystems.* Familiarity with progressive delivery practices (feature flagging, phased rollout, blue/green deployment) at scale.* Experience pushing a team toward elite software delivery practices: progressive delivery, shift-left quality/testing, and the kind of engineering discipline reflected in metrics like deployment frequency, lead time, and change failure rate.* Experience with managed agent runtime infrastructure (e.g., AWS Bedrock AgentCore or similar).* Domain expertise in legal, regulated, professional-services, or other fiduciary domains is a plus, but not required.#LI-ES1New Position: This position is open due to an existing vacancy to support our evolving business needs.**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.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 role.In the United States, Thomson Reuters offers a comprehensive benefits package to our employees. Our benefit package includes market competitive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance programs, as well as a competitive 401k plan with company match. In addition, Thomson Reuters offers market leading work life benefits with competitive vacation, sick and safe paid time off, paid holidays (including two company mental health days off), parental leave, sabbatical leave. These benefits meet or exceeds the requirements of paid time off in accordance with any applicable state or municipal laws. Finally, Thomson Reuters offers the following additional benefits: optional hospital, accident and sickness insurance paid 100% by the employee; optional life and AD&D insurance paid 100% by the employee; Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts; fitness reimbursement; access to Employee Assistance Program; Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit paid 100% by employee; access to 529 Plan; commuter benefits; Adoption & Surrogacy Assistance; Tuition Reimbursement; and access to Employee Stock Purchase Plan.Thomson 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 any eligible US locations, unless otherwise noted, the base compensation range for this role is $127,400 USD - $236,600 USD.For Ontario, Canada, the base compensation range for this role is $140,000 CAD - $175,000 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.