Lead Software Engineer AI (Staff Engineer)

Thomson Reuters; Frisco (TX); On-site; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

Drug-free workplace

Reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities

Job summary

Thomson Reuters is looking for a Lead Software Engineer AI (Staff Engineer) in Frisco, Texas. You will own the architecture of backend systems that power AI orchestration workflows. Your role involves leading cross-functional teams, mentoring engineers, and ensuring system reliability at scale.

The ideal candidate has a strong background in C#/.NET, cloud-based applications, and distributed systems. If you are passionate about AI integration and collaborating in fast-paced environments, apply now!

Qualifications

• 10+ years cumulative experience with 2 years in a lead role.
• 5+ years in full-stack development, building scalable applications.
• Excellent communication skills and collaboration abilities.
• Strong interest in AI systems and engineering paradigms.

Responsibilities

• Lead multi-quarter AI initiatives and mentor engineers.
• Own the architecture and design of backend services.
• Design for high throughput, low latency AI workloads.
• Establish observability, incident response for AI systems.

Skills

C#/.NET expertise

Scalable cloud-based applications

AI integration

JavaScript/TypeScript

Distributed systems knowledge

Leadership in projects

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

AWS

PostgreSQL

FastAPI

Job description

Thomson Reuters products power the professionals who are shaping the world. Our platforms drive legal, tax, accounting and audit products, including Cloud Audit Suite—a connected set of products spanning Engagement Manager and Guided Assurance. As a Lead Software Engineer AI (Staff Engineer AI) you will own core backend and AI orchestration systems that turn frontier models into reliable, production‑grade workflows at scale. You will also help drive our shift to an engineering‑led, AI‑native organization, one where AI writes much of the code and engineers stay in the loop to provide judgment, architecture, and direction where it matters most.

You will be a Lead Software Engineer AI (Staff Engineer) responsible for the architecture and system design of Audit Suite.

• Shape the team's AI and patterns: Define patterns for building MCP servers, designing agents, novel uses of LLMs, experimentation, and scalable infrastructure. Your decisions will influence your product area and adjacent teams, not just a single feature.
• Work at real production scale: Build and evolve systems that operate over millions of documents, highly structured tax data, ever‑changing laws, and thousands of concurrent AI interactions from accountants doing time‑sensitive work.
• Small teams, big surface area: Interact and lead across several teams of engineers, product, UX design and AI Labs partners to research, design and ship products quickly, with direct access to product leadership and customers.
• Great fit for people who enjoy and thrive at setting technical direction, mentoring senior engineers, and spending most of their time in the code and architecture of AI systems.
• Shape the platform integration strategy across new and existing Thomson Reuters audit systems to provide world‑class content and solutions for our customers.

What you'll do:

Technical leadership and cross‑functional influence

• Lead multi‑quarter initiatives that cut across AI, product, and infra (e.g., a new orchestration layer, a low‑latency retrieval system, or a unified knowledge base).
• Mentor senior and mid‑level engineers, raising the bar on system design, code quality, and AI integration practices across the org.
• Be a go‑to expert in new model capabilities, collaborating closely with AI/ML engineers, researchers, designers, and PMs to translate industry improvements into reliable, user‑facing workflows that accountants trust.
• Help shape the team's roadmap, technical strategy, and engineering culture—from experimentation practices to testing, rollout, and post‑mortems.

Design and own AI‑first backend systems

• Own the end‑to‑end architecture and design of backend services (C#/.NET, Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, AWS, Vercel) that integrate and orchestrate across heterogeneous systems and technology stacks, powering generative AI agents, complex workflows and document‑centric experiences.
• Build and evolve AI orchestration: routing, tool calling, MCP servers, multi‑step workflows, safety and guardrails, and robust error handling around third‑party LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, and others).

Scale, reliability, and performance

• Design for high throughput, low latency AI workloads—caching, queuing, rate limiting, model failover, and cost‑performance tradeoffs.
• Work with large‑scale data: millions of documents, retrieval and search, vector stores, and indexing strategies tailored to tax and accounting use cases.
• Establish and refine SLOs, observability, and incident response for AI systems that must be correct, auditable, and trustworthy in professional workflows.

About You

You are a fit for the position of Lead Software Engineer AI (Staff Engineer) if your background includes:

Required Experience & Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Overall 10+ years cumulative experience with 2 years in a lead role and minimum 5+ years full‑stack development, building scalable cloud‑based applications, web services, APIs and AI‑driven products.
• C#, .NET expertise and experience with production systems using frameworks like ASP.NET Core (or similar), relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL or equivalent), and a major cloud provider (AWS preferred, Azure).
• Experience architecting and implementing accessible front‑end solutions, including: JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS; experience with modern JavaScript frameworks, e.g., Angular, React, etc.
• Strong background in distributed systems: data modeling, API contracts, observability, resilience patterns, and performance tuning under load.
• Proven track record leading large, complex projects end to end: architecture, execution, rollout, and long‑term operation.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to partner with product, design, and ML teams in a fast‑moving environment.
• Demonstrated interest in AI systems and new engineering paradigms: LLMs, agents, retrieval, or similar – you care about what "AI native" software should look like.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions).
• Hands‑on experience integrating LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) into production applications, including prompt/response management, cost controls, and safety considerations.
• Experience with AI adjacent infrastructure: vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, or custom retrieval pipelines.
• Opinions and experience around automated testing, reliability, and release practices for systems with non‑deterministic model behavior.
• Prior experience in domains where correctness, auditability, and compliance matter (fintech, tax, audit, legal, or similar), or strong interest in applying AI in those contexts.

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 make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. If you reside in the United States and require an accommodation in the recruiting process, you may contact our Human Resources Department at [e-mail].