Senior Legal Engineer, CoCounsel FDE

Thomson Reuters; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 118,000 - 219,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Flex My Way policies

Two Mental Health Days off

401k with company match

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Thomson Reuters is seeking a Senior Legal Engineer in New York to design, build, and deploy AI-powered software for legal workflows. You will work with lawyers and engineers to translate customer needs into secure, scalable solutions, leveraging cloud-native architectures and advanced prompting strategies.

The role emphasizes production-grade Python development, rigorous security and reliability practices, and collaboration across product, legal, and design teams.

Qualifications

• JD or equivalent depth of experience in legal practice.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering.
• Strong Python proficiency for production-grade software.
• Experience designing distributed systems, microservices, APIs, and cloud-native apps.
• Experience evaluating AI and LLM outputs for legal use cases.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and deploy end-to-end software solutions for complex legal workflows and AI-enabled products.
• Partner directly with legal customers to understand their needs, workflows, and challenges, translating requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Architect and build modern cloud-native systems using distributed services, microservices, APIs, containerization, and orchestration technologies.
• Develop production-grade Python software while applying strong engineering practices for security, testing, reliability, and maintainability.
• Evaluate AI and LLM solutions for legal use cases, including assessing outputs for legal accuracy, relevance, reliability, and usability.
• Design, iterate, and optimize advanced prompting strategies for specialized legal-domain tasks.
• Apply DevOps and Infrastructure as Code practices to support secure, reliable, and automated deployments.
• Manage technical debt effectively while balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term scalability and system health.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, coaching, and knowledge sharing.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, legal, and design partners to prioritize work, manage delivery commitments, and continuously improve the software development lifecycle.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

LLM evaluation

Prompt engineering

Legal domain

Education

JD or legal training

Job description

Job Description

Are you a software engineer with legal-domain expertise who is excited to build AI-powered solutions that help legal professionals work smarter and deliver better outcomes? Join Thomson Reuters and help shape the future of legal technology on the CoCounsel Forward Deployed Engineering team.

As a Senior Legal Engineer, you will work directly with legal customers and cross-functional teams to design, build, and improve sophisticated software and AI solutions for legal workflows. You will combine strong engineering fundamentals with legal fluency to translate real-world customer needs into secure, scalable, high-quality products.

Travel to customer sites may be required.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and deploy end-to-end software solutions for complex legal workflows and AI-enabled products.
• Partner directly with legal customers to understand their needs, workflows, and challenges, translating requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Architect and build modern cloud-native systems using distributed services, microservices, APIs, containerization, and orchestration technologies.
• Develop production-grade Python software while applying strong engineering practices for security, testing, reliability, and maintainability.
• Evaluate AI and LLM solutions for legal use cases, including assessing outputs for legal accuracy, relevance, reliability, and usability.
• Design, iterate, and optimize advanced prompting strategies for specialized legal-domain tasks.
• Apply DevOps and Infrastructure as Code practices to support secure, reliable, and automated deployments.
• Manage technical debt effectively while balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term scalability and system health.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, coaching, and knowledge sharing.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, legal, and design partners to prioritize work, manage delivery commitments, and continuously improve the software development lifecycle.

Required Qualifications

• A JD, formal legal training, or equivalent depth of experience in a legal-practice environment.
• Fluency in legal terminology and experience working directly with or alongside legal teams.
• 5+ years of pr
• Professional software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Python and experience building production-grade software.
• Experience designing and delivering distributed systems, microservices, APIs, and cloud-native applications.
• Strong knowledge of AI and LLM evaluation methodologies.
• Advanced prompt-engineering skills, including the ability to design, test, iterate, and optimize prompts for legal-domain use cases.
• Experience evaluating AI-generated outputs for legal accuracy, relevance, reliability, and safety.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage credibly with both lawyers and engineers.
• Comfort working independently, navigating ambiguity, and presenting in client workshops or knowledge-sharing sessions.
• A collaborative, growth-oriented mindset and a commitment to secure engineering, ethical AI, privacy, and confidentiality

Preferred Qualifications

• Python scripting experience.
• Experience with legal technology platforms, legal SaaS products, or AI-enabled legal workflows.
• Experience building or evaluating AI tools for specific legal practice areas (transactional, litigation, compliance, or intake).
• Experience with Thomson Reuters legal products or comparable legal AI platforms.

#LI-LB1

What's in it For You?

• Hybrid Work Model: We've adopted a flexible hybrid working environment 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.

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. Eligible office location(s) for this role include one or more of the following: New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and/or Irvine, CA; McLean, VA; Washington, DC. The base compensation range for the role in any of those locations is $117,700 USD - $218,600 USD. For any eligible US locations, unless otherwise noted, the base compensation range for this role is $102,200 USD - $189,800 USD. For Ontario, Canada, the base compensation range for this role is $111,400 CAD - $161,400 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.

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.

Thomson Reuters makes 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]. Disability accommodations in the recruiting process may include things like a sign language interpreter, making interview rooms accessible, providing assistive technology, or other relevant accommodations. Please note this email is not intended for general recruitment questions and we will promptly respond to inquiries regarding accommodations. More information on requesting an accommodation here.