Staff Software Engineer, AI Product Engineering

Refinitiv; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible vacation

Mental Health Days off

Headspace app access

Tuition reimbursement

401k plan with company match

Employee stock purchase plan

Job summary

Thomson Reuters is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, AI Product Engineering, to shape AI-powered software for tax and accounting pros. You will own greenfield AI systems, design scalable backend services in Python/FastAPI with PostgreSQL on AWS, and guide engineers through production.

Hybrid role with onsite expectations in NYC/Minneapolis/TO. Strong architectural influence and cross-functional collaboration are required.

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering experience on large-scale backend systems.
• Recent hands-on Python development experience.
• Experience with backend frameworks (FastAPI strongly preferred).
• Designing APIs, data models, and distributed architectures.
• Relational DBs (PostgreSQL) and cloud deployment (AWS).
• Proven track record delivering greenfield/0-1 products.

Responsibilities

• Own greenfield AI systems from discovery through production launch.
• Design and build production backend services (Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, AWS).
• Develop AI-native apps with LLMs, agents, orchestration, and real-time workflows.
• Integrate models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.
• Define scalable APIs, data models, and asynchronous workflows.
• Lead architecture decisions for reliability, scalability, and security.
• Mentor engineers and drive cross-team initiatives.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

APIs

Distributed systems

AWS

PostgreSQL

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

LLM / AI-native apps

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

AWS

FastAPI

Job description

Thomson Reuters is looking for a Staff Software Engineer, AI Product Engineering to help shape and build the next generation of AI-powered software for tax and accounting professionals. You will join the CoCounsel for Tax & Accounting organization, working in a fast-moving, product-focused environment that combines startup-style ownership with the scale and resources of Thomson Reuters. This is a highly hands-on Staff-level engineering role for someone who thrives in greenfield and 0-1 product development. You will be expected to take ambiguous product and technical problems, define the right architecture, build critical parts of the solution yourself, and help guide other engineers from prototype through production. This is a hybrid role, with opportunities based in New York City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Toronto. Candidates should be comfortable working onsite as part of the team’s hybrid schedule. Final interviews may also be conducted onsite at the hiring hub associated with the candidate’s location.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer, AI Product Engineering, you will:

• Own greenfield and 0-1 AI systems, taking ambiguous product problems from technical discovery and architecture through implementation, production launch, monitoring, and iteration.
• Design and build production backend services using Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and AWS.
• Build and evolve AI-native applications incorporating large language models, AI agents, orchestration, retrieval, tool/function calling, and real-time AI workflows.
• Integrate models and services from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and other foundation-model platforms.
• Design scalable APIs, data models, asynchronous workflows, and distributed services for high-volume, production-grade AI applications.
• Make and influence architectural decisions across reliability, scalability, latency, observability, security, testing, failure handling, and maintainability.
• Establish reusable engineering patterns and technical standards that improve consistency and velocity across multiple teams or workstreams.
• Evaluate AI behavior in production and build mechanisms for quality measurement, experimentation, evaluation, guardrails, and continuous improvement.
• Partner closely with Product and Design to translate complex customer problems into simple, scalable technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership across complex, cross-functional initiatives while remaining hand‑on in design, implementation, debugging, and code review.
• Mentor engineers, raise the technical bar, and help teams make sound architectural and engineering trade‑offs.
• Identify technical risks early and drive solutions across multiple systems or teams.

About You

You are a strong fit for this role if you have:

• Significant software engineering experience building and operating large-scale, production-grade backend systems.
• Strong, recent hands‑on development experience with Python.
• Production experience with backend frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask, or Django, with FastAPI strongly preferred.
• Experience designing APIs, backend services, data models, asynchronous systems, and distributed architectures.
• Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL and building production systems on a major cloud platform; AWS experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience personally designing, building, and launching greenfield or 0-1 products and systems, with clear ownership from architecture through production.
• Experience making architecture decisions that affect multiple systems, teams, or major product capabilities.
• Strong system-design skills with the ability to reason through scalability, reliability, performance, failure modes, and operational trade-offs.
• Experience taking software through the full lifecycle, including architecture, implementation, deployment, observability, debugging, incident response, and production iteration.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction without relying on formal authority.
• Strong communication skills and experience partnering effectively across Engineering, Product, Design, AI/ML, and other technical stakeholders.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and turn incomplete requirements into clear technical direction.
• Hands‑on production experience building generative AI or AI-native applications is strongly preferred.
• Experience with LLM-powered agents, agent orchestration, tool/function calling, RAG, embeddings, vector search, retrieval systems, or real‑time AI interactions is preferred.
• Experience integrating commercial or open foundation models, including OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar providers, is preferred.
• Experience building customer-facing SaaS or product software in a startup, scale-up, or similarly high-ownership environment is preferred.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, and modern cloud-native engineering is preferred.
• Exposure to TypeScript or modern frontend frameworks is helpful but not required.

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

• flexible vacation
• two company-wide Mental Health Days off
• access to the Headspace app
• retirement savings
• tuition reimbursement
• employee incentive programs
• 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.

Benefits (United States)

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.

Compensation

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 $146,800 USD - $272,600 USD. 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.

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.

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.