Staff Software Engineer: Content Tools Architect

Thomson Reuters Foundation; Eagan (MN); Hybrid; USD 118,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Thomson Reuters Foundation seeks a Staff Software Engineer to lead Content Tools API design, evaluation, and operations. You will own end-to-end tool contracts, versioned schemas, and a high‑quality retrieval platform with Vespa and Python stacks.

You will drive spec‑driven development, implement robust testing, and shape governance across cross‑team efforts, including onboarding engineers and ensuring secure deployments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of software engineering experience with progression to staff-level or equivalent leadership
• Mastery of Python and API design, testing strategy, system design, and security architecture
• Track record designing and operating API-first systems used by multiple teams with a product mindset
• Working fluency with information-retrieval concepts for architectural decisions
• Demonstrated experience designing or owning evaluation frameworks for IR/LLM systems
• Proven reliability ownership at the system level including on-call, SLOs, and incident response
• Strong communication across engineering, product, and science teams

Responsibilities

• Content Tool Architecture & API Ownership: define patterns, templates, contracts, catalog schema, and retrieval architecture
• Verified Spec-Driven Development & Evaluation: define acceptance criteria, evaluation datasets, and CI gates
• Reliability & Operations: own on-call, SLO targets, incidents, observability, and cost strategy
• Technical Leadership & Governance: act as architecture authority, write ADRs, mentor seniors, foster cross-team collaboration

Skills

Python

API design

Information retrieval

Security architecture

AI-assisted development

Leadership

System design

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Vespa

Claude Agent SDK

FastAPI

OpenSearch

Job description

Thomson Reuters Foundation seeks a Staff Software Engineer to lead Content Tools API design, evaluation, and operations. You will own end-to-end tool contracts, versioned schemas, and a high‑quality retrieval platform with Vespa and Python stacks.

You will drive spec‑driven development, implement robust testing, and shape governance across cross‑team efforts, including onboarding engineers and ensuring secure deployments.