Staff Software Engineer, Search Retrieval Platform

Thomson Reuters Foundation; New York (NY); On-site; USD 118,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Thomson Reuters seeks a Staff Software Engineer for the Search Retrieval Platform to democratize high-quality retrieval across products. You will design APIs, drive platform capabilities, and collaborate with product teams, research engineers, and internal clients to deliver scalable search solutions.

This role emphasizes ownership of ingestion, indexing, security, and observability, with a path to production-ready capabilities and continuous AI-assisted development.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with progression to staff-level scope and cross-functional leadership.
• CS or related degree or equivalent experience.
• Experience building search/retrieval/data-intensive platforms at scale with distributed systems fundamentals.
• Experience designing APIs and services used by multiple teams with contracts and versioning.
• Operational rigor: SLOs, observability, on-call ownership, and incident learning.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools.

Responsibilities

• Turn customer and product needs into platform capabilities with product teams, client teams, and agent builders.
• Design the retrieval APIs and search services for end users, AI agents, and internal systems, with tunable filtering and ranking.
• Make retrieval customizable by design: pluggable components for chunking, enrichment, embedding, ranking, and custom models.
• Own how content is ingested and indexed on the platform, so customization reaches the stack.
• Partner across disciplines with Research Engineering and Applied Science to translate new retrieval techniques into platform capability.
• Work with product and client teams to prioritize the roadmap and drive adoption.
• Build evaluation into the platform: offline evaluation, search grading, and online experiments.
• Own the security posture of retrieval: multi-tenant data isolation and entitlements.
• Own SLOs, observability, and on-call for what you build, driving improvements from incident reviews.

Skills

8+ years exp

Distributed systems

APIs design

Python/Java/Go

Cross-functional leadership

AI-assisted development

Education

CS or related degree

Tools

Vespa

OpenSearch

Elasticsearch

Job description

Staff Software Engineer, Search Retrieval Platform

Our vision We are building the next-generation search platform, with a vision to democratize knowledge construction and consumption at Thomson Reuters. The platform consolidates search systems across Thomson Reuters products and services, serving millions of end users, internal agents, and internal search teams, into a fully managed, customizable, sovereign, and self-serve search platform.

Job Description

Advanced Content Engineering (ACE) is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to democratize retrieval at Thomson Reuters. You will build the platform capabilities that let any product team, research team, or AI agent get high-quality, customizable search without building it from scratch. That takes customer obsession: understanding what teams need, translating it into reusable platform capabilities, and making retrieval a fully customizable, plug-and-play service. You will work closely with product, research engineering, and applied science partners. The scope spans APIs, search services, agents, evaluation and grading, and authentication and security, powering end customers, AI agents, and internal systems at enterprise scale. Staff Engineers here define, build, deploy, and operate what they ship. We ship to production constantly and use AI-assisted development as the norm.

Key Responsibilities

• Turn customer and product needs into platform capabilities, working directly with product teams, client teams, and agent builders to learn what they need and where the platform gets in their way.
• Design the retrieval APIs and search services that serve end users, AI agents, and internal systems, with consistent contracts, tunable filtering and ranking, predictable latency, and result payloads built for agent context windows.
• Make retrieval customizable by design: pluggable components for chunking, enrichment, embedding, ranking, and custom models that teams can compose and tune through self-service APIs.
• Own how content is ingested and indexed on the platform (streaming pipelines, search engine configuration, zero-downtime index changes), so customization reaches all the way down the stack.
• Partner across disciplines Partner with Research Engineering and Applied Science to take new retrieval techniques, such as embedding models, hybrid retrieval, re-ranking, and agentic patterns, from experiment to supported platform capability, with a clear path to production.
• Work with product and client teams to prioritize the roadmap, bring adoption feedback back into the platform, and reduce time-to-value for new adopters.
• Build evaluation into the platform: offline evaluation, search grading, LLM-as-judge scoring, and online experiments, so every change to retrieval can be measured.
• Own the security posture of retrieval: multi-tenant data isolation, entitlements enforced at query time, and telemetry that protects user content.
• Own SLOs, observability, and on-call for what you build, including tracing for agentic retrieval paths, and drive improvements from incident reviews.

Technical leadership

• Set architectural direction and design patterns across retrieval, search services, and the APIs teams build on, and act as the technical authority others turn to.
• Lead cross-team initiatives, set priorities, and make hard trade-offs between near-term product needs and the long-term platform.
• Mentor Senior and mid-level engineers, and help the team use AI-assisted development effectively.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with progression to staff-level scope, including ownership of a functional area and cross-functional leadership.
• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience building search, retrieval, or data-intensive platforms at scale, with strong distributed systems fundamentals, in a language such as Python, Java, or Go.
• Track record translating customer needs into platform capabilities, working across product, engineering, and science.
• Experience designing APIs and services consumed by multiple teams, with attention to contracts, versioning, and developer experience.
• Operational rigor: SLOs, observability, on-call ownership, and learning from incidents.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools.

Preferred qualifications

• Production experience with search engines such as Vespa, OpenSearch, or Elasticsearch.
• Experience with hybrid (dense and sparse) retrieval, ranking, and embedding pipelines.
• Experience building tools or APIs for AI agents, including agentic retrieval patterns and protocols such as MCP.
• Search evaluation experience: relevance metrics, LLM-as-judge, and online experimentation.
• Multi-tenant authentication, authorization, and entitlements.
• Experience operationalizing ML models in production, including serving, promotion, and monitoring.

What Success Looks Like

• In the first 90 days Learn the platform's retrieval, indexing, and API architecture and its known gaps Build relationships with product, research, and client teams, and understand their top pain points firsthand Take on-call ownership for your area and deliver one meaningful improvement to retrieval quality, reliability, or customizability.
• In the first year Deliver a customizable retrieval capability that a client team adopts and configures on its own, without platform team involvement Establish evaluation coverage, SLOs, and runbooks for the retrieval stack Move at least one research innovation from experiment to supported platform capability Become the recognized technical authority for retrieval on the platform, shaping standards and advising leadership.

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, 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. 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 $136,000 USD - $253,000 USD. For any eligible US locations, unless otherwise noted, the base compensation range for this role is $118,400 USD - $219,800 USD. For Ontario, Canada, the base compensation range for this role is $140,600 CAD - $190,600 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. Learn more on how to protect yourself from fraudulent job postings here. More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com At Thomson Reuters, we’re not riding the AI wave — we’re reshaping the future of professional work across law, tax, compliance, and journalism. Here, you will collaborate with smart, ambitious people who thrive on solving complex problems, delivering market-leading solutions, and innovating with curiosity and care.

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