Manager, Software Development Engineering, CoCounsel FDE

Manager, Software Development Engineering, CoCounsel FDE Product Development | CoCounsel Forward Deployed Engineering

What if you could shape the future of legal AI while leading a team of engineers embedded directly with customers to solve their most complex problems? At Thomson Reuters, we’re redefining how professionals interact with the law through CoCounsel, our generative AI legal assistant, and we’re looking for a technically strong, people-focused leader to guide our Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team as we scale AI-powered solutions across the legal industry.

As Manager, Software Development Engineering for CoCounsel FDE, you will provide technical leadership and people management for engineers embedded in customer-facing initiatives, translating ambiguous, real-world problems into scalable AI/ML solutions. You’ll balance hands‑on technical guidance with strategic influence, ensuring your team delivers high-quality, secure, and reusable AI components while growing as engineers and professionals.

In this opportunity as Manager, Software Development Engineering, CoCounsel FDE, you will:

• Lead and support multiple cross-functional Forward Deployed Engineering project teams, ensuring efficient and effective execution while resolving issues as they arise.

• Architect and guide the design of scalable, secure AI/software solutions, applying deep knowledge of software and AI system architecture to complex, end-to-end AI/ML development across the software development lifecycle.

• Drive innovation by evaluating and adopting emerging AI methodologies, influencing enterprise-wide MLOps and LLMOps practices, and setting strategy for testing, AI monitoring, and debugging at the platform level.

• Manage and develop talent through hiring, performance management, coaching, and mentoring of engineers, fostering a culture of technical growth and high performance.

• Translate business needs into AI solutions by communicating and coordinating with project teams, partners, and stakeholders, and by championing thought leadership that promotes reusable, consistent AI frameworks and patterns.

• Own technical delivery across multiple projects and products‑in‑including large‑scale AI/ML initiatives‑by removing impediments, guiding project leads, and managing budgets where applicable.

• Build a customer‑aware, high‑performing team culture ensuring close collaboration with Product, Project Management, and Technical Operations to deliver impactful, prioritized work.

You’re a fit for the role of Manager, Software Development Engineering, CoCounsel FDE if your background includes:

• 10+ years in software/solutions engineering
  , including 2+ years in a formal or informal people‑management or team‑lead capacity, while remaining technically hands‑on rather than purely administrative.

• Team leadership experience – you’ve led and grown a team of forward‑deployed, field, or solutions engineers, with direct accountability for hiring, performance management, career development, and team structure.

• Sustained customer‑facing experience – running discovery sessions, presenting architecture, defending technical decisions, and building trust with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders (GCs, IT leaders, innovation teams).

• A track record of scoping, building, and demoing rapid POCs and pilots against ambiguous or evolving requirements, and turning what you learn into repeatable patterns your team can execute on.

• Strong Python development skills
  , plus hands‑on AWS expertise (Bedrock Agent Core, CDK, EKS, ECR) and ownership of CI/CD pipelines (Docker, SQL/Flyway migrations, Cumulus or similar enterprise deployment platforms).

• Direct ownership of building and deploying LLM‑powered agents (Anthropic Claude or similar) – from requirements gathering and solution design through implementation, integration, and production hand‑off – including backend, frontend, agent guardrails/security design, evaluation frameworks and scorecard‑based quality testing, and production observability (e.g., Datadog), and infra.

• Comfort operating at the intersection of Product, Engineering, Sales, and Customer Success translating customer‑specific…