Director, Applied Research

About the Role

Thomson Reuters Labs is seeking an experienced applied science leader with a strong product mindset to lead a high-performing team developing transformative AI solutions for tax, audit, and accounting professionals. TR Labs experiments, builds, and delivers. We support the organization and our customers through applied research and innovation, working closely with product and domain experts to identify compelling solutions at the intersection of customer needs and technical feasibility.

This role will lead applied research and development for the next generation of agentic AI capabilities supporting tax and accounting professionals around the world. You will help create entirely new workflows that address fundamental challenges across the industry. Thomson Reuters brings together the critical ingredients required to build differentiated AI solutions in this space—from annotated tax law and robust tax engines to end-to-end platforms for data management, filing, audit, and compliance.

You will join the R&D organization supporting Thomson Reuters' tax product portfolio, including Checkpoint, CoCounsel Tax, and One Source. This is a highly collaborative leadership role. You will partner closely with product engineering, product management, domain experts, and business stakeholders to bring high-value AI capabilities into production, particularly in high-stakes environments where accuracy, verification, and customer trust are essential.

Lead and develop a high-performing applied science team focused on agentic AI solutions for tax and accounting professionals. Drive the design, development, and delivery of AI features that meaningfully reimagine customer workflows in high-stakes, accuracy-critical settings. Set technical direction for applied research initiatives, balancing scientific rigor, customer value, product feasibility, and delivery timelines. Partner closely with product engineering teams to transition research innovations into scalable, reliable, production-ready capabilities.

Serve as a strategic thought partner to Labs leadership, product leadership, and key business stakeholders on long-term AI strategy, external partnerships, and capability roadmaps. Influence product strategy through deep technical expertise and insights derived from product usage data, quality metrics, evaluations, and customer feedback. Develop and advance approaches for LLM-based systems, agentic workflows, information retrieval, document understanding, knowledge representation, and AI evaluation.

Ensure AI systems are designed with appropriate accuracy, verification, observability, safety, and quality controls for professional tax and accounting use cases. Engage tax, audit, accounting, and other subject-matter experts in concept development, design workshops, experimentation, and solution validation. Continuously improve ways of working across R&D and product engineering in a fast-paced, tightly embedded delivery environment. Foster a culture of innovation, rigor, collaboration, technical excellence, and continuous learning across the team.

Represent TR Labs and the broader tax technology organization in internal technical forums, cross-functional initiatives, and relevant external research communities.

You are an accomplished applied science leader who combines deep AI and machine learning expertise with a strong product orientation and a record of delivering commercial impact. You are excited by the challenge of translating emerging AI research into practical, high-value capabilities for professionals operating in complex and highly regulated domains. You understand that success is not defined solely by model performance, but by the ability to create trustworthy…