Applied Scientist, Document Understanding

Applied Scientist, Document Understanding About the Role This is an applied

science position focused on designing, building, and deploying production-grade

document understanding systems that power Westlaw, PracticalLaw, and CoCounsel.

You will work across semantic chunking, document enrichment, and knowledge graph

construction for complex legal, tax, and accounting content — delivering

foundational intelligence that multiple product teams depend on at scale. About

You You hold a PhD or Master's in Computer Science, AI, NLP, or a related field,

with 3+ years of post-degree industry experience shipping document

understanding, information extraction, or knowledge graph systems into

production. You have hands-on depth across model development, distillation,

evaluation, and deployment. You work independently and measure success by what

ships and performs in production.

What You'll Do

• Design and deploy semantic
• chunking models for lengthy, non-uniformly structured legal documents with
• adjustable granularity across use cases Build document enrichment systems that
• classify documents according to legal and customer-defined taxonomies and
• extract rich metadata Develop LLM-based knowledge graph construction pipelines
• that extract and link citations, entities, and legal concepts across diverse
• legal content Build scalable synthetic data generation systems for model
• training, multi-hop query simulation, and hallucination-free answer generation
• Apply knowledge distillation techniques to compress large models into
• latency-constrained, production-ready SLMs Design evaluation frameworks —
• component-level and end-to-end — using expert annotation and synthetic data
• Drive independent technical decisions on chunking strategy, classification
• approach, knowledge extraction methods, and multi-document reasoning
• architecture Partner with engineering on delivery, reliability, and scale across
• multiple product lines Contribute to published research at venues such as ACL,
• EMNLP, ICLR, NeurIPS, SIGIR, and KDD, and to intellectual property Required

Qualifications

• PhD or Master's in Computer Science, AI, NLP, or a related field
• 3+ years of post-degree industry experience shipping document understanding,
• information extraction, or knowledge graph systems into production — not
• research-only experience Publications at ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, NeurIPS, SIGIR, KDD,
• or equivalent Production Python and experience with PyTorch, Hugging Face
• Transformers, and DeepSpeed Hands-on production depth required in: Document
• layout analysis and semantic chunking beyond fixed-size or paragraph-based
• methods Hierarchical, multi-label document classification with domain-specific
• and customer-defined schemas Entity recognition and linking, relation
• extraction, citation parsing, and knowledge graph construction from unstructured
• text LLM-based information extraction, few-shot and multi-task learning, and
• post-training Knowledge distillation, model compression, and SLM deployment
• under latency constraints Synthetic data generation for NLP: query-answer
• generation with verification and scalable data augmentation Annotation workflow
• design and evaluation framework development for document understanding tasks

Preferred Qualifications

• Legal document understanding, legal information
• extraction, or legal AI applications Complex document structures common in legal
• content: nested hierarchies, cross-references, non-uniform formatting, and
• embedded elements Retrieval, QA, or analysis systems over large document
• collections Knowledge graph frameworks for legal or enterprise applications RAG
• and agentic workflows for enterprise knowledge systems AzureML or AWS SageMaker
• #LI-LP2 What’s in it For You? Hybrid Work Model: We’ve adopted a flexible hybrid
• working environment (2-3 days a week in the office depending on the role) 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

We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include

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. 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.

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

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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 [email protected]. Disability

accommodations in the recruiting process may include things like a sign language

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Reuters, we’re not riding the AI wave — we’re reshaping the future of

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collaborate with smart, ambitious people who thrive on solving complex problems,

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