Principal Software Engineer / Architect – AI, CoCounsel FDE

Job Description Are you a Principal-level software engineer who enjoys solving complex customer problems while remaining deeply hands-on with technology? Thomson Reuters is looking for a Principal Software Engineer / Architect – AI, CoCounsel Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) to help design, build, and deliver production AI solutions for some of our most complex customer environments. This is a highly technical, hands-on individual contributor role. You will work directly with customers, product teams, and engineers to understand difficult business and technical problems, architect solutions, and personally contribute production code. You will also help translate what we learn from customer engagements into scalable capabilities that strengthen the broader CoCounsel product. We are looking for someone who combines Principal-level architecture and technical leadership with strong hands-on engineering skills . This is not an architecture-only or advisory role. Key Responsibilities Lead highly complex technical and customer engagements from discovery through production delivery. Architect, build, and deploy production AI solutions within customer and enterprise environments. Write production code regularly and review the work of Senior, Staff, and Forward Deployed Engineers. Provide technical direction across complex AI, software architecture, integration, security, and deployment decisions. Work directly with customers to understand their technical environments, constraints, and business needs. Partner closely with Product and Engineering to translate customer learnings into scalable product capabilities. Identify patterns across client engagements and recommend improvements to the core CoCounsel platform. Guide engineers through complex technical challenges through hands-on development, architecture reviews, mentoring, and technical leadership. Influence technical strategy across Forward Deployed Engineering and related product and engineering teams. Evaluate new technologies and approaches that improve AI delivery, reliability, scalability, and customer outcomes. Communicate complex technical decisions clearly to engineering teams, product leaders, executives, and customer stakeholders. Serve as a senior technical representative for Thomson Reuters in high-impact customer engagements. Required Qualifications 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant technical leadership at the Principal, Architect, or highest individual-contributor level. Deep experience designing and delivering complex production software systems. Strong hands-on software engineering skills with recent experience personally writing and reviewing production code. Significant experience with AI/ML, Generative AI, or LLM-powered systems in production environments. Experience architecting and delivering AI solutions that integrate with enterprise or customer-owned infrastructure. Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, system integration, cloud architecture, scalability, reliability, and production operations. Demonstrated experience leading highly complex technical initiatives or customer engagements end-to-end. Ability to translate customer-specific technical work into reusable, scalable product capabilities. Experience providing technical guidance and mentorship to Senior and Staff-level engineers. Strong judgment around architecture, technical tradeoffs, security, reliability, and production deployment. Excellent communication skills with the ability to work effectively with engineers, product teams, executives, and customer stakeholders. Preferred Qualifications Experience building or deploying LLM, agentic AI, RAG/retrieval, or other Generative AI systems in production. Experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, customer engineering, solutions engineering, or another deeply technical customer-facing engineering environment. Experience working with enterprise customers and complex customer-owned infrastructure. Experience operating within legal technology, financial services, professional services, or other highly regulated environments. Familiarity with security, privacy, governance, or fiduciary-grade requirements associated with enterprise AI deployments. Demonstrated technical presence through open-source contributions, technical publications, conference presentations, patents, industry leadership, or equivalent technical recognition. Experience influencing product strategy based on direct customer and field experience. #LI-TH1 This posting is for proactive recruitment purposes and may be used to fill current openings or future vacancies within our organization. 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: 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. 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, acc