Technical Lead – Westlaw Japan at Thomson Reuters in Tokyo, Tokyo, JP

Technical Lead – Westlaw Japan

We are seeking a Technical Lead to join the Westlaw Japan team. This role offers a fantastic opportunity to contribute to the cutting edge of AI and legal research technology in Japan. As part of the Westlaw Japan Product Development Organization, you will support technical leadership in developing next-generation professional solutions leveraging AI technology. You will be responsible for technical strategy formulation, architecture design, and team management for innovative AI-powered systems including RAG systems and Deep Research technologies in the legal, tax, risk management, and compliance domains. You will collaborate with global technical teams to deliver high-business-value AI solutions.

Your contributions will directly impact our mission to deliver unparalleled value to top law firms and legal departments in Japan and globally. This is your chance to shape the future of legal technology and make a real impact on the industry.

About the role

In this opportunity as a Technical Lead, you will:

• Develop and execute AI technology strategies that support business objectives on Westlaw Japan

• Provide technical leadership and management for Westlaw Japan's development team

• Lead AI roadmap development, technology selection, and PoC design

• Make technical decisions and determine architectural direction

• Design custom AI agents with multi-component pipelines, RAG, and multi-step reasoning, natural language processing, summarization, and question-answering systems leveraging LLM architectures

• Lead cross-functional collaboration and streamline information flow across teams and internal and external partner organizations

• Share knowledge through internal forums and demonstrate technical leadership

• Review code and architecture

• Provide technical guidance for junior engineers and guidance for solving complex problems

About you

You’re a fit for the role of Technical Lead, if you have the following required qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or equivalent experience

• Fluency in Japanese or English, with business-level proficiency in the other

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with modern tech stack

• 3+ years of AI/ML and project leadership experience

• Experience with web system development, operations, security, and technical strategy formulation/execution.

• Technical Skills:

  • Experience with advanced info analysis systems (RAG, Open Search, Agentic workflows)
  • DevOps and CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
  • AI/ML experience (LLM implementation, RAG system development, Vector database, etc.)

• Leadership Skills:

  • Technical lead experience on large-scale projects
  • Experience leading projects and teams

• Excellent communication, organizational, and project management skills

• Highly motivated and team-oriented

• Committed to knowledge-sharing, efficiency, and excellence

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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.

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.

We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com.