Distinguished Engineer

Reed Technology • Raleigh, NC

1d

About The Position

LexisNexis is well regarded as a content and technology partner to the legal industry. With our leadership in generative AI, we have a unique opportunity to drive innovation and transform the legal-tech ecosystem. This role reports into the CTO, Legal Markets. As a Distinguished Engineer on the Global Technology team, you will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for defining and driving architecture, technical strategy, and engineering excellence for high-impact capabilities on the Lexis+ platform. You will partner closely with senior engineering, product, data science, and security leaders to solve the hardest technical problems—especially in areas like GenAI-enabled experiences, scalable platform services, reliability, and modernization—while setting a high bar for quality, performance, and responsible innovation. This role requires a highly resourceful, self-driven individual who leads through influence, deep technical credibility, and pragmatic execution. Duties and Responsibilities Technical Vision & Architecture Leadership Define and communicate an end-to-end technical vision for platform and product capabilities aligned to strategic business goals on Lexis+. Lead architecture decisions for complex, distributed systems; establish patterns and guardrails for scalable, secure, resilient services. Drive modernization of critical components (cloud adoption, microservices evolution, observability, developer productivity), balancing near-term delivery with long-term sustainability. Provide technical leadership on build-vs-buy decisions and integration of third-party systems and services. Engineering Execution & Delivery (Hands-on Influence) Partner with engineering teams to translate architecture into delivery plans; remove technical blockers and reduce cycle time. Lead technical design reviews for major initiatives; ensure designs meet standards for availability, performance, security, privacy, and cost efficiency. Contribute to critical code paths and reference implementations as needed; raise the quality bar through exemplars. Champion engineering rigor: testing strategy, code quality, API design, and operational readiness. Innovation & Technology Roadmap Evaluate emerging technologies, trends, and industry standards to keep Lexis+ at the forefront of legal tech innovation, including GenAI and multi-model approaches where relevant. Drive proof-of-concept initiatives, prototyping, and pilots to validate value, feasibility, and risk; inform platform and product roadmaps. Establish best practices for responsible AI engineering (quality evaluation, reliability, safety, and governance) in partnership with Data Science, Legal, and Security. Cross-Functional & Executive Collaboration Partner with senior leaders across Product, UX, Data Science, Security, and Operations to align technical investments with business priorities and customer outcomes. Influence organization-wide decisions through clear technical narratives, tradeoff analysis, and measurable outcomes. Act as a trusted technical advisor for complex initiatives and strategic planning. Operational Excellence & Reliability Define and drive standards for observability, incident response, SLOs/SLAs, capacity planning, and cost management across key services. Use metrics (e.g., DORA, reliability, performance, quality) to identify systemic bottlenecks and drive improvements across teams. Ensure compliance with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements relevant to the legal industry. Collaboration & Technical Community Leadership Collaborate with architecture teams and senior engineering leaders to align on enterprise standards, reference architectures, and consistent engineering patterns across domains. Coach senior technical engineers and technical leaders to strengthen design quality, delivery excellence, operational readiness, and engineering craftsmanship. Partner across engineering, product, data science, security, and operations on major initiatives and design reviews to ensure solutions meet expectations for scalability, security, reliability, and cost efficiency. Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement by setting high standards and modeling strong engineering behaviors.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 20+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including technical leadership on large-scale, business-critical systems.
• Proven track record delivering complex, scalable, high-availability products in a global or enterprise environment.
• Deep understanding of modern software architecture, cloud-native infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP), microservices, and DevOps practices.
• Strong proficiency in modern development languages and ecosystems (e.g., Java/J2EE, JavaScript, C#, SQL and related frameworks).
• Demonstrated ability to use engineering metrics (including DORA and Agile metrics) to inform decisions and improve delivery and reliability.
• Expertise in software architecture, performance optimization, and continuous improvement of the SDLC.
• Strong experience with code review practices, testing strategy (including TDD where appropriate), and quality engineering.
• Experience integrating and governing third-party software/services and working effectively with offshore and domestic partners.
• Exceptional communication skills—able to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and drive alignment.
• Strong problem-solving skills with demonstrated ability to lead cross-team resolution of ambiguous, high-impact technical issues.
• Ability to drive change across multiple organizations, balancing business needs with engineering excellence and customer outcomes.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with legal tech, content management, and search technologies is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate an end-to-end technical vision for platform and product capabilities aligned to strategic business goals on Lexis+.
• Lead architecture decisions for complex, distributed systems; establish patterns and guardrails for scalable, secure, resilient services.
• Drive modernization of critical components (cloud adoption, microservices evolution, observability, developer productivity), balancing near-term delivery with long-term sustainability.
• Provide technical leadership on build-vs-buy decisions and integration of third-party systems and services.
• Partner with engineering teams to translate architecture into delivery plans; remove technical blockers and reduce cycle time.
• Lead technical design reviews for major initiatives; ensure designs meet standards for availability, performance, security, privacy, and cost efficiency.
• Contribute to critical code paths and reference implementations as needed; raise the quality bar through exemplars.
• Champion engineering rigor: testing strategy, code quality, API design, and operational readiness.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, trends, and industry standards to keep Lexis+ at the forefront of legal tech innovation, including GenAI and multi-model approaches where relevant.
• Drive proof-of-concept initiatives, prototyping, and pilots to validate value, feasibility, and risk; inform platform and product roadmaps.
• Establish best practices for responsible AI engineering (quality evaluation, reliability, safety, and governance) in partnership with Data Science, Legal, and Security.
• Partner with senior leaders across Product, UX, Data Science, Security, and Operations to align technical investments with business priorities and customer outcomes.
• Influence organization-wide decisions through clear technical narratives, tradeoff analysis, and measurable outcomes.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor for complex initiatives and strategic planning.
• Define and drive standards for observability, incident response, SLOs/SLAs, capacity planning, and cost management across key services.
• Use metrics (e.g., DORA, reliability, performance, quality) to identify systemic bottlenecks and drive improvements across teams.
• Ensure compliance with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements relevant to the legal industry.
• Collaborate with architecture teams and senior engineering leaders to align on enterprise standards, reference architectures, and consistent engineering patterns across domains.
• Coach senior technical engineers and technical leaders to strengthen design quality, delivery excellence, operational readiness, and engineering craftsmanship.
• Partner across engineering, product, data science, security, and operations on major initiatives and design reviews to ensure solutions meet expectations for scalability, security, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement by setting high standards and modeling strong engineering behaviors.

Benefits

• Health Benefits: Comprehensive, multi-carrier program for medical, dental and vision benefits
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with match and an Employee Share Purchase Plan
• Wellbeing: Wellness platform with incentives, Headspace app subscription, Employee Assistance and Time-off Programs
• Short-and-Long Term Disability, Life and Accidental Death Insurance, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity
• Family Benefits, including bonding and family care leaves, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Health Savings, Health Care, Dependent Care and Commuter Spending Accounts
• Up to two days of paid leave each to participate in Employee Resource Groups and to volunteer with your charity of choice

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive