Jan 24, 2023 | Inside Thomson Reuters

Technology plays a critical role in our growth aspirations to a content-driven technology organization. Part of this is ensuring that we have our technologists at the table as we make important decisions for our customers and business. In support of this, Thomson Reuters launched the Distinguished Engineer (DE) program in 2022. The Distinguished Engineer program is an opportunity to promote a strong engineering culture within our organization while maintaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The mission of the Distinguished Engineer program is to:

• establish a rewarding technical career path for our top technologists that complements the management and architecture career paths
• recognize the outstanding technical achievements of our technologists
• strengthen our engineering culture to provide purpose for our technologists while helping us retain, grow and attract talent

What is a Distinguished Engineer at Thomson Reuters?

A Distinguished Engineer is a highly experienced and influential senior technologist with deep technical knowledge and an understanding of diverse methodologies and best practices. This is an individual with a proven record of technical deliveries who understands the big picture, while being able to deep dive into technical details. This individual is an established role model, mentor, and technical thought leader, vigorously supporting and driving innovation. An effective communicator and cross-functional collaborator, a Distinguished Engineer can explain even complex technical concepts to different audiences and spark commitment and engagement. A Distinguished Engineer is also a tech ambassador actively promoting tech achievements and best practices, sharing knowledge and influencing, internally and externally.

To become a Distinguished Engineer at Thomson Reuters, the individual needed to pass selection criteria focused on four key competencies: technical skills, expertise and excellence, technical leadership, technical ambassadorship, while having a minimum of five years tenure at Thomson Reuters. Going forward, this minimum tenure requirement will probably decrease as the program expands within the organization.

Our Distinguished Engineers will expand their remit to work side-by-side with key stakeholders to improve the quality and sophistication of our digital products and services.

Having the opportunity to build a career as an individual contributor, outside of a manager and architect path will be a key differentiator for us. Also, having clarity around career pathing for a variety of technical roles will help to foster internal mobility within Thomson Reuters.

I joined Thomson Reuters last March as the first Distinguished Engineer, with a focus to design and launch this program. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, I was a Distinguished Engineer with UBS, where my experience spanned a variety of roles, largely in creative, service-oriented roles specializing in client experience, applied innovation, and various strategic topics. Drawing upon my passion for innovation, a culture of diversity, and engineering excellence, I also developed a global hackathon for UBS to unleash the creativity of engineering teams from across the organization.

In December, we announced our first cohort of Distinguished Engineers after going through a rigorous selection process. Meet our first Distinguished Engineer cohort:

• Bob Sturm: Bob has a passion for large-scale engineering challenges, software architecture design, cross-functional requirements, and machine learning.  He holds a B.S. in Computer Science, M.S. in Data Science, and has spent 25 years of his career at Thomson Reuters where his technical leadership is reflected in West km, Cobalt, Westlaw trials, ONESOURCE APIs, Onvio, and Content & Research Services.
• Ryan Cosgrove: Ryan joined Thomson Reuters 15 years ago and has worked across technology in support, engineering, and operations roles.  He has spent the last 11 years in Information Security, specializing in digital forensics and incident response where he helped to defend Thomson Reuters against cyber-attacks and threats as part of the Cyber Incident Response Team (CIRT).
• Palanisamy Ramasamy: Palani has worked in law firm management software (3E) at Thomson Reuters for the last 16 years in both engineering and architecture roles. He specializes in search, APIs, messaging, events Azure cloud, DMS, microservices, and low code platforms, helping 3E teams create innovative products and achieve cloud technology excellence.
• John Duprey: John has worked in TR Labs for the past 24 years driving engineering excellence in applied research and development through standards, best practices, and end-to-end lifecycle management. Most recently, John has worked on capabilities that help scientists and engineers adopt cloud computing for artificial intelligence (AI) solution development.

A healthy engineering organization automatically brings value to the business. I am excited to see this program evolve over 2023 as we fulfill our mission and continue to embrace a strong engineering culture.