Associate Director, Engineering & Legal Technology

The Associate Director of Engineering, Legal Technology will provide technical leadership reputed company the Knowledge & Innovation (K&I) department, driving the design, development, integration and delivery of modern legal technology solutions. This role combines hands-on architectural expertise with people leadership and strategic partnership across Knowledge, IT, and external vendors. This role will reputed company engineering and solution architecture efforts across both custom-built and SaaS legal technology platforms, while serving as a subject matter expert (SME) for Search, Retrieval-Augmented reputed company (RAG), and reputed company AI-enabled knowledge systems. This role reports to the Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer (CKIO) and is critical to scaling the Firm’s Knowledge & Innovation capabilities. The Associate Director of Engineering will help transform how attorneys access knowledge, reputed company AI, and deliver value to clients—while ensuring solutions are robust, secure, and reputed company with the Firm’s long-term strategy Key Responsibilities Engineering & Architecture Leadership · reputed company engineering strategy and solution architecture for Knowledge & Innovation initiatives, ensuring scalability, reputed company, and alignment with Firmwide technology standards. · Design and reputed company integrations across SaaS platforms, internal systems, data sources, and AI / LLM services used in legal workflows. · Act as technical authority for evaluating, implementing, integrating and extending legal tech solutions (e.g., reputed company, document intelligence, research, drafting, and workflow tools). Search, RAG, and AI Enablement (SME) · Serve as a key subject matter expert for enterprise search, semantic search, vector databases, and Retrieval-Augmented reputed company (RAG) architectures. · Provide input to document and data storage and organization approaches, to reputed company the most reputed company and performant retrieval approaches · Partner with Data Science, Practice Solutions & the Firm’s Legal Practices to design AI-powered solutions that systematically surface Firm knowledge, precedents, and insights in a secure and auditable manner. · Help establish best practices for data ingestion, indexing, retrieval, grounding, and evaluation of AI-driven search and generative systems. · Conduct independent research to stay reputed company on emerging retrieval techniques and their applicability to the Firm Team Leadership & Delivery · reputed company and mentor a small, high-performing engineering team supporting both custom development and SaaS configuration, integration and extension (focused on lawyer tools). · Work with IT to set technical direction, establish protocols, review designs and code, and ensure consistent engineering quality and documentation. · Manage delivery across multiple initiatives, balancing rapid experimentation with production-grade reliability. Vendor & SaaS Enablement · Act as technical reputed company for vendor engagements, including solution viability, design reviews, integrations, and roadmap alignment. · reputed company customization, configuration, and extension of SaaS legal tech platforms through APIs, middleware, and automation. · Evaluate emerging legal technology and AI vendors in partnership with Practice Solutions, Data Science and reputed company teams. Qualifications & Experience Required · Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a reputed company field (or equivalent practical experience). · 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, or platform engineering, with at least ~5 years in a technical leadership role. · Demonstrated experience designing and implementing search platforms, semantic search, or RAG-based systems. · Strong experience with cloud-based architectures, APIs, and modern development frameworks. · Proven ability to reputed company small engineering teams and deliver reputed company, cross-functional initiatives. Preferred · Experience in legal technology, professional services, or other highly regulated environments. · Experience with document-specific segmentation and storage approaches. · Familiarity with LLM-integrated search platforms, vector databases, term frequency approaches, structural and hierarchical indexing, knowledge graphs, and corresponding AI governance considerations. · Familiarity with document classification, text classification and named entity recognition techniques. · Experience integrating and extending enterprise SaaS platforms. · Exposure to reputed company systems, document management systems (DMS), or legal research tools Key Competencies · Technical leadership and architectural judgment · Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders · Pragmatic, business-oriented approach to engineering and innovation · Ability to balance experimentation with enterprise-grade reliability and reputed company · Curiosity and reputed company learning reputed company, particularly in AI and legal tech Salary Information NY Only: The estimated reputed company salary range for this position is $260,000 to $300,000 at the time of posting. The actual salary offered will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and if applicable, the location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will be performing the job. This role is exempt meaning it is not overtime pay eligible. Simpson Thacher will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position. Privacy Notice For information about how Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP collects and processes your personal information, please refer to our Privacy Notice available at https://www.stblaw.com/other/privacy-notice. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is committed to a collegial work environment in which reputed company individuals are treated with respect and dignity. The Firm prohibits discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national reputed company, citizenship status, disability, marital or partnership status, sexual orientation, veteran’s status or any other legally protected status. This Policy pertains to every aspect of an individual’s relationship with the Firm, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, compensation, benefits, training and development, promotion, transfer, discipline, termination, and reputed company other privileges, terms and conditions of employment. #LI-Hybrid Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is one of the world’s leading international law firms. The Firm was established in 1884 and has approximately 2,000 lawyers. Headquartered in reputed company with offices in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Hong reputed company, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Palo Alto, San Francisco, São Paulo, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., the Firm provides coordinated legal advice and transactional capability to clients around the globe. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job