Senior NLP Research Engineer
Clio · Toronto, ON
- On site
- Full-time
- CA$209,300 / year
- Toronto, ON
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Job highlights
- Advance legal AI with LLMs and NLP research.
- Develop scalable retrieval and agentic infrastructures.
- Design evaluation frameworks for AI systems.
- Collaborate with engineers on production deployment.
- Master's or PhD required; AI research experience vital.
About the role
About Clio
Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.We are transforming the legal experience for all by bettering the lives of legal professionals while increasing access to justice.
Summary:
Clio signed a definitive agreement to acquire vLex in 2025. This transaction is a major milestone in Clio’s platform evolution and a turning point for the future of legal work. It combines Clio’s legal operating system - trusted by more than 400,000 legal professionals - with vLex’s cutting-edge legal intelligence platform, which includes Vincent AI, built on the industry’s most comprehensive global legal database. Together, these platforms establish a new category of intelligent legal technology at the intersection of the business and practice of law, empowering legal professionals to seamlessly manage, research, and execute legal work within a unified system.
Learn more here.
This role is available to candidates local to our Toronto hub, with the expectation of being in office minimum twice per week on our Anchor Days.
About the Role
As a Senior NLP Research Engineer, you will play a key role in developing and advancing Vincent, vLex’s groundbreaking AI, by contributing to applied research experiments that integrate cutting-edge AI - particularly large language models (LLMs) - into real-world legal workflows. You will work closely with software engineers and domain experts on sophisticated technical challenges to deliver innovative solutions that push the boundaries of legal technology.What you’ll work on:
- Foundations of retrieval at scale: Re-think how we search over vast, heterogeneous legal corpora. Exploring new approaches to chunking, query augmentation, hybrid sparse/dense embeddings, contextual embeddings, quantisation, to push the boundaries of recall, speed, and efficiency
- Learning to rank with legal signals: Experiment with re-ranking strategies for search results that incorporate legal-specific signals that go beyond keyword matches and semantic similarities, to surface the most authoritative and relevant results first
- Agentic infrastructure for legal workflows: Develop the foundations of agents that can decompose complex legal tasks, plan across multiple tools, and execute with traceability and guardrails. These are building blocks that underpin future end-to-end automated workflows
- Evaluation frameworks for retrieval and agents: Design and run experiments that help us measure system performance against the needs of legal professionals: offline testbeds, human-in-the-loop evaluations, implicit feedback pipelines, and alignment between lab metrics and customer satisfaction
- Grounding and validation of model responses: Create mechanisms that ensure model responses are trustworthy by anchoring them in trusted legal sources, with clear traceability to supporting evidence, and methods for validating cited content and surfacing uncertainty when the model lacks sufficient grounding
A day in the life might look like:
- Leading complex research projects focused on LLMs, advanced information retrieval, and novel AI applications in the legal domain, working independently with minimal supervision
- Designing and implementing sophisticated prototypes that demonstrate the feasibility and business value of cutting-edge research ideas, ensuring they meet production-quality standards
- Driving the transition of research innovations from prototype to production, collaborating closely with product and engineering teams to ensure successful integration and scalability
- Contributing to strategic research planning by identifying high-impact research opportunities and helping prioritize initiatives based on business value and technical feasibility
- Staying at the forefront of AI research, particularly in NLP, LLMs, and legal AI, actively incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into your work and sharing insights with the team
- Lead technical discussions and code reviews, ensuring high standards of research quality and implementation across the team
- Collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders including product managers, legal engineers, and business leaders to align research efforts with strategic objectives
- Documenting and communicating research findings through internal presentations, technical documentation, and potentially external publications or conference presentations
- Contributing to the development of research infrastructure and best practices that enhance the team's overall efficiency and impact
What you may have
- Masters degree or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field
- Industry experience in applied AI research or engineering
- At least one of the following experiences:
- Information retrieval systems
- LLM fine-tuning and evaluation
- LLM hosting and inference optimization
- LLM workflow automation using prompt engineering, prompt chaining techniques, and agent orchestration frameworks
- Track record of independently delivering complex technical projects from ideation to implementation
- Hands-on experience in working closely with product engineering in production applications
- Proficiency in data manipulation, cleaning, and pre-processing for complex unstructured data sets
- A proven ability to quickly learn new technologies and adapt to a fast-paced environment with distributed teams and customers
- A strong understanding of modern AI tools and approaches
- Clear communication skills and the ability to build trust with both internal teams and external customers
- A desire to continuously learn, challenge yourself, and refine your craft
- A deep interest in how technology transforms the legal industry is highly valuable
What you will find here:
Compensation is one of the main components of Clio’s Total Rewards Program. We have developed a series of programs and processes to ensure we are creating fair and competitive pay practices that form the foundation of our human and high-performing culture.Some highlights of our Total Rewards program include:
- Competitive, equitable salary with top-tier health benefits, dental, and vision insurance
- Hybrid work environment, with expectation for local Clions (Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Dublin, London, New York City and Sydney) to be in office min. twice per week.
- Flexible time off policy, with an encouraged 20 days off per year.
- $2000 annual counseling benefit
- RRSP matching and RESP contribution
- Clioversary recognition program with special acknowledgement at 3, 5, 7, and 10 years
Our salary bands are designed to reflect the range of skills and experience needed for the position and to allow room for growth at Clio. For experienced individuals, we typically hire at or around the midpoint of the band. The top portion of the salary band is reserved for employees who demonstrate sustained high performance and impact at Clio. Those who are new to the role may join below the midpoint and develop their skills over time. The final offer amount for this role will be dependent on geographical region, applicable experience, and skillset of the candidate.
Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity (DIBE) & Accessibility
Our team shows up as their authentic selves, and are united by our mission. We are dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. We pride ourselves in building and fostering an environment where our teams feel included, valued, and enabled to do the best work of their careers, wherever they choose to log in from. We believe that different perspectives, skills, backgrounds, and experiences result in higher-performing teams and better innovation. We are committed to equal employment and we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.Clio provides accessibility accommodations during the recruitment process. Should you require any accommodation, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.
Learn more about our culture at clio.com/careers
We're a Human and High Performing AI company, meaning we use artificial intelligence to improve all of our operations. In recruitment, AI helps us streamline the process for greater efficiency. However, we've built our systems to ensure that a human always reviews AI-generated output, and we never make automated hiring decisions.
Disclaimer: We only communicate with candidates through official @clio.com email addresses.
Key skills/competency
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Information Retrieval
- Applied AI Research
- Machine Learning
- Data Science
- Python
- Deep Learning
- Algorithm Design
- Software Engineering
Skills & topics
- Senior NLP Research Engineer
- NLP
- LLM
- Large Language Models
- AI Research
- Information Retrieval
- Machine Learning
- Data Science
- Legal Tech
- Artificial Intelligence
How to get hired
- Tailor your resume: Highlight your NLP, LLM, and applied AI research experience, especially in information retrieval and agentic workflows.
- Showcase project impact: Quantify your achievements in delivering complex technical projects from ideation to implementation in production environments.
- Prepare for technical questions: Be ready to discuss your experience with LLM fine-tuning, evaluation, hosting, inference optimization, and workflow automation.
- Demonstrate domain interest: Emphasize your understanding of how technology transforms the legal industry and your desire to learn.
- Network and inquire: Reach out to the hiring manager via email at *****@clio.com for specific role insights.
Technical preparation
Practice information retrieval system design.,Experiment with LLM fine-tuning and evaluation.,Build prototypes for agentic workflows.,Prepare to discuss AI research impact.
Behavioral questions
Describe a complex research project you led.,How do you transition research to production?,How do you stay updated on AI research?,How do you collaborate with cross-functional teams?
Frequently asked questions
- What is the salary range for a Senior NLP Research Engineer at Clio?
- The expected salary range for this Senior NLP Research Engineer role in Toronto is $154,700 to $209,300 CAD. The final offer depends on your experience, skillset, and location.
- Is the Senior NLP Research Engineer position remote or hybrid at Clio?
- This Senior NLP Research Engineer role is hybrid. Candidates local to the Toronto hub are expected to be in the office a minimum of twice per week on designated Anchor Days.
- What qualifications are essential for the Senior NLP Research Engineer role at Clio?
- A Master's degree or PhD in a relevant field (Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, etc.) is required. Significant industry experience in applied AI research or engineering, with specific expertise in information retrieval or LLM applications, is also crucial.
- What are the key research areas for the Senior NLP Research Engineer at Clio?
- Key research areas include scalable information retrieval, learning to rank with legal signals, agentic infrastructure for legal workflows, designing evaluation frameworks, and grounding/validating AI model responses, all within the legal tech domain.
- How does Clio use AI in its recruitment process for the Senior NLP Research Engineer position?
- Clio uses AI to streamline recruitment for efficiency. However, all AI-generated output is human-reviewed, and automated hiring decisions are never made. Human interaction and review are integral to their process.
- What is the significance of the vLex acquisition for this Senior NLP Research Engineer role?
- The acquisition of vLex integrates their advanced legal intelligence platform, including Vincent AI, with Clio's operating system. This creates a new category of intelligent legal technology, and this role is central to advancing Vincent AI.
- Does Clio offer relocation assistance for the Senior NLP Research Engineer role?
- The job description specifies that this role is available to candidates local to the Toronto hub, with an expectation of being in the office. Relocation details are not explicitly mentioned, so it's best to inquire directly with the hiring manager.
- What kind of projects can a Senior NLP Research Engineer expect to work on at Clio?
- You can expect to lead research projects on LLMs and advanced information retrieval, design and implement prototypes, drive research from prototype to production, and contribute to strategic research planning, all focused on AI applications in law.