Head of Legal Engineering

Job Description

At Norton Rose Fulbright, people thrive because of a shared commitment to quality, unity and integrity. The highly regarded law firm consistently receives recognition from Great Place to Work and Top Workplaces, two companies that specialize in assessing organizational culture. Teams collaborate across regions, value new ideas and deliver meaningful client solutions, supported by a culture that embraces ambition, development and shared success. With more than 3,000 lawyers and 3,000 business services professionals working together across 50 offices worldwide, this global law firm provides a full range of legal services to leading corporations and financial institutions operating in key markets and sectors.

You are a builder at heart and a natural problem solver. You don't just theorize about AI, you design, prototype, and deliver solutions that solve real problems. You are equally comfortable whiteboarding with attorneys, vibe coding, and translating ambiguity into working commercial products. You bring a pragmatic mindset: focusing on speed to value while ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with firm risk tolerance.

Norton Rose Fulbright has a long-standing commitment to leveraging technology to enhance legal services and streamline operations. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Head of Legal Engineering to play a central role in designing, building, and scaling AI-enabled solutions across the firm. This role sits within the US Innovation team and reports to the US Director, Head of Innovation, and collaborates closely with legal practice groups, IT, and other business services functions. A successful candidate will bring strong legal acumen, a practical understanding of AI technologies, and the ability to lead a team as well as complex, cross-functional initiatives.

This is a unique opportunity to help build a legal engineering function inside one of the world's leading law firms -- with organizational support, a growing team, and genuine executive sponsorship. The work is consequential, the problems are hard, and the potential to reshape how legal services are delivered is real.

As a builder-coach, this is a hands-on role where you will be focused on both product and people by directly building solutions and leading a growing team. Equally, you will build trusted relationships with attorneys and business service colleagues across the firm to drive alignment and support for the Innovation program's initiatives.

You will also help shape the firm's broader approach to applied AI, contributing to standards, governance practices, and solution architecture that enable responsible and sustainable adoption at scale.

• Own the full product lifecycle for legal engineering initiatives: from scoping, workflow decomposition, and prototyping; through production deployment and scaled adoption across the firm (in collaboration with other Innovation teams)
• Design and develop AI-powered legal workflows, solutions, and internal products from concept through deployment, using tools such as LLM APIs, and legal-specific platforms (e.g., Legora, Harvey)
• Develop and maintain evaluation frameworks to measure accuracy, consistency, and defensibility of AI outputs against legal standards and firm expectations
• Identify high-value automation and augmentation opportunities across practice groups and business services
• Collaborate with attorneys, business services, and firm leadership to surface unmet needs and translate them into engineered solutions
• Integrate AI tools into existing legal workflows, ensuring usability and adoption
• Build and test prototypes rapidly, iterating toward production-ready solutions

• Manage and mentor a team of legal engineers and automation specialists, with accountability for hiring and team development as the function scales
• Establish engineering standards, workflows, and quality practices for the team
• Partner with the Director of Innovation and senior leadership to shape the legal engineering roadmap and org design

• Work directly with Innovation leadership, attorneys, practice leaders, and business stakeholders to co-design solutions
• Partner with the AI Governance & Program Manager, IT, and Info security teams to ensure solutions meet firm standards and governance requirements
• Act as a translator between technical capabilities and legal use cases

• Bachelor's degree; JD preferred, or equivalent professional experience
• Minimum seven years of experience in product-focused roles, legal innovation, professional services consulting, or related fields, with a strong understanding of legal service delivery and how legal work is performed in practice
• Demonstrated technical or product proficiency: building or shipping products or tools in legal or professional services production environments, software development, workflow automation, or legal technology implementation
• Demonstrated experience building and deploying AI-enabled solutions into production environments, preferably using large language models (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic)
• Experience working with APIs, scripting, or low-code/no-code platforms (Python, JavaScript, or similar preferred), RAG architectures, or multi-step AI workflows
• Comfort operating in ambiguity: this function is still being defined, and you will help define and mature it
• Excellent communication skills and ability to translate business or legal requirements into technical solutions and workflows; able to present to senior partners and work alongside engineers in the same day
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and deliver results in a fast-paced environment
• Genuine broader market curiosity about AI and its implications for the future of legal practice - beyond simply familiarity with the tools
• Understanding of data privacy, security, and responsible AI considerations in a professional services context
• Experience developing reusable frameworks, templates, or scalable solution patterns

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP is committed to providing employees with a comprehensive and competitive benefits package that supports you, your health, and your family. Benefit packages include access to three medical plans, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance. Employees can also access pre-tax benefits such as health savings and flexible spending accounts. Norton Rose Fulbright helps provide financial security by allowing employees to participate in a 401(k) savings plan and profit-sharing plans if eligible. Full- time employees are eligible to access fertility benefits designed to support fertility and family-forming journeys.

In addition to the Firm's health and welfare benefits above, we offer a competitive paid time off plan, which provides a minimum of 20 days off based on your role and tenure with the firm. The firm offers a generous paid parental leave benefit allowing parents to take a minimum of 14 weeks of paid leave to bond with your newborn, or adopted child(ren). Employees are also entitled to 11 Firm holidays.

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal laws and their implementing regulations that require the collection and recording of certain data and information. The information we receive will not be used to make any decision regarding employment and will be kept separate from your application. Similarly, self-identification information is kept confidential and used only in accordance with applicable federal laws and regulations. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.Norton Rose Fulbright is committed to providing reasonable accommodation as an Equal Opportunity Employer to applicants with disabilities. If you require assistance or accommodation to complete your application, please contact us.hr@nortonrosefulbright.com. Please provide your contact information and a description of your accessibility issue. We will make a determination on your request for reasonable accommodation on a case-by-case basis.

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Equal Employment Opportunity

Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the firm, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c).