His research and teaching focus on text-based information retrieval and analysis. His recent work develops advanced search engine architectures, neural search algorithms, use of semi-structured knowledge for open domain search, conversational information seeking, and large-scale distributed search. Jamie has published more than 200 research papers on these and related subjects.

Jamie's scientific service includes annual participation on the program committees of the major information retrieval conferences. He is a past Treasurer and past Chair of SIGIR, the international professional society for Information Retrieval research, a co-founding Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, and a past Editor-in-Chief of ACM's Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS).