Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to a fair and just marketplace through rigorous testing, trusted ratings, reporting, and consumer advocacy. The Senior Research Engineer will lead exploratory engineering research, rapidly prototype emerging technology solutions, and guide strategic initiatives with a focus on AI, machine learning, and the AskCR RAG chatbot.
Responsibilities
- Lead exploratory spikes, proof-of-concept projects, and early-stage prototyping end-to-end to test high-impact, forward-looking ideas
- Identify strategic opportunities in emerging technologies (notably AI/ML) and translate these opportunities into actionable prototypes
- Serve as a technical leader on AskCR, our RAG chatbot built on Consumer Reports' product testing, journalism, and advocacy work and own architectural decisions on retrieval, evaluation, and orchestration
- Collaborate closely on technical planning, architecture, and implementation efforts for AskCR, our RAG chatbot built on Consumer Report’s product testing, journalism and advocacy work
- Work collaboratively across cross-functional teams (Digital Product, Product Testing, User Research, Data Engineering, Advocacy) to share insights and ensure learnings are leveraged broadly across Consumer Reports
- Establish and refine practices for documenting experiments and synthesizing research outputs to maximize their organizational impact
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the team
- Cultivate a culture of curiosity, experimentation, rapid learning, and discovery
Skills
- You have deep experience as a full-stack software engineer
- You are a problem solver. You can take a vague problem and return with a crisp framing, a plan, and a working prototype without needing the path defined for you
- You are motivated by entrepreneurial challenges, comfortable navigating ambiguity, and experienced in rapidly iterating early ideas to test feasibility and viability
- You're comfortable being a senior voice on the team and making calls on technical direction, pushing back when something isn't worth building, and knowing when to kill a project
- You effectively communicate experimental findings and engineering insights clearly and enthusiastically to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- You understand the balance between near-term product delivery and longer-term investment in innovation, and are capable of operating effectively in early phases of product development (spike → proof-of-concept → early prototype)
- You have practical understanding or curiosity regarding consumer rights, consumer advocacy, product ethics, and how responsible AI can empower individuals
- You have the experience. 7+ years of professional software engineering experience; a Swiss army knife of engineering skill with demonstrated expertise in Python (particularly FastAPI), frontend development frameworks (ideally React and React Native) and AI orchestration
- You've built and shipped applied AI products to consumers (building data pipelines, fine-tuning models, evaluating AI tools)
- You have a demonstrated curiosity for solving challenging and non-straightforward engineering problems; this might be reflected in a prior research engineering position, contributions to open source projects, self-directed programming projects, or something you'll surprise us with
- You bring a track record of designing and building innovative prototypes from the ground up, with examples you can walk through
- You have exceptional problem-solving skills and the ability to clearly communicate technical concepts to cross-functional teams
- You have experience mentoring other engineers or otherwise multiplying the work of a team
- This position is not eligibale for sponsorship or relocation assistance
- You have deep experience as a full-stack software engineer, with additional depth and interest in applied research, particularly within AI/ML domains
Benefits
- Medical benefits that start on your first day as a CR employee
- Behavioral health coverage
- Family planning coverage
- A generous 401K match
- This is a full-time remote opportunity, with hybrid work available for candidates local to Consumer Reports offices in New York or Washington, D.C.
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