Senior Research Engineer - Experimental Engineering

The Experimental Engineering team leads the engineering R&D efforts in new and emerging products at Consumer Reports. We're seeking a highly capable Senior Research Engineer to join our team and drive forward exploratory research engineering with particular focus on innovative applications of AI, machine learning, and emerging technologies. In this role, you’ll embark on ambitious early-stage engineering efforts, validate concepts through rapid prototypes, and translate timely experiments into actionable insights that guide Consumer Reports' strategic initiatives. Research engineers operate 6+ months ahead of product roadmaps. Your work will be essential to identifying opportunities and pushing our technological boundaries.

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; Work collaboratively across cross-functional teams (Digital Product, Product Testing, User Research, Data Engineering, Advocacy) to share insights and ensure learnings are leveraged broadly; Establish and refine practices for documenting experiments and synthesizing research outputs; Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the team; Cultivate a culture of curiosity, experimentation, rapid learning, and discovery

Requirements

Deep experience as a full-stack software engineer, with additional depth and interest in applied research, particularly within AI/ML domains; Problem solver who can take a vague problem and return with a crisp framing, a plan, and a working prototype; Motivated by entrepreneurial challenges, comfortable navigating ambiguity, and experienced in rapidly iterating early ideas to test feasibility and viability; 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; Effectively communicates experimental findings and engineering insights clearly and enthusiastically to both technical and non-technical stakeholders; Understands the balance between near-term product delivery and longer-term investment in innovation, and capable of operating effectively in early phases of product development (spike → proof-of-concept → early prototype); Practical understanding or curiosity regarding consumer rights, consumer advocacy, product ethics, and how responsible AI can empower individuals

Nice to have

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; built and shipped applied AI products to consumers (building data pipelines, fine-tuning models, evaluating AI tools); demonstrated curiosity for solving challenging and non-straightforward engineering problems; track record of designing and building innovative prototypes from the ground up; exceptional problem-solving skills and ability to clearly communicate technical concepts to cross-functional teams; experience mentoring other engineers or otherwise multiplying the work of a team

Benefits

Medical benefits that start on your first day as a CR employee; behavioral health coverage; family planning; generous 401K match