Senior Research Engineer - Experimental Engineering

Overview

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.

How You'll Make An Impact

• 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 Reports' 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.

About You

• You have deep experience as a full-stack software engineer, with additional depth and interest in applied research, particularly within AI/ML domains.
• 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.

Fair Pay and a Just Workplace

• Consumer Reports is committed to fair, transparent pay and strives to provide competitive, market-informed compensation informed by location, as well as the candidate's particular combination of knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience.
• Salary ranges vary based on location:
• NY/California: $140K-$160K annually
• DMV/Massachusetts: $120K-$140K annually
• Colchester, CT and additional approved CR locations: $115K-$135K annually