We’re seeking a product manager with technical expertise and a passion for privacy to join Consumer Reports on a contract basis. This is a good opportunity for a mission-oriented product professional who wants to experience a startup social enterprise and help bring an experimental product to market.
Scope:
- You will be supporting Permission Slip, an experimental consumer product currently in private iOS beta (read about our past related work on privacy here).
- As part of this overarching scope of work, you will help power the Permission Slip app and recommend process improvements and workflows to help Consumer Reports better send data requests for consumers at scale;
- Help wrap up Permission Slip’s private beta and ready the app for a soft launch in the iOS App Store;
- Collaborate with our external design and development teams to polish key features pre-launch;
- Join the team in testing new builds and identifying bugs, then help triage and prioritize fixes in partnership with the engineering and support teams.
- Gather and synthesize feedback from users about their experience using Permission Slip to send data requests;
- Help plan Permission Slip’s future roadmap, including integration with Data Rights Protocol, an open standard for exchanging data rights requests under the law.
Qualifications:
- Prior experience working on a technical product team and/or with technical vendors
- Strong oral and written communication skills
- Highly motivated and able to work independently
- Proficient with technology and Google Suite applications
- Sharp attention to detail and ability to multitask
- Reliable, diligent, and professional
- Curiosity about privacy, data rights, consumer protection, or public interest technology
- Extra credit for Computer Science or App Development experience
This is a contract opportunity, working remotely with colleagues in Eastern and Pacific time zones. Time commitment is estimated at 20-30 hours per week.
Interested applicants should get in touch, explain their interest and qualifications and attach a resume or CV. To apply or request more information, contact digitallab@cr.consumer.org.
Background:
Consumer Reports is a trusted and nationally recognized non-profit with an 85 year history conducting policy work at the federal and state levels. The CR Digital Lab builds consumer power in the digital economy, integrating research, products and advocacy to tilt the marketplace towards fairness and safety for consumers.
U.S. consumers have little control over the collection and sale of their personal data, which leads to profiling, manipulation, price discrimination and other practices that cut against consumers’ best interests. Regulations such as California’s CCPA and Europe’s GDPR seek to restore power to individuals but depend on consumers’ ability to meaningfully exercise their data rights.
In 2018, CR helped pass the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Mid-2020, the CR Digital Lab conducted a participatory study to understand how the CCPA is working for consumers and learned just how tough it can be for Californians to use the privacy rights the CCPA grants.
Next, the Lab kicked off a year of R&D to explore what emergent, consumer-facing services might be possible under the CCPA. We launched two pilot programs focused on the CCPA’s “authorized agent” provision (§999.326.), which allows consumers to designate a third party to issue data requests to companies on their behalf.
We continue to lay practical foundations for consumer data control in the U.S. through new products and services that help consumers manage their data. The work is crucial because, without good tooling, even highly-engaged and interested consumers are unlikely to be able to control their data or benefit from the many hidden insights it contains.
