Hiring technologists to protect consumers
If you work for a federal, state, or local government agency and are responsible for enforcing laws that protect consumers, technologists can assist your organization as you work to discover, investigate, litigate, and remedy wrongdoing.
The government needs technologists
The influence of Big Tech on the information we consume continues to grow, and algorithmic decision-making is increasingly influencing our everyday lives. As a result, the government needs more technologists to serve in its ranks to regulate this constantly evolving marketplace. At the CFPB, technologists work alongside attorneys and policy experts to hold companies accountable for financial wrongdoing and ensure the marketplace is fair for all Americans.
What are technologists?
Technologists apply their technical expertise to help the government conduct investigations, advocate for consumer needs, and ensure the federal government can keep pace with the private sector. Technologists can be experts in any of the following areas:
- Data science and strategy - Examine large datasets using scripting languages and computational languages (e.g., Python, R, SQL) to investigate allegations that financial institutions have broken the law. Ensure the data being requested and collected from companies supports investigatory goals. Apply expertise to casework involving data privacy, AI/ML, algorithmic discrimination, and secure data systems.
- Front-end, back-end, and full-stack engineering – Design, create, and test systems to support investigations. Research new and emerging technical strategies that could help effectively protect consumers. Support investigatory efforts around identity theft, cyber fraud, and system breaches. Programming languages, e.g., Python, SQL, R, Java, JS, Go, Scala, C, C++, Julia, or MatLab.
- User research or product management - Use agile or lean expertise to align cross-functional teams around a shared vision, strategy and user needs. Monitor markets and develop environmental analyses to understand and summarize economic, social, and financial product research on issues affecting consumers’ everyday decision-making.
- Product design and user experience - Apply human-centered design techniques to regulatory or investigative efforts and advocate for consumer needs. Help agencies understand how certain UX techniques can be harmful to consumers.
How can technologists support your work?
Technologists work alongside CFPB staff to improve the quality of our investigations through their expert knowledge of how technology works. They also apply technical expertise and design methods to ongoing regulatory efforts. Technologists have helped:
- Strengthen investigations to uncover areas of concern more precisely and consider the future of the market.
- Apply user-centered practices to rulemaking efforts and ensure regulations consider technical solutions effectively.
- Analyze algorithms implemented by financial institutions that inform what products consumers are eligible for and may reinforce discriminatory biases.
- Research how companies harvest and monetize the data they collect from consumer transactions.
- Anticipate risks and help the agency act fast to support consumers when systems fail.
- Engage the public and relevant experts to understand trends and advance agency work.
- Design remedy models that effectively address bad actor incentives.
Job descriptions for technologists
The CFPB used the following job duties and qualifications to develop job descriptions for the Technologist Program. Feel free to use these job descriptions to bring technologists into your agency.
Senior or management level technologists
Senior technologists serve as technical experts and strategic advisors to further investigative and policymaking objectives. They lead agencies through organizational change, support investigative experts in identifying potential risks to consumers, and monitor new entrants in financial markets.
Program or team lead technologists
Program technologists support the work of small, cross-functional teams and partner with policy experts to lead complex, cross-agency investigative efforts into banks and Big Tech.
Technologists or analysts
Technologists work on small, cross-functional agile teams with enforcement attorneys and economists to perform technical investigative research, dig into available data, and think strategically about opportunities to prevent consumer harm.
Ways to get talent, including hiring authorities
Hiring technical staff in the government can take many forms, the following are authorities that already exist and are most often used by agencies.
How to structure and support technologists
For technologists to be successful, it’s important that they feel enabled and supported to make changes to how an agency approaches policy and investigative work.
At the CFPB, our Chief Technologist reports to the Director of the CFPB and provides operational and strategic leadership for the Technologist Program. Senior technologists (CN-71) report to the Directors of Enforcement and Supervision to signal the importance of technical expertise to effectively regulate the current marketplace. Our program technologists (CN-60) and technologists (CN-53) then report to the senior technologists and are embedded in relevant workstreams and project teams within Supervision and Enforcement.
All technologists within the Technologist Program are treated as a cohort and have regular touchpoints with the Chief Technologist for support, brainstorming, and sharing work in progress across workstreams.
We expect technologists to use their technical expertise to strengthen our work. We don’t expect them to be experts in specific markets or consumer finance law. It’s important to form cross-disciplinary teams with attorneys and policy or market experts when embedding technologists into investigations or fieldwork.
Additionally, technologists have regular check-ins with internal technical talent from other parts of the agency with similar expertise. For example, UX designers within the Technologist Program may be focused on using design techniques to inform investigations but frequently meet with their UX peers working on digital CFPB products for support, cross pollination of ideas, and peer review.
To gain a better understanding of our teams, learn more about the CFPB organizational structure.
Stay connected
For more information about the Technologist Program and stay in-the-loop on our activities, sign up to receive updates from the CFPB .
To ask us questions or hear more about our efforts to integrate technologists into casework, email technologists@cfpb.gov.