Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, December 2020
684 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 33 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 17% of them.
Titles in this thread
Change: percentage points against a year before| # | Title | Posts | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Full Stack EngineerWorks across the browser, the API and the database; the default startup hire.17% · e.g. Cash Flow Portal | 17% | 119 | +0.9 |
| 2 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.7.5% · e.g. Codecov | 7.5% | 51 | -0.4 |
| 3 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.7.2% · e.g. Cash Flow Portal | 7.2% | 49 | +1.2 |
| 4 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.6.7% · e.g. United States Digital Service | 6.7% | 46 | +1.2 |
| 5 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.5.4% · e.g. SprintEins | 5.4% | 37 | +0.4 |
| 6 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.5.4% · e.g. Torqata | 5.4% | 37 | -0.4 |
| 7 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.7% · e.g. Codecov | 4.7% | 32 | -0.1 |
| 8 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.4.2% · e.g. Recursion Pharmaceuticals | 4.2% | 29 | -2.3 |
| 9 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.3.5% · e.g. Casa | 3.5% | 24 | +1.3 |
| 10 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.3.5% · e.g. Shield AI | 3.5% | 24 | +2.0 |
| 11 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.3.2% · e.g. 98point6 | 3.2% | 22 | -0.7 |
| 12 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.3.2% · e.g. Tapad | 3.2% | 22 | -0.6 |
| 13 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.0% · e.g. Codecov | 2.0% | 14 | -0.6 |
| 14 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.1.2% · e.g. Whatnot | 1.2% | 8 | +0.3 |
| 15 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.0% · e.g. oso | 1.0% | 7 | +0.1 |
| 16 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.0.90% · e.g. ISO | 0.90% | 6 | +0.7 |
| 17 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.90% · e.g. 98point6 | 0.90% | 6 | -0.3 |
| 18 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.60% · e.g. Caper | 0.60% | 4 | -0.1 |
| 19 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.0.60% · e.g. ETIQ | 0.60% | 4 | +0.3 |
| 20 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.0.60% · e.g. Workist | 0.60% | 4 | +0.3 |
| 21 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.40% · e.g. | Entia | 0.40% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 22 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.40% · e.g. Minimax Labs | 0.40% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 23 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.0.40% · e.g. Roblox | 0.40% | 3 | +0.4 |
| 24 | Deep Learning EngineerTrains neural networks; the 2016 to 2019 name for what became ML engineering.0.40% · e.g. V7 Labs | 0.40% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 25 | Data Product ManagerTreats data sets and data platforms as products with users and roadmaps.0.30% · e.g. United States Digital Service | 0.30% | 2 | +0.1 |
| 26 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. Citrine Informatics | 0.30% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 27 | Big Data EngineerThe Hadoop-era title of the early 2010s, before Spark and cloud warehouses folded it into data engineering.0.30% · e.g. Celonis | 0.30% | 2 | +0.1 |
| 28 | Forward Deployed EngineerAn engineer who ships software inside a customer's environment, part builder and part consultant; Palantir coined it, AI labs made it common.0.30% · e.g. Clay | 0.30% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 29 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 2 | +0.0 |
| 30 | AI Deployment EngineerDeploys and tunes an AI product or agent inside a customer's stack; a close cousin of the forward deployed engineer.0.10% · e.g. String and Key | 0.10% | 1 | +0.1 |
| 31 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.10% · e.g. WELL Health Inc. | 0.10% | 1 | -0.1 |
| 32 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.10% · e.g. PathAI | 0.10% | 1 | +0.1 |
| 33 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.10% · e.g. Zocdoc | 0.10% | 1 | -0.2 |