Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, December 2024
327 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 32 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 20% 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.20% · e.g. PredictionHealth | 20% | 65 | +4.6 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.6.7% · e.g. Happy Scribe | 6.7% | 22 | +0.9 |
| 3 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.6.1% · e.g. Eigen | 6.1% | 20 | +1.0 |
| 4 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.5.5% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 5.5% | 18 | -1.2 |
| 5 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.4.9% · e.g. Tracebit | 4.9% | 16 | -1.8 |
| 6 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.4.6% · e.g. Counsel | 4.6% | 15 | +1.4 |
| 7 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.4.6% · e.g. Suno | 4.6% | 15 | +0.1 |
| 8 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.3% · e.g. Costa Security | 4.3% | 14 | -1.5 |
| 9 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.0% · e.g. Myndstream | 4.0% | 13 | -1.8 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.4% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.4% | 11 | -0.4 |
| 11 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.3.4% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.4% | 11 | +1.5 |
| 12 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.1% · e.g. Costa Security | 3.1% | 10 | -0.7 |
| 13 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.4% · e.g. Plotly | 2.4% | 8 | -0.8 |
| 14 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.2.1% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.1% | 7 | -1.1 |
| 15 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.1% · e.g. E2B | 2.1% | 7 | -0.8 |
| 16 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.1.8% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.8% | 6 | -2.7 |
| 17 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.1.5% · e.g. Zetier | 1.5% | 5 | +0.2 |
| 18 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.5% · e.g. Exa Labs Inc. | 1.5% | 5 | +0.5 |
| 19 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.5% · e.g. Exa Labs Inc. | 1.5% | 5 | +1.2 |
| 20 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.2% · e.g. Suno | 1.2% | 4 | +0.2 |
| 21 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.90% · e.g. Archie | 0.90% | 3 | +0.6 |
| 22 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.90% · e.g. Envision | 0.90% | 3 | +0.9 |
| 23 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.60% · e.g. SmarterDx | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 24 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.60% · e.g. Exa Labs Inc. | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 25 | 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.0.60% · e.g. Sourcegraph | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 26 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 27 | Legal EngineerA lawyer who builds: turns legal workflows into prompts, evals and product for legal AI tools.0.30% · e.g. Norm | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 28 | Prompt EngineerWrites and tests the instructions given to language models; the 2023 breakout title.0.30% · e.g. Faktory | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 29 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Vannevar Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 30 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Anam | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 31 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. Pinterest | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 32 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.30% · e.g. BI Engineer @ DigitalOcean | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |