Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, March 2025
353 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 38 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. SluiceboxAI | 20% | 71 | +2.4 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.7.1% · e.g. Snout | 7.1% | 25 | +0.1 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.5.9% · e.g. LlamaIndex | 5.9% | 21 | +1.9 |
| 4 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.5.4% · e.g. LlamaIndex | 5.4% | 19 | -2.3 |
| 5 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.5% · e.g. LlamaIndex | 4.5% | 16 | -1.5 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.4.5% · e.g. Modash.io | 4.5% | 16 | -0.2 |
| 7 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.4.2% · e.g. LlamaIndex | 4.2% | 15 | +1.9 |
| 8 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 4.0% | 14 | -2.0 |
| 9 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.4.0% · e.g. OneSignal | 4.0% | 14 | -1.0 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.7% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.7% | 13 | -0.3 |
| 11 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.2.8% · e.g. C.H. Robinson | 2.8% | 10 | -0.5 |
| 12 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.2.8% · e.g. iwell | 2.8% | 10 | +1.1 |
| 13 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.2.8% · e.g. Foxglove | 2.8% | 10 | -1.9 |
| 14 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.5% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 2.5% | 9 | +1.5 |
| 15 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.0% · e.g. Toolhouse| SF/Bay Area Onsite | 2.0% | 7 | +0.0 |
| 16 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.0% · e.g. Linkurious | 2.0% | 7 | -0.3 |
| 17 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.1.7% · e.g. Zetier | 1.7% | 6 | +0.0 |
| 18 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.4% · e.g. iGenius.ai | 1.4% | 5 | +0.1 |
| 19 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.1.1% · e.g. Parable | 1.1% | 4 | +0.4 |
| 20 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.80% · e.g. Vannevar Labs | 0.80% | 3 | +0.8 |
| 21 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.80% · e.g. Norm | 0.80% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 22 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.60% · e.g. LlamaIndex | 0.60% | 2 | -1.1 |
| 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. Honeylove | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 24 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.60% · e.g. Seen Finance | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 25 | Deep Learning EngineerTrains neural networks; the 2016 to 2019 name for what became ML engineering.0.60% · e.g. Incept AI | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 26 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.60% · e.g. Incept AI | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 27 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.0.60% · e.g. Flexa | 0.60% | 2 | -0.1 |
| 28 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.60% · e.g. Stealth Startup | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 29 | 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. Abel | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 30 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. iGenius.ai | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 31 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | 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 |
| 33 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Skysight | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 34 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | -0.7 |
| 35 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.30% · e.g. Count | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 36 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.30% · e.g. Optimal | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 37 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.30% · e.g. LiveKit | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 38 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.30% · e.g. Kay.ai | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |