Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, April 2025
304 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 37 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 23% 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.23% · e.g. Tram Case | 23% | 69 | +3.9 |
| 2 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.7.6% · e.g. Hi, I’m Ben, CTO at Inductive Bio. | 7.6% | 23 | +2.4 |
| 3 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.6.6% · e.g. Seeq | 6.6% | 20 | +1.0 |
| 4 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.6.3% · e.g. Tracebit | 6.3% | 19 | +1.4 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.5.6% · e.g. Tram Case | 5.6% | 17 | +3.9 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.5.3% · e.g. CrazyGames | 5.3% | 16 | +0.4 |
| 7 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.4.3% · e.g. SmarterDx | 4.3% | 13 | -0.9 |
| 8 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.3% · e.g. Lovable | 4.3% | 13 | -1.9 |
| 9 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.3.9% · e.g. Maxmodus | 3.9% | 12 | +2.2 |
| 10 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.3.3% · e.g. Aha! | 3.3% | 10 | -2.6 |
| 11 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.0% · e.g. Quatt.io | 3.0% | 9 | +0.2 |
| 12 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.2.3% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.3% | 7 | +0.2 |
| 13 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.2.3% · e.g. Olo | 2.3% | 7 | -0.5 |
| 14 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.2.0% · e.g. Lovable | 2.0% | 6 | +0.3 |
| 15 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.2.0% · e.g. Kadoa | 2.0% | 6 | -0.4 |
| 16 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.1.6% · e.g. Zetier | 1.6% | 5 | -0.5 |
| 17 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.3% · e.g. Aleph | 1.3% | 4 | +0.6 |
| 18 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.3% · e.g. Railway | 1.3% | 4 | -1.1 |
| 19 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.0% | 3 | -0.7 |
| 20 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.0% · e.g. Metabase | 1.0% | 3 | +1.0 |
| 21 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.0% · e.g. Uncountable | 1.0% | 3 | -1.1 |
| 22 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.70% · e.g. Blue Origin | 0.70% | 2 | +0.0 |
| 23 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.70% · e.g. Shortwave | 0.70% | 2 | +0.7 |
| 24 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.70% · e.g. Incept AI | 0.70% | 2 | +0.7 |
| 25 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.70% · e.g. Redfin | 0.70% | 2 | +0.0 |
| 26 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Quatt.io | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 27 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 28 | AI Deployment EngineerDeploys and tunes an AI product or agent inside a customer's stack; a close cousin of the forward deployed engineer.0.30% · e.g. Norm | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 29 | 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 |
| 30 | Deep Learning EngineerTrains neural networks; the 2016 to 2019 name for what became ML engineering.0.30% · e.g. Incept AI | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 31 | AI Solutions ArchitectDesigns how a customer should use AI models and services, from architecture review to a working proof of concept.0.30% · e.g. V7 Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 33 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.30% · e.g. TensorZero | 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 | -1.1 |
| 35 | 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. Workhelix | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 36 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.30% · e.g. Squint | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 37 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Canvas | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |