Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, May 2025
300 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 37 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 24% 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.24% · e.g. Terial | 24% | 73 | +6.8 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.8.0% · e.g. Terial | 8.0% | 24 | +1.9 |
| 3 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.7.0% · e.g. Better Stack | 7.0% | 21 | +2.7 |
| 4 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.5.7% · e.g. Tracebit | 5.7% | 17 | -0.1 |
| 5 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.0% · e.g. ko-br | 5.0% | 15 | +0.4 |
| 6 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.7% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 4.7% | 14 | -0.6 |
| 7 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.4.3% · e.g. Smile ID | 4.3% | 13 | +2.3 |
| 8 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.4.0% · e.g. Solace Health | 4.0% | 12 | -0.3 |
| 9 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.7% · e.g. Chorus One | 3.7% | 11 | -0.9 |
| 10 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.3.0% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.0% | 9 | +1.0 |
| 11 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.0% · e.g. Epistemic AI | 3.0% | 9 | -0.5 |
| 12 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.7% · e.g. Sphinx Defense | 2.7% | 8 | +0.4 |
| 13 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.3% · e.g. Xeotek Inc. | 2.3% | 7 | +0.3 |
| 14 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.1.7% · e.g. Zetier | 1.7% | 5 | +0.4 |
| 15 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.7% · e.g. Stream | 1.7% | 5 | +0.4 |
| 16 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.1.7% · e.g. Norm | 1.7% | 5 | -0.8 |
| 17 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.3% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.3% | 4 | -1.5 |
| 18 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.1.3% · e.g. Goody | 1.3% | 4 | -2.2 |
| 19 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.0% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 20 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.1.0% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 1.0% | 3 | +1.0 |
| 21 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.1.0% · e.g. Sharecare | 1.0% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 22 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.0% · e.g. Exa Labs Inc. | 1.0% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 23 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.70% · e.g. ChipStack | 0.70% | 2 | +0.7 |
| 24 | 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.0.70% · e.g. Sourcegraph | 0.70% | 2 | +0.4 |
| 25 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.30% · e.g. Ameba | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 26 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. Coveo | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 27 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.30% · e.g. Purplefish | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 28 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. PlantingSpace | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 29 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Skysight | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 30 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.30% · e.g. Equity Trust Company | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |
| 31 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Foxglove | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.30% · e.g. AllSpice | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | 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 | +0.0 |
| 34 | 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 |
| 35 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.30% · e.g. Pavefi.com | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |
| 36 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Canvas | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |
| 37 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · e.g. Enjin | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |