Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, July 2025
330 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 33 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 19% 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.19% · e.g. Better Stack | 19% | 61 | +2.1 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.7.3% · e.g. Goody | 7.3% | 24 | +1.2 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.7.0% · e.g. Privacy-focused AI Project | 7.0% | 23 | +1.7 |
| 4 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.7% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 6.7% | 22 | +0.6 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.6.4% · e.g. Deyan7 | 6.4% | 21 | +3.5 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.6.1% · e.g. Better Stack | 6.1% | 20 | +1.4 |
| 7 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.5.8% · e.g. Beacon AI | 5.8% | 19 | +0.0 |
| 8 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.5% · e.g. SmarterDx | 5.5% | 18 | -1.1 |
| 9 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.5.5% · e.g. SmarterDx | 5.5% | 18 | +1.5 |
| 10 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.5% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 4.5% | 15 | +1.9 |
| 11 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.3.9% · e.g. NowSecure | 3.9% | 13 | -0.3 |
| 12 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.9% · e.g. Lore | 3.9% | 13 | -1.9 |
| 13 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.3.3% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.3% | 11 | +1.7 |
| 14 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.0% · e.g. Tesla | 3.0% | 10 | +0.9 |
| 15 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.4% · e.g. LiveKit | 2.4% | 8 | +0.0 |
| 16 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.4% · e.g. Oso | 2.4% | 8 | +0.8 |
| 17 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.8% · e.g. Fold | 1.8% | 6 | +1.3 |
| 18 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.8% · e.g. Verition | 1.8% | 6 | +0.5 |
| 19 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.5% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.5% | 5 | -1.7 |
| 20 | 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.1.5% · e.g. CoPlane | 1.5% | 5 | +1.0 |
| 21 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.1.2% · e.g. LiveKit | 1.2% | 4 | +1.2 |
| 22 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.90% · e.g. Komodo Health | 0.90% | 3 | +0.9 |
| 23 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.90% · e.g. Pex | 0.90% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 24 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.60% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 25 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.60% · e.g. Squint | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 26 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.60% · e.g. AllSpice | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 27 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.60% · e.g. Lumafield | 0.60% | 2 | -0.2 |
| 28 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.60% · e.g. Teton | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 29 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Duranta | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |
| 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. GoodParty.org | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 31 | 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 |
| 32 | 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 | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · e.g. Category Labs | 0.30% | 1 | -0.2 |