Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, August 2025
305 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 31 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. Eleshop | 19% | 58 | -0.3 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.11% · e.g. Goody | 11% | 32 | +2.1 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.7.5% · e.g. Nexus Intelligence | 7.5% | 23 | +1.9 |
| 4 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.2% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 6.2% | 19 | +2.2 |
| 5 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.5.9% · e.g. *Blacklane* | 5.9% | 18 | +1.5 |
| 6 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.5.9% · e.g. Founding AI Engineer at AI Tech Startup | 5.9% | 18 | +3.1 |
| 7 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.6% · e.g. SmarterDx | 5.6% | 17 | -0.3 |
| 8 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.4.9% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 4.9% | 15 | +2.4 |
| 9 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.3.9% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.9% | 12 | +0.5 |
| 10 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.3.6% · e.g. Sudowrite | 3.6% | 11 | +1.4 |
| 11 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.0% · e.g. GoodParty.org | 3.0% | 9 | -0.4 |
| 12 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.3.0% · e.g. Chronograph | 3.0% | 9 | +0.5 |
| 13 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.2.6% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.6% | 8 | -0.5 |
| 14 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.2.6% · e.g. Radar Labs | 2.6% | 8 | -0.5 |
| 15 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.2.6% · e.g. Fold | 2.6% | 8 | +1.0 |
| 16 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.3% · e.g. Clio | 2.3% | 7 | -0.2 |
| 17 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.6% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 1.6% | 5 | +1.0 |
| 18 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.6% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 1.6% | 5 | -1.8 |
| 19 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.6% · e.g. Depot | 1.6% | 5 | -0.9 |
| 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.1.0% · e.g. Chestnut | 1.0% | 3 | +1.0 |
| 21 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.1.0% · e.g. StrongDM | 1.0% | 3 | +0.7 |
| 22 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.1.0% · e.g. AllSpice | 1.0% | 3 | +0.7 |
| 23 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.70% · e.g. SmarterDx | 0.70% | 2 | -0.2 |
| 24 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.70% · e.g. Limitless | 0.70% | 2 | +0.4 |
| 25 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Clio | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 26 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Duranta | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 27 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.30% · e.g. Littlebird | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 28 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.30% · e.g. BillionToOne | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 29 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · e.g. AllSpice | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 30 | 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 |
| 31 | 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% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |