Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, September 2025
299 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 34 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. Greenline | 19% | 57 | -2.2 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.9.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 9.0% | 27 | +2.3 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.8.4% · e.g. Greenline | 8.4% | 25 | +2.4 |
| 4 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.7.0% · e.g. SmarterDx | 7.0% | 21 | +4.0 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.6.7% · e.g. Proton | 6.7% | 20 | +4.7 |
| 6 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.7% · e.g. Checkly | 6.7% | 20 | +3.7 |
| 7 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.7% · e.g. SmarterDx | 5.7% | 17 | +0.0 |
| 8 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.5.0% · e.g. Friendly Captcha | 5.0% | 15 | +1.7 |
| 9 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.5.0% · e.g. Dash0 | 5.0% | 15 | +2.7 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.5.0% · an example posting | 5.0% | 15 | +0.7 |
| 11 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.0% · e.g. Checkly | 4.0% | 12 | +2.3 |
| 12 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.3.7% · e.g. Cogram | 3.7% | 11 | +2.0 |
| 13 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.7% · e.g. Pex | 3.7% | 11 | +1.7 |
| 14 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.3.3% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.3% | 10 | +2.0 |
| 15 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.7% · e.g. Lovable | 2.7% | 8 | +1.4 |
| 16 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.2.3% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.3% | 7 | -0.7 |
| 17 | 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.1.7% · e.g. Foxglove | 1.7% | 5 | +1.7 |
| 18 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.7% · e.g. Mathlib Initiative | 1.7% | 5 | -1.3 |
| 19 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.3% · e.g. Komodo Health | 1.3% | 4 | +1.3 |
| 20 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.1.3% · e.g. Master Works / Nabeh | 1.3% | 4 | +1.3 |
| 21 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.1.3% · e.g. AllSpice | 1.3% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 22 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.0% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 1.0% | 3 | +0.0 |
| 23 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.0% · e.g. Foxglove | 1.0% | 3 | -1.3 |
| 24 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.0% · e.g. Lovable | 1.0% | 3 | -0.7 |
| 25 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.1.0% · e.g. Clio | 1.0% | 3 | +0.7 |
| 26 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.70% · e.g. P2P.org - We’re Hiring | 0.70% | 2 | +0.7 |
| 27 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.70% · e.g. LiveKit | 0.70% | 2 | +0.7 |
| 28 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.30% · e.g. SmarterDx | 0.30% | 1 | -1.0 |
| 29 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Master Works / Nabeh | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 30 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.30% · e.g. Roundtable | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 31 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.30% · e.g. Category Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 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. Agile Six | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 33 | 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 |
| 34 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · e.g. TigerData | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |