Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, October 2025
339 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 35 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 17% 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.17% · e.g. ReciPal | 17% | 57 | -2.4 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.11% · e.g. SmarterDx | 11% | 36 | +5.1 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.7.4% · e.g. Raremarq | 7.4% | 25 | +0.7 |
| 4 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.7.4% · e.g. Moyai | 7.4% | 25 | +5.9 |
| 5 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.7.1% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 7.1% | 24 | +4.1 |
| 6 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.2% · e.g. SmarterDx | 6.2% | 21 | +3.2 |
| 7 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.5.9% · an example posting | 5.9% | 20 | +0.4 |
| 8 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.5.6% · e.g. Squint | 5.6% | 19 | +2.6 |
| 9 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.1% · e.g. Crux | 4.1% | 14 | +2.3 |
| 10 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.3.5% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 3.5% | 12 | +1.7 |
| 11 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.3.2% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.2% | 11 | +0.8 |
| 12 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.2% · e.g. DuckDuckGo | 3.2% | 11 | +0.2 |
| 13 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.2.7% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.7% | 9 | -1.9 |
| 14 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.2.7% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 2.7% | 9 | -1.9 |
| 15 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.7% · e.g. Checkly | 2.7% | 9 | +0.9 |
| 16 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.4% · e.g. Aha! | 2.4% | 8 | +0.6 |
| 17 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.4% · e.g. Stytch | 2.4% | 8 | +1.5 |
| 18 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.1.8% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.8% | 6 | +1.2 |
| 19 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.8% · e.g. CoPlane | 1.8% | 6 | +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.1.8% · e.g. Foxglove | 1.8% | 6 | +1.8 |
| 21 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.5% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 1.5% | 5 | +0.6 |
| 22 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.2% · e.g. Fundamental Research Labs | 1.2% | 4 | +0.6 |
| 23 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.1.2% · e.g. Valantor | 1.2% | 4 | +1.2 |
| 24 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.90% · e.g. Vibrant | 0.90% | 3 | +0.6 |
| 25 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.90% · e.g. Parable | 0.90% | 3 | +0.0 |
| 26 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.60% · e.g. pod network | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 27 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.60% · e.g. Duranta | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 28 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.60% · e.g. Founding Engineer | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 29 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.30% · e.g. Artificial Analysis | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 30 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · e.g. Artificial Analysis | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 31 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.30% · e.g. Konvu | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Consigli | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 33 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. Consigli | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 34 | Deep Learning EngineerTrains neural networks; the 2016 to 2019 name for what became ML engineering.0.30% · e.g. Deep Learning Researcher | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 35 | 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. Location: United States | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |