Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, November 2025
393 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 35 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. Pango | 19% | 76 | +1.2 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.8.4% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 8.4% | 33 | +3.3 |
| 3 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.9% · e.g. FetLife | 6.9% | 27 | +2.5 |
| 4 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.6.6% · e.g. Tracebit | 6.6% | 26 | +0.3 |
| 5 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.6.4% · e.g. SmarterDx | 6.4% | 25 | +3.5 |
| 6 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.6.1% · e.g. Hiring Tech Lead | 6.1% | 24 | +2.3 |
| 7 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.5.3% · e.g. FetLife | 5.3% | 21 | +4.0 |
| 8 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.5.3% · e.g. Hardian Health | 5.3% | 21 | +0.9 |
| 9 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.5.3% · e.g. LiveMap | 5.3% | 21 | -0.7 |
| 10 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.5.1% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 5.1% | 20 | +1.9 |
| 11 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.8% · e.g. Pex | 3.8% | 15 | -1.0 |
| 12 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.3.1% · e.g. FetLife | 3.1% | 12 | +1.2 |
| 13 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.5% · e.g. FusionAuth | 2.5% | 10 | +1.2 |
| 14 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.2.5% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.5% | 10 | +0.3 |
| 15 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.2.5% · e.g. SmarterDx | 2.5% | 10 | -0.7 |
| 16 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.0% · e.g. FusionAuth | 2.0% | 8 | -0.2 |
| 17 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.5% · e.g. QUOBYTE | 1.5% | 6 | -2.3 |
| 18 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.3% · e.g. CoPlane | 1.3% | 5 | +0.0 |
| 19 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.1.0% · e.g. Document Crunch | 1.0% | 4 | +0.7 |
| 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.1.0% · e.g. Foxglove | 1.0% | 4 | +0.4 |
| 21 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.1.0% · e.g. Konvu | 1.0% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 22 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.80% · e.g. SmarterDx | 0.80% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 23 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.80% · e.g. Shepherd | 0.80% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 24 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.0.80% · e.g. Layer Health | 0.80% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 25 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.80% · e.g. Konvu | 0.80% | 3 | +0.8 |
| 26 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.80% · e.g. Mercanis | 0.80% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 27 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.50% · e.g. Sophont Inc. | 0.50% | 2 | +0.2 |
| 28 | 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 |
| 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 | Data Product ManagerTreats data sets and data platforms as products with users and roadmaps.0.30% · e.g. Ledgebrook | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | NLP EngineerLanguage models before they were large: search, classification, extraction and translation.0.30% · e.g. Teleskope[0] | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 34 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Duranta | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 35 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Oscilar.com | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |