Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, December 2025
376 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 33 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 18% 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.18% · e.g. Jam.dev | 18% | 68 | -1.8 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.9.6% · e.g. SmarterDx | 9.6% | 36 | +2.9 |
| 3 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.8.5% · e.g. Tendavo | 8.5% | 32 | +3.6 |
| 4 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.7.7% · e.g. Jam.dev | 7.7% | 29 | +1.6 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.7.4% · e.g. Shepherd | 7.4% | 28 | +2.8 |
| 6 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.4% · e.g. SmarterDx | 6.4% | 24 | +0.9 |
| 7 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.8% · e.g. SmarterDx | 4.8% | 18 | +0.8 |
| 8 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.3% · e.g. Lovable | 4.3% | 16 | +2.5 |
| 9 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.0% · e.g. Virtasant | 4.0% | 15 | -0.3 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.7% · e.g. SmarterDx | 3.7% | 14 | +0.3 |
| 11 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.5% · e.g. Koyeb | 3.5% | 13 | +0.4 |
| 12 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.2% · e.g. Lovable | 3.2% | 12 | -1.4 |
| 13 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.9% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 2.9% | 11 | +1.4 |
| 14 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.1% · e.g. Aha! | 2.1% | 8 | -0.3 |
| 15 | 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.2.1% · e.g. Lovable | 2.1% | 8 | +1.5 |
| 16 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.2.1% · e.g. Trunk | 2.1% | 8 | +0.0 |
| 17 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.9% · e.g. Tracebit | 1.9% | 7 | -1.5 |
| 18 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.9% · e.g. Lovable | 1.9% | 7 | +0.4 |
| 19 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.1% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.1% | 4 | -1.0 |
| 20 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.1% · e.g. Longshot Systems | 1.1% | 4 | -0.1 |
| 21 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.1.1% · e.g. CLEAR | 1.1% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 22 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.80% · e.g. GovDash.com | 0.80% | 3 | +0.8 |
| 23 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.0.80% · e.g. The General Intelligence Company | 0.80% | 3 | -0.1 |
| 24 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.80% · e.g. Renaissance Philanthropy | 0.80% | 3 | -0.7 |
| 25 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.50% · e.g. SmarterDx | 0.50% | 2 | +0.2 |
| 26 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.50% · e.g. PostHog | 0.50% | 2 | -0.4 |
| 27 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.50% · e.g. Artificial Analysis | 0.50% | 2 | +0.5 |
| 28 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.50% · e.g. Tiger Data | 0.50% | 2 | +0.5 |
| 29 | 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 |
| 30 | LLMOps EngineerRuns language models in production: serving, prompt and model versions, evals in CI, cost and latency.0.30% · e.g. Thrive Career Wellness Inc | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 31 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. Bonsai Robotics | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 32 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. Bonsai Robotics | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.30% · e.g. px dynamics GmbH | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |