Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, January 2026
257 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 32 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 21% 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.21% · e.g. Clever Benefits | 21% | 54 | +0.3 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.8.6% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 8.6% | 22 | +2.1 |
| 3 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.7.4% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 7.4% | 19 | +3.4 |
| 4 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.6.6% · e.g. DoShare Labs | 6.6% | 17 | +2.6 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.6.6% · e.g. Cosuno | 6.6% | 17 | +3.0 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.6.2% · e.g. AREO | 6.2% | 16 | +2.2 |
| 7 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.8% · e.g. Immunera | 5.8% | 15 | -0.4 |
| 8 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.5.4% · e.g. Bevyl | 5.4% | 14 | -1.9 |
| 9 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.5.1% · e.g. Unit | 5.1% | 13 | +3.3 |
| 10 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.9% · e.g. AREO | 3.9% | 10 | +1.0 |
| 11 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.5% · e.g. Quantum Rise | 3.5% | 9 | -1.6 |
| 12 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.2.7% · e.g. Radar Labs | 2.7% | 7 | -0.6 |
| 13 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.7% · e.g. Zetier | 2.7% | 7 | +0.9 |
| 14 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.3% · e.g. FetLife | 2.3% | 6 | -1.0 |
| 15 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.9% · e.g. Resemble AI | 1.9% | 5 | -0.6 |
| 16 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.9% · e.g. 9 Mothers Defense | 1.9% | 5 | -1.4 |
| 17 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.6% · e.g. Cora AI | 1.6% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 18 | 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.1.6% · e.g. Resemble AI | 1.6% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 19 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.6% · e.g. CoPlane | 1.6% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 20 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.2% · e.g. Trunk | 1.2% | 3 | +0.5 |
| 21 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.2% · e.g. IPinfo.io | 1.2% | 3 | -1.0 |
| 22 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.1.2% · e.g. Lumos | 1.2% | 3 | +0.8 |
| 23 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.1.2% · e.g. DeepL | 1.2% | 3 | +0.1 |
| 24 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.80% · e.g. Pickle Robot | 0.80% | 2 | +0.1 |
| 25 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.80% · e.g. Artificial Analysis | 0.80% | 2 | +0.1 |
| 26 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.80% · e.g. BetterBugs | 0.80% | 2 | +0.8 |
| 27 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.40% · e.g. Category Labs | 0.40% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 28 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.40% · e.g. Beatdapp | 0.40% | 1 | +0.4 |
| 29 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.40% · e.g. CrazyGames | 0.40% | 1 | -0.7 |
| 30 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.40% · e.g. Amperos Health | 0.40% | 1 | -0.7 |
| 31 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.40% · e.g. Tiger Data | 0.40% | 1 | +0.4 |
| 32 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.40% · e.g. HomeVision | 0.40% | 1 | -0.3 |