Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, February 2026
409 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. Spiich Labs | 18% | 73 | -1.9 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.7.6% · e.g. Goody | 7.6% | 31 | +1.3 |
| 3 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.7.6% · e.g. PostHog | 7.6% | 31 | +2.8 |
| 4 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.7.3% · e.g. Shepherd | 7.3% | 30 | +1.0 |
| 5 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.6.1% · e.g. Updater | 6.1% | 25 | +1.8 |
| 6 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.5.9% · e.g. Greenline | 5.9% | 24 | +1.6 |
| 7 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.5.4% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 5.4% | 22 | +3.1 |
| 8 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.4.2% · e.g. Memorang | 4.2% | 17 | +0.7 |
| 9 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.7% · e.g. Baseten Labs | 3.7% | 15 | -0.8 |
| 10 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.3.7% · e.g. ClickHouse | 3.7% | 15 | +0.7 |
| 11 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.3.4% · e.g. Sesame | 3.4% | 14 | -1.4 |
| 12 | 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.3.2% · e.g. Baseten Labs | 3.2% | 13 | +2.4 |
| 13 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.2.4% · e.g. ASBL | 2.4% | 10 | -0.9 |
| 14 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.7% · an example posting | 1.7% | 7 | -0.1 |
| 15 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.7% · e.g. AIDAR | 1.7% | 7 | -1.3 |
| 16 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.5% · e.g. Baseten Labs | 1.5% | 6 | -1.8 |
| 17 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.5% · e.g. Trunk | 1.5% | 6 | -0.5 |
| 18 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.5% · e.g. L2 Labs | 1.5% | 6 | -0.3 |
| 19 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.1.5% · e.g. DuckDuckGo | 1.5% | 6 | -0.8 |
| 20 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.5% · an example posting | 1.5% | 6 | +0.5 |
| 21 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.1.2% · e.g. PostHog | 1.2% | 5 | +0.9 |
| 22 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.1.0% · e.g. Goody | 1.0% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 23 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.1.0% · an example posting | 1.0% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 24 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.0% · an example posting | 1.0% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 25 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.0.50% · e.g. CVector | 0.50% | 2 | -0.5 |
| 26 | 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 |
| 27 | Blockchain EngineerWrites smart contracts and protocol code; peaked with the 2018 and 2021 crypto cycles.0.50% · e.g. Category Labs | 0.50% | 2 | +0.2 |
| 28 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.50% · e.g. HomeVision | 0.50% | 2 | +0.2 |
| 29 | AI Solutions ArchitectDesigns how a customer should use AI models and services, from architecture review to a working proof of concept.0.20% · e.g. Baseten Labs | 0.20% | 1 | +0.2 |
| 30 | Data Product ManagerTreats data sets and data platforms as products with users and roadmaps.0.20% · e.g. Foxglove | 0.20% | 1 | +0.2 |
| 31 | Legal EngineerA lawyer who builds: turns legal workflows into prompts, evals and product for legal AI tools.0.20% · an example posting | 0.20% | 1 | -0.1 |
| 32 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.20% · e.g. Artificial Analysis | 0.20% | 1 | -0.1 |
| 33 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.20% · e.g. Gaia AI | 0.20% | 1 | -0.6 |