Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, April 2026
332 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 37 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 15% 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.15% · e.g. PrairieLearn | 15% | 50 | -7.6 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.9.0% · e.g. BIT Capital | 9.0% | 30 | +2.4 |
| 3 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.7.5% · e.g. Shepherd | 7.5% | 25 | +1.9 |
| 4 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.7.5% · an example posting | 7.5% | 25 | +2.2 |
| 5 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.5.4% · e.g. Tracebit | 5.4% | 18 | -0.8 |
| 6 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.4.8% · e.g. Oscilar.com | 4.8% | 16 | +0.5 |
| 7 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.4.5% · e.g. WireScreen | 4.5% | 15 | +1.2 |
| 8 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.5% · e.g. Shepherd | 4.5% | 15 | -3.1 |
| 9 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.4.2% · e.g. Temporal Technologies | 4.2% | 14 | -0.1 |
| 10 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.3.6% · e.g. OpenRent | 3.6% | 12 | +1.6 |
| 11 | 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.3.0% · e.g. Stellar | 3.0% | 10 | +2.7 |
| 12 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.7% · e.g. Aha! | 2.7% | 9 | +1.1 |
| 13 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.2.7% · e.g. Rootly | 2.7% | 9 | +0.4 |
| 14 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.2.4% · e.g. Squint | 2.4% | 8 | -1.5 |
| 15 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.5% · an example posting | 1.5% | 5 | +0.5 |
| 16 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.5% · e.g. Shepherd | 1.5% | 5 | +0.5 |
| 17 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.5% · e.g. HumanSignal | 1.5% | 5 | +0.5 |
| 18 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.1.5% · e.g. Oneleet | 1.5% | 5 | +1.2 |
| 19 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.1.5% · e.g. LiveMap | 1.5% | 5 | -1.5 |
| 20 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.1.2% · e.g. American Board of Family Medicine | 1.2% | 4 | +0.5 |
| 21 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.2% · e.g. Prior Labs | 1.2% | 4 | -0.1 |
| 22 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.2% · e.g. Prior Labs | 1.2% | 4 | -1.1 |
| 23 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.90% · e.g. Prior Labs | 0.90% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 24 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.90% · e.g. TechTalk | 0.90% | 3 | +0.2 |
| 25 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.0.60% · e.g. Shepherd | 0.60% | 2 | -1.4 |
| 26 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.0.60% · e.g. MongoDB | 0.60% | 2 | -0.7 |
| 27 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.60% · e.g. Caribou | 0.60% | 2 | +0.6 |
| 28 | AI Deployment EngineerDeploys and tunes an AI product or agent inside a customer's stack; a close cousin of the forward deployed engineer.0.60% · e.g. Cyngn | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 29 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.60% · e.g. PostHog | 0.60% | 2 | -0.1 |
| 30 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.60% · e.g. Eagle | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 31 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Oscilar.com | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 32 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.30% · e.g. GameBrain AI | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | LLMOps EngineerRuns language models in production: serving, prompt and model versions, evals in CI, cost and latency.0.30% · e.g. AllSpice | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 34 | Legal EngineerA lawyer who builds: turns legal workflows into prompts, evals and product for legal AI tools.0.30% · an example posting | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 35 | AI Solutions ArchitectDesigns how a customer should use AI models and services, from architecture review to a working proof of concept.0.30% · e.g. Baseten Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 36 | 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 |
| 37 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.30% · e.g. BrandMultiplier | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |