Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, May 2026
317 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 37 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 17% 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.17% · e.g. UpMetrics | 17% | 55 | -6.9 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.11% · e.g. NetBird | 11% | 34 | +2.7 |
| 3 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.7.3% · e.g. Pathos AI | 7.3% | 23 | +3.0 |
| 4 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.7.3% · e.g. Burnin | 7.3% | 23 | +1.6 |
| 5 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.7.3% · e.g. Smarkets | 7.3% | 23 | +2.6 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.6.9% · e.g. # Moyai | 6.9% | 22 | -0.1 |
| 7 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.6.0% · e.g. We The Flywheel | 6.0% | 19 | +2.0 |
| 8 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.4.7% · e.g. Pathos AI | 4.7% | 15 | -0.3 |
| 9 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.4.1% · e.g. Smarkets | 4.1% | 13 | +1.1 |
| 10 | 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.4.1% · e.g. Factory AI | 4.1% | 13 | +3.4 |
| 11 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.3.8% · e.g. NetBird | 3.8% | 12 | +2.5 |
| 12 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.8% · e.g. A24 Films | 3.8% | 12 | +0.1 |
| 13 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.3.2% · e.g. NetBird | 3.2% | 10 | +0.9 |
| 14 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.3.2% · e.g. We The Flywheel | 3.2% | 10 | +1.5 |
| 15 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.2.2% · e.g. Smarkets | 2.2% | 7 | -0.5 |
| 16 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.2.2% · e.g. Beacon AI | 2.2% | 7 | +0.5 |
| 17 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.9% · e.g. MongoDB | 1.9% | 6 | -1.1 |
| 18 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.6% · e.g. Shepherd | 1.6% | 5 | +1.3 |
| 19 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.1.6% · e.g. IBM Research | 1.6% | 5 | +0.6 |
| 20 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.6% · e.g. DuckDuckGo | 1.6% | 5 | +0.3 |
| 21 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.3% · e.g. Burnin | 1.3% | 4 | +0.3 |
| 22 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.0.90% · an example posting | 0.90% | 3 | -0.8 |
| 23 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.90% · e.g. Mercor | 0.90% | 3 | +0.9 |
| 24 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.90% · an example posting | 0.90% | 3 | +0.9 |
| 25 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.90% · e.g. PostHog | 0.90% | 3 | +0.6 |
| 26 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.60% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 0.60% | 2 | -0.1 |
| 27 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.60% · e.g. DuckDuckGo | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 28 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.0.60% · e.g. Gen-Alpha Transistor | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 29 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.30% · e.g. OpenVPN Inc. | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 30 | Data Product ManagerTreats data sets and data platforms as products with users and roadmaps.0.30% · e.g. Foxglove | 0.30% | 1 | +0.3 |
| 31 | Analytics EngineerModels raw data into clean, tested tables (usually with dbt) for analysts and dashboards; named by dbt Labs around 2019.0.30% · e.g. Caribou | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 32 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. Prior Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | 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 |
| 34 | 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 | +0.3 |
| 35 | 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 |
| 36 | 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 |
| 37 | Data AnalystAnswers business questions with SQL, dashboards and spreadsheets.0.30% · e.g. Oscilar.com | 0.30% | 1 | -0.7 |