Titlesby GlyphWho is hiring, June 2026
313 postings in the Hacker News thread mention 36 tracked titles; the most mentioned is Full Stack Engineer, in 19% 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.19% · e.g. OpenRent | 19% | 58 | -1.1 |
| 2 | Staff EngineerThe senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.9.3% · e.g. Atom Computing | 9.3% | 29 | +1.2 |
| 3 | Platform EngineerBuilds the internal platform other engineers deploy on: clusters, CI, paved roads.8.3% · e.g. Atom Computing | 8.3% | 26 | +3.0 |
| 4 | Founding EngineerOne of a startup's first engineers, usually with equity and a wide remit.7.0% · e.g. Servicing Copilot | 7.0% | 22 | +0.0 |
| 5 | AI EngineerA software engineer who builds products on top of models rather than training them.6.4% · e.g. Starbridge | 6.4% | 20 | +2.2 |
| 6 | Product EngineerA full-stack engineer who owns product decisions too, not just tickets.6.1% · e.g. Safi | 6.1% | 19 | +0.8 |
| 7 | Product ManagerDecides what gets built and why, and gets it shipped.5.4% · e.g. Olli Health | 5.4% | 17 | +1.5 |
| 8 | Data EngineerBuilds the pipelines, warehouses and platforms that move and store data.5.4% · e.g. Hiring: Senior Data Engineer | 5.4% | 17 | +1.5 |
| 9 | 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.5.1% · e.g. PostHog | 5.1% | 16 | +4.5 |
| 10 | Machine Learning EngineerTrains, ships and maintains machine learning models in production.5.1% · e.g. Shepherd | 5.1% | 16 | -0.5 |
| 11 | Engineering ManagerManages a team of engineers: hiring, delivery and careers.4.2% · e.g. Atom Computing | 4.2% | 13 | +2.2 |
| 12 | Site Reliability EngineerKeeps production up with software: on-call, SLOs and automation; Google's term.3.8% · e.g. MongoDB | 3.8% | 12 | -0.4 |
| 13 | Security EngineerFinds and fixes weaknesses in systems, code and cloud accounts.3.8% · e.g. Chime | 3.8% | 12 | +2.4 |
| 14 | Product DesignerDesigns how a product works and looks, from research to the final screen.3.5% · e.g. Baton | 3.5% | 11 | +0.7 |
| 15 | Research EngineerWrites the code that makes research run: training runs, experiments, infrastructure.2.2% · e.g. Mechanize | 2.2% | 7 | +0.2 |
| 16 | Data ScientistUses statistics and models to answer questions with data; the "sexiest job" of 2012.1.9% · e.g. SmarterDx | 1.9% | 6 | +0.2 |
| 17 | Design EngineerHalf designer, half front-end engineer: prototypes and ships polished interfaces.1.9% · an example posting | 1.9% | 6 | +0.2 |
| 18 | Applied AI EngineerTurns frontier models into working products for specific customers or use cases.1.6% · e.g. Shepherd | 1.6% | 5 | +1.6 |
| 19 | Developer AdvocateRepresents developers to a company and the company to developers: docs, demos, talks.1.6% · e.g. Prior Labs | 1.6% | 5 | -1.8 |
| 20 | Research ScientistDesigns and runs experiments to push what models can do; usually a PhD role.1.3% · e.g. IBM Research | 1.3% | 4 | -0.4 |
| 21 | Member of Technical StaffA deliberately flat title from Bell Labs, revived by AI labs for engineers and researchers alike.1.3% · e.g. Aptura AI | 1.3% | 4 | +1.0 |
| 22 | DevOps EngineerAutomates builds, deploys and infrastructure; the title that took over from sysadmin.1.0% · e.g. Hiring: Senior Data Engineer | 1.0% | 3 | -2.4 |
| 23 | Solutions EngineerThe technical half of a sale: demos, proofs of concept and integration help.1.0% · e.g. FusionAuth | 1.0% | 3 | -2.1 |
| 24 | Technical Product ManagerA product manager for platforms, APIs and developer products.0.60% · e.g. Baton | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 25 | MLOps EngineerRuns the training, serving and monitoring infrastructure that ML teams depend on.0.60% · e.g. Prior Labs | 0.60% | 2 | +0.0 |
| 26 | Head of DataLeads a company's data team: analytics, data science and data engineering.0.60% · e.g. DuckDuckGo | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 27 | Head of AILeads the AI or ML group below the C-suite: VP, director or head.0.60% · an example posting | 0.60% | 2 | +0.0 |
| 28 | Computer Vision EngineerBuilds models and systems that read images and video, from robots to retail.0.60% · e.g. Trace Labs | 0.60% | 2 | +0.3 |
| 29 | AI Product ManagerA product manager for model-powered products, fluent in evals and model behaviour.0.30% · e.g. *Scribd | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 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 | Applied ScientistResearch methods pointed at a product problem; Amazon made the title mainstream.0.30% · e.g. Prior Labs | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 32 | 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. Trax | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 33 | GTM EngineerBuilds sales and marketing systems with data enrichment, automation and language models instead of adding headcount.0.30% · e.g. Beautiful.ai | 0.30% | 1 | -0.8 |
| 34 | LLM EngineerAn engineer focused on building with, fine-tuning or serving large language models.0.30% · e.g. Lysk | 0.30% | 1 | +0.0 |
| 35 | Agent EngineerBuilds LLM agents that plan and call tools, and the harnesses that keep them reliable.0.30% · e.g. LiveKit| | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |
| 36 | AI Deployment EngineerDeploys and tunes an AI product or agent inside a customer's stack; a close cousin of the forward deployed engineer.0.30% · e.g. Comvex | 0.30% | 1 | -0.3 |