Making Sense of AI Job Titles
September 3, 2025
Even when you live and breathe AI, the job titles can feel like a moving target. I can only imagine how mystifying they must be to everyone else.Because the field is actively evolving, the language we use keeps changing. Brand new titles appear overnight or, worse, one term means three different things at three different companies.
This is my best attempt at a “Cheat Sheet for AI Titles.” I’ll try to keep it updated as the jargon shifts, settles, or fades away. As always, shoot me a note with any additions, updates, thoughts, or feedback.
Source: Making Sense of AI Job Titles
Do the names we call professional roles matter? In an immediate sense, they often do. Developers who do more or less the same thing earn significantly more when they have the title engineer in their role.
It’s only just two years since Shawn Wang, if not invented, then certainly popularised a particular meaning for the term AI Engineer.
Here Drew Breunig tries to provide a rubric for understanding the kinds of roles that we’re starting to see emerge in the field.
