AI Firms Embrace 'Member of Technical Staff' as a Catch-All Title
Generic job titles are surging at leading AI companies. Use of 'member of the technical staff' rose 50% in a year.
A growing number of artificial intelligence companies are abandoning traditional job titles in favor of a single, deliberately vague designation: "member of the technical staff." An analysis found that use of the generic label rose by 50 percent in the past year among employees at prominent AI firms including Anthropic and OpenAI.
The trend signals a broader cultural shift inside the AI industry, where flat organizational structures and cross-functional roles have made conventional titles like "software engineer" or "research scientist" feel increasingly inadequate or limiting. By adopting a uniform designation, companies may also be signaling an egalitarian ethos — or, critics might argue, obscuring meaningful distinctions in seniority and responsibility.
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Anthropically and OpenAI are among the most high-profile adopters of the practice, reflecting the outsized influence these labs wield over workplace norms across the broader technology sector. As the AI industry matures and competition for top talent intensifies, title conventions that took root in Silicon Valley decades ago are being reconsidered at a rapid pace.
Whether the shift proves lasting or fades as organizations scale and bureaucratic demands grow remains an open question. Startups have historically experimented with flat hierarchies only to reintroduce structured titles as headcounts expand and reporting lines become more complex.
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