AI companies adopt "Member of Technical Staff" job title
Major AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic are increasingly using the title "Member of Technical Staff." This shift aims to equalize researchers and engineers, echoing historical practices.
A once-obscure job title, "Member of Technical Staff" (MTS), is rapidly gaining traction across hiring boards and LinkedIn profiles within the artificial intelligence sector. Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are prominently featuring this designation.
The MTS title encompasses a broad range of employees, from seasoned engineers with over a decade of experience to junior staff early in their careers, and even co-founders or technical leaders. An analysis cited by The New York Times revealed that in December 2023, 39% of Anthropic employees used the title on LinkedIn, along with 31% at OpenAI and 26% at xAI. The use of "Member of Technical Staff" has seen a 50% increase over the past year among employees at OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Microsoft AI.
OpenAI and Anthropic have framed the adoption of this title as a strategy to collapse the distinction between researchers and engineers, placing them on equal footing rather than elevating PhD-holding researchers as in the past. The term also serves as a deliberate callback to a widely used title at the historic Bell Labs research center.
The trend extends beyond leading AI labs, with some companies incorporating the terminology into their job listings, potentially to project a specific image or signal the type of talent they seek. According to Elizabeth Eley, an assistant professor at McGill University, the title signals to prospective employees that they are joining a team engaged in innovative technical work, bypassing the need for highly specific job titles.