Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?
I'm seeing an enormous contingency of my LinkedIn connections change their titles to "AI Engineer." I know for a fact that they're not working on any models or even AI workflows, they're just building apps and backends using AI tools like Claude. Is that what "AI Engineer" means nowadays? Is that what companies are looking for when they open recs for "AI Engineer"? Should I be marketing myself as an "AI Engineer" just because I'm very efficient using modern AI tooling to build good non-AI software?
Discussion Highlights (10 comments)
root-parent
Somebody soon to lose their job?
gavinray
I wrote an entire blogpost about this ridiculous phenomenon: https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/absurdity-of-ai-engineer-t...
agup792
The definition is definitely changing.. or the way people are using it. AI PM used to mean something very different than what it does now as well!
simonw
I like these definitions: - AI Engineer: an engineer who builds software that makes use of LLMs and other AI models, and maybe trains models (but not required) - Agentic Engineer: an engineer who makes use of AI tools like coding agents when writing software. AI Engineer was quite well established in the last few years to that first meaning, mainly thanks to swyx in 2023: https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer - which then lead to the popular AI Engineer Summit / World's Fair series of events https://www.ai.engineer/ But this year coding agents have become much more widely spread (the category didn't exist when AI Engineer was coined in 2023), so there's a possibility the term is being redefined to describe people who use those. I think that's a bad redefinition, personally. ("Agentic Engineer" is much less widely used, there may be other names for that category of engineer that I've not encountered yet.)
taintlord223
Hi, I'm a AI Engineer at Poopshit dot com. I graduated from Dickmuth with honors.
janalsncm
Probably the only correct answer is to look at the job description under the title. Job titles in software engineering have always been flexible. What matters is what they actually want you to do. Even better is if you can figure out what problem they’re trying to solve because there can be better ways. As for whether you should market yourself that way, I personally think your actual experience matters way more because most companies also haven’t hired many “AI engineers” before.
ravenstine
It doesn't mean anything. The very title "engineer" is a massive scam to begin with, especially in places like the United States where it's neither a protective title or credentialed. Any asshole can call themselves an engineer and nobody bats an eye at the absurdity. When employers invent these titles like "AI engineer", they're looking for tech geeks who check off the keywords du jour. It's no different from the now defunct "blockchain engineer" of yesteryear. It's about broadcasting a particular skillset without really having anything to do with actual engineering. I guarantee you that the role of an AI engineer at one company will look very different in another – because it's not real.
osigurdson
Here are a few job descriptions for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48099785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47978246
dundunUp
AI Engineer It doesn't mean anything
mikewarot
Engineering involves assuming liability. I can't see how anyone can rationally assume liability for the output of any current LLM or anything likely to emerge in the near future.