The most prestigious job in AI has no description

By Christine Ji

 Everyone from Anthropic to tiny startups is hiring for the 'member of technical staff' - but does anyone know what it means? 

 The "member of technical staff" position originated at Bell Labs to promote collaboration between researchers and engineers. 

 Over the past several months, tech-company leaders have warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out many coding and software engineering jobs. They've even pinned layoffs on AI's disruption of their businesses. 

 But there's evidence that tech talent, at least at the highest levels, is still in demand. 

 Recently, companies ranging from top AI labs to software giants to scrappy startups have been hiring for an enigmatic position: "member of technical staff," or MTS. As tech giants race to win the battle for AI dominance, they're looking to attract versatile personnel who can do whatever is necessary to advance the frontier of computer science. And a position with few formal responsibilities that technical heavyweights can define themselves may be attractive to the field's top talent. 

 The MTS role is gaining popularity on sites like LinkedIn. It's "an emerging job, with the most growth observed in the way workers are updating their titles once hired," Mar Carpanelli, LinkedIn's head of AI and skills research, told MarketWatch. Since the beginning of the year, there's been a 14.5% increase in the number of professionals on the platform with this specific title, Carpanelli said. 

 "What's likely happening is that companies are transparent in their job postings - maybe they are looking for a nimble data scientist or an engineer - but once the hired is made, their title is converted to 'member of technical staff,'" Carpanelli added. 

 Anthropic, in particular, has been making high-profile hires, often snatching talent directly from the application-software companies that it's disrupting. In March, former Workday (WDAY) Chief Technology Officer Peter Bailis - a former Stanford professor and founder of Sisu Data, a data-analytics company - stepped down from his executive post at the company to join Anthropic as an MTS focusing on reinforcement learning. 

 An Anthropic spokesperson said that Bailis specializes in training the company's AI model Claude, rather than developing HR software in his former role. Workday declined to comment. 

 The role's ambiguity, offering no hint of seniority or rank, is by design. The MTS traces its roots back a century to Bell Labs, the iconic research organization that developed technologies such as the transistor, the laser and various programming languages. There, the MTS role functioned more like a scientific fellowship than a corporate position. 

 In corporate hierarchies, researchers have historically been deemed a "higher class of citizens," Michelle Li, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told MarketWatch. "By being called 'member of technical staff,' there can be more fluidity of engineers doing more research work, researchers writing more code, or people going in between. 

 "Bell Labs was known for its research specialty and developing cutting-edge technology," Li added. "I think the big [AI] labs like OpenAI [and] Anthropic are trying to bring that back." 

 Read: Senior AI staffers keep quitting - and are issuing warnings about what's going on at their companies 

 A software engineer with status 

 According to Yoni Rechtman, a partner at venture-capital firm Slow Ventures, the primary purpose of the MTS title today is not to signal a focus on research, but rather confer status on someone who is working as an individual contributor.  Typically, employees at the top of a corporate hierarchy are managers - but members of technical staff don't manage other people, focusing instead on technical output. 

 "They're working in more of a traditional software-engineering capacity," Rechtman said. 

 As traditional software business models come under scrutiny in the age of AI, it makes sense why high-level employees at software companies would leave for an MTS role at an AI giant, Rechtman said. Last month, Anthropic rolled out "managed agents" with the ability to complete complex, multistep tasks - adding more fuel to the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative, or the notion that software companies will be doomed by AI. Rechtman believes that valuations of software businesses will "fundamentally rerate down" in the AI era. 

 For many, the move from legacy software to AI is an "easy choice," Rechtman noted. "You get to go back to your roots doing the most fun thing you've ever done ... when the alternative is working at a business that, best case, you think is structurally flawed - [and] worst case, might disappear overnight." 

 Read: Workday's stock dives as earnings reveal the cost of competing in AI 

 In the present-day AI boom, OpenAI is generally credited with popularizing the MTS, Jayden Clark, the Silicon Valley culture commentator behind the viral X account @creatine_cycle, told MarketWatch. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment. 

 As the MTS gains traction, the role's meaning has expanded. While the colloquial understanding of an MTS is an AI researcher at a lab, it's increasingly become a "catch-all" label at the intersection of AI and engineering, according to Clark. The title "definitely sounds cooler than staff engineer," he said. 

 The role has become so ubiquitous that Clark also hosts a podcast about San Francisco technology culture which he titled "Members of Technical Staff." 

 "I've seen members of technical staff at seed-stage startups," Clark said. "The joke is that everybody's called a 'member of technical staff' now, so why not call the culture podcast 'Members of Technical Staff,' right?" 

 When OpenAI introduced the role, the company was novel at the time for being a research lab that also made products. "They branded software engineers to be fancier and called them members of technical staff," Rechtman said. 

 Now, other tech companies are looking to borrow some of that prestige. 

 "Companies that want to ride on the good vibes and memetic potential" of being a research lab "will just call software engineers 'member of technical staff,'" Rechtman said, adding: "I don't actually think their jobs are different." 

 See more: Palantir pioneered the hottest job in tech. Its legions of copycats may not succeed. 

 -Christine Ji 

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05-09-26 0830ET

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