Making Sense of AI Job Titles - A Cheat Sheet for Job Titles in the AI Ecosystem
The AI job market is flooded with confusing and overlapping titles, and this article offers a “decoder ring” to make sense of them. Many titles are created by combining a few recurring modifiers (like Applied or Forward Deployed), domains (AI, ML, or Gen AI), and suffixes (Engineer, Scientist, Researcher). The distinctions matter: Applied AI Engineers build products using AI models, Forward Deployed Engineers work directly with customers to implement solutions, and “Researcher” or “Scientist” titles often blur between academic-style exploration and product-driven work. The piece also notes that “Generative AI” is becoming less useful as a term as LLMs are used for more than text or image creation, and that “AI Engineer” is emerging as a broad umbrella for those applying AI in real-world systems. Overall, the guide helps professionals and job seekers navigate the shifting jargon and better understand what these evolving roles really mean. Read the full article.