AI labs are embracing the title 'member of technical staff', raising questions about pay, recognition and how employers signal seniority
A former senior vice president and someone fresh out of an internship could have something in common at an AI lab: the same job title.
At OpenAI and Anthropic, "member of technical staff" is becoming a catch-all label for people coming from very different levels of experience. They're among a growing number of AI companies using it, a practice that strips away the usual clues about rank and leaves little indication of where someone sits in the organization.
"Your title does not confer your seniority," says Caelan Wilkie-Rogers, an economic analyst at Revelio Labs in San Francisco who co-authored research into the trend.
The shift raises questions about what job titles are meant to do in the first place, from signaling career progression to rewarding employees. And while the trend is particularly pronounced at AI labs, it could offer a glimpse of how employers rethink roles as the nature of work changes.
Where the title is spreading fastest
Wilkie-Rogers said he started looking into the topic after seeing it appear again and again among people he knows on LinkedIn. Revelio's data, which draws on job postings and LinkedIn profiles, shows a steep climb in the U.S.
"The number of people we see with that title is up almost 50 percent since 2023. It's kind of been rising before that, but there's a sharp discontinuity around then and it starts to rise much more quickly," Wilkie-Rogers said.
Part of the rise comes down to hiring.
"They've both added a lot of staff, and a lot of those staff tend to be titled member of technical staff," he said, referring to OpenAI and Anthropic.
The title is most common at newer labs. Revelio's data shows 75 percent of staff at Thinking Machines Lab hold it, compared with 30 percent at OpenAI and 33 percent at Anthropic, according to Wilkie-Rogers. He put the figure at about 50 percent at Reflection, another newer lab.
Older tech firms such as Oracle, Salesforce, Sandia, AMD and AT&T use it too, but with a difference.
"Almost all of them have some kind of seniority qualifier before it. At Oracle, you'll see principal member of technical staff or senior or junior or whatever. And the AI labs really don't do that. No one has that. They're just member of technical staff," Wilkie-Rogers said.
"From our data, we can see that people are getting hired out of internships, out of entry-level positions, and then out of mid-level or even director positions," he said.
Why the labs favor a flat title
Wilkie-Rogers said he doesn't know for certain why the label has caught on, but he speculated that culture has something to do with it. The labs are concentrated in San Francisco, he said, and tend to do many things in similar ways.
"I think part of it is to promote a culture where it's like, we're all just working on this product. It's not about me. It's kind of minimizing the self so you can focus on building the machine gods or whatever," he said.
He also pointed to flexibility.
"I know that they want their researchers to do engineering and their engineers to do research," Wilkie-Rogers said. "I do think it fits, there's this kind of broader labor market narrative that jobs are changing really quickly because of AI. So what the task composition of a job is, is changing rapidly."
HR leaders expect AI to change jobs, too. Entry-level roles are set to evolve and expand in the AI era, according to a Cognizant and Pearson survey of 750 HR professionals, in which 96 percent said they expect those roles to evolve into positions that supervise or manage AI systems within five years. Wilkie-Rogers also raised talent competition as a possible factor, since a broad designation can obscure what a given person does from rival recruiters.
What it could mean for other employers
Whether the approach travels beyond the labs is an open question. Wilkie-Rogers said there are specific cultural reasons the labs adopted it so quickly, but he sees a possible path elsewhere.
"I wouldn't be surprised if, in occupations that are particularly affected by AI, we would see more emphasis on role flexibility and see that in the titles as well," he said.
On pay, Wilkie-Rogers said that, from conversations with people at Anthropic, he understands employees still have internal levels and pay bands, even though they share one title.
"I think pay is pretty structured, and that level is going to really determine what your pay range is, the pay band you sit in. But you don't necessarily know what your coworkers' level is," he said.
Explaining pay is a challenge for many employers. In Aon's 2026 Pay Transparency Pulse Survey, 43 percent named manager readiness as the largest unresolved risk, HRD America reported.
HRD America has also reported on pay bands that aren't budging even as AI skills command a premium. Lightcast's analysis of more than 1.3 billion job postings found that those listing AI skills advertised salaries 28 percent higher, or nearly $18,000 more a year than postings without them.
Wilkie-Rogers said titles are one way employers reward people, so a single broad title comes with a trade-off.
"I think companies are often thoughtful about titling for how that makes their employees feel and also for organizational reasons, so that everyone has an understanding of where people sit," he said.
Employers weighing something similar have practical decisions to make. A broad title can leave room for work that keeps changing, but it also removes a familiar signal of seniority and one of the ways companies recognize people. If a title no longer shows where someone stands, employers will need another clear way to tell people their level, pay and path to promotion.
