AI companies are banking on this job title

A once-obscure job title is taking hold across hiring boards and LinkedIn profiles: “member of technical staff.” At companies like OpenAI, the title could be applied to a senior engineer with a decade-plus of experience under their belt. Or it could refer to a cofounder or tech leader who was previously in a C-suite role. But it just as easily might describe a junior employee who is early in their career. Now “member of technical staff”—also known as MTS in some circles—seems to be growing in popularity, and not just at OpenAI. A New York Times story this week cited an analysis by Stanford University researchers Nick Bloom and Gideon Slocum Moore, which looked at the rise of this job title at major AI companies. In December 2025, 39% of Anthropic employees used that job title to describe their current role on LinkedIn, along with 31% of the workforce at OpenAI and 26% at xAI, according to the Times. Over the last year, there’s been a clear shift: The use of “member of technical staff” has ticked up by 50% across employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Microsoft AI. OpenAI and Anthropic have both framed this title as a way to collapse the distinction between researchers and engine…