Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#1

Post by seattle_spring » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

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?

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#2

Post by root-parent » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

Somebody soon to lose their job?

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#3

Post by gavinray » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

I wrote an entire blogpost about this ridiculous phenomenon:

https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/absurdity-of-ai-engineer-t...

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#4

Post by agup792 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

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!

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#5

Post by kys11 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

root-parent wrote: post #2

Somebody soon to lose their job?

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#6

Post by simonw » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

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.)

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#7

Post by simonw » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #3

I wrote an entire blogpost about this ridiculous phenomenon: https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/absurdity-of-ai-engineer-t...

I think "They wanted an engineer to build a chatbox that called ChatGPT with company documents as prompt context" fits the term "AI Engineer", personally - see https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer which uses it for "applied" AI.

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#8

Post by seattle_spring » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #6

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 - whic…

Considering 99% of engineers are using AI tools, that would mean all engineers are now "Agentic Engineers." Are we really no longer putting any value on someone who has expertise in understanding the code it produces?

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#9

Post by simonw » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #8

simonw wrote: post #6

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 - whic…

Considering 99% of engineers are using AI tools, that would mean all engineers are now "Agentic Engineers." Are we really no longer putting any value on someone who has expertise in understanding the code it produces?

Right, that's why I don't think that class particularly needs a name. It's trending towards "software engineers" now.

We need a name for engineers who don't use coding agents.

Re: Ask HN: What Is an "AI Engineer"?

#10

Post by seattle_spring » Thu, May 28, 2026, 8:03 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #7

gavinray wrote: post #3

I wrote an entire blogpost about this ridiculous phenomenon: https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/absurdity-of-ai-engineer-t...

I think "They wanted an engineer to build a chatbox that called ChatGPT with company documents as prompt context" fits the term "AI Engineer", personally - see https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer which uses it for "applied" AI.

Why would a self-described "AI Engineer" be any more capable of building that sort of functionality over any other backend engineer, especially one who is familiar with agent-assisted development?