AI labs embrace 'member of technical staff' as catch-all job title

A job title once associated with Bell Labs, "member of technical staff" or MTS, is spreading across AI companies. Research by Stanford's Nick Bloom and Gideon Slocum Moore found that by December 2025, 39% of Anthropic employees used the title on LinkedIn, along with 31% at OpenAI and 26% at xAI, with usage up 50% over the past year across those firms plus Microsoft AI.

The title can apply to anyone from a decade-long veteran engineer to a cofounder or a junior hire, deliberately blurring old hierarchies between researchers and engineers. OpenAI and Anthropic reportedly use it to put technical staff on equal footing rather than privileging PhD-holding researchers as labs once did.

Organizational behavior experts say the title's vagueness is itself the point, signaling flexibility and a flat structure that may appeal to talent, while also spreading to smaller AI companies in job listings as a way to project prestige.