Making Sense of Tech Titles – An Incomplete List of Definitions

When you immerse yourself in the tech world, keeping track of everyone’s title and responsibilities can seem overwhelming. “They do what? What does that mean? That exists? ” are all questions you begin asking yourself. To ease your mind, here are some definitions of an ever growing list of tech titles:

Programming

Developer: These are the people responsible for designing, coding and modifying websites, from layout to function and according to a client’s specifications. They also strive to create visually appealing sites that feature user-friendly design with clear navigation. Titles can range from Junior, Mid, and Senior-level based on experience.

Front-End Developer: They build a website or application using HTML, CSS and Javascript that the user can see and interact with.

Back-End Developer: They build and maintain the technology that powers the servers and database, this person typically handles integrations with other services as well.

Full Stack Developer: They’re knowledgeable in both front-end and back-end development. The ideal Full Stack  developer has a “T” shaped skillset, this means a wide range of moderate skill in different technologies but one deep channel of knowledge as well.

Development Operations (DevOps): They aim to establish a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software, can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably.

Data Science

Data Scientist: These people help turn the torrent of a company’s data into useful information, knowledge, and insights. Ideally these insights will be used to make better decisions and come up with more informed strategies.

Data Engineer: They design, build,and manage massive sets of data. Companies from Netflix to your local gas station are producing tons of potential data points every second, and a data Engineer’s job is to design a system that collects those data points into useable data sets.

Data Analyst: These people collect, organize, and interpret different sets of data. Once the data has been collected by the engineer, the analyst will clean and organize the data before they can run any assertions on it.

Venture

Angel Investor: They provide financial backing, either in the form of a one-time seed round or ongoing support, for startups and entrepreneurs.

Partner: An individual that a VC firm brings in to help with investments and management, but is not a permanent member of the partnership.

Limited Partner (or LP): These people are the money. Limited Partners are typically – not not always –  corporations, endowments, foundations, or state pension plans.

Associate: Responsible for the deal sourcing for partners, screening, support, analysis and more within the VC firm.

Marketing

Growth Hacker: Uses creative, analytical, and social metrics to increase exposure of the organization and their products.

Technical Marketing Specialist: Combines technical and marketing knowledge to fulfill the company’s sales objectives and goals. They also providing technical support and advice in order to develop new products, analyze market trends, expectations, and design new sales and promotion techniques.

Brand Marketing Manager: Takes on marketing responsibilities to plan, develop and execute marketing programs that increase brand identity and brand awareness of a company or product.

Evangelist: Also known as a Community Advocate or Developer Advocate. This position is typical in developer-facing organizations like Galvanize, dev shops, or companies that want to encourage more developers to use their API.  An evangelist is a marketing person with the technical chops to help developers understand and use a technical product.

What did we miss? What else do you want to see in this list? Comment below with your suggestions!

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