In today’s AI labs, the distinction between an engineer and a researcher is gradually blurring. The title does not matter as much as the work. Writing code, exploring data, building something new. At places like OpenAI, these labels are being left behind.
Elon Musk has now challenged the divide publicly. “This false nomenclature of ‘researcher’ and ‘engineer’, which is a thinly-masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system, is being deleted from xAI today. There are only engineers. ‘Researcher’ is a relic term from academia,” he wrote in a recent post on X.
He was responding to one of his own engineers, who was hiring for researchers and engineers at xAI.
Musk argued that SpaceX does more meaningful, cutting-edge research in rocketry and satellites than all academic labs on Earth combined. Yet, the company avoids using what he calls the “pretentious, low-accountability” title of a ‘researcher’.
Meanwhile, Meta is pouring billions into building superintelligence, hiring hardcore researchers, not just engineers.
While Meta sticks to more traditional research roles, OpenAI has taken a different path.
Almost everyone at the company holds the title ‘member of technical staff’. In a recent interview, former OpenAI researcher Bob McGrew addressed this.
He said that OpenAI was intentional about not creating a divide between engineers and researchers. “If you look at a classic lab like Google Brain, where many early OpenAI members came from, there was a clear separation between researchers—often PhDs—and software engineers, who handled data and implementation. That split was harmful.”
McGrew explained that the best researchers in AI today aren’t working in purely academic lab environments, they get their hands dirty writing code and working directly with data and implementations. He pointed to Alec Radford as an example who doesn’t have a PhD degree.
“What makes Alec a brilliant researcher is that he always looked closely at the data and explored its possibilities. He wrote his own data scraping code right from the start.”
Besides him, Aditya Ramesh, creator of DALL·E, also does not have a graduate degree. He has a bachelor’s from NYU and leads the Sora team as a VP of research at OpenAI.
Adithya S Kolavi of CognitiveLab told AIM that in startups, everyone ends up wearing multiple hats — researcher, full-stack engineer, cloud architect, you name it. “The title doesn’t matter much; adaptability does. We give our interns the title ‘research intern’ because it looks good on a resume, but in practice, everyone contributes across the stack,” he said.
Kolavi added that in early-stage startups the line between research and engineering often disappears. “You might be running model experiments in the morning and building the UI at night.”
Researchers Are Different
While some agree that the roles of an engineer and a researcher need to amalgamate, others fear the loss of basic inquiry and neglect in ethical concerns.
“There’s definitely a need to separate researchers and engineers in a startup. A researcher is typically working on a technology/product that is 6–12 months away from going live, while an engineer is someone who is working on deployment/development of code for an existing product,” said Mansoor Rahimat Khan, founder of Beatoven, an AI music generator.
He added that researchers are typically PhDs with deep experience in a specific field, having spent several years specialising in it, while engineers are more generalists who take these ideas to production.
Speaking about his company, Khan said they do maintain a distinction between research and engineering roles. “An R&D team is dedicated to working on some of our future products, while the engineering team ensures that our current products run smoothly.”
Andrew McDiarmid, director of podcasting and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, offered a more cautionary view on the distinction. He said researchers are responsible for examining all angles of a new technology before it reaches the market, considering its potential impact on humans, nature, and society. “Engineers typically don’t exercise the same cautions. They are tasked with designing, building, and making.”
According to McDiarmid, it’s essential for companies leading technological innovation to have both roles. “Progress without careful examination of the price of that progress is reckless,” he warned.
The Degree Debate
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s researcher Noam Brown recently said that one doesn’t need a PhD to be a great AI researcher. “Even OpenAI’s chief research officer doesn’t have a PhD.”
When asked whether a bachelor’s degree is necessary to work in a top research lab, Brown said it’s not a strict requirement. “It’s rare, but there are some great folks at top research labs without a bachelor’s,” he said. He added that many strong undergraduates either drop out or take a leave of absence to join research labs if they get an offer — something he believes is worth it.
On the other hand, Meta’s FAIR chief AI scientist believes that PhDs are essential for startup founders and maintains a clear separation between engineers and AI researchers.
Yann LeCun, in an interview with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, advised budding AI entrepreneurs in India to pursue an academic degree, such as a master’s or PhD, particularly in technical and complex fields like artificial intelligence, before building a startup. “Doing a PhD or graduate studies trains you to invent new things and ensures that your methodology prevents you from fooling yourself into thinking you’re being an innovator when you’re not,” he said.
LeCun added that while a PhD is not a strict requirement for success, it offers significant advantages for entrepreneurs. “It gives you a different perspective,” he said, adding, “In a complex, deeply technical area like AI, it’s useful to learn about what exists out there, what’s possible, and what’s not.”
In Conclusion
The gap between engineers and researchers is shrinking as working with AI involves coding, testing, and building all at once. OpenAI’s flat structure pushes against traditional academic hierarchies, embracing versatility over titles. Yet, for others, maintaining a distinction preserves rigour and process of inquiry before execution.
The post Why OpenAI Calls Everyone a ‘Member of Technical Staff’ appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
