The Engineering Roles That Will Matter In The AI Era By Thine AI
Boris Cherny, who built Claude Code, recently shared an idea that's hard to shake.
As engineering, product, design, and data science blur together, he found himself thinking less about job titles and more about what people actually do. On his team, five archetypes emerged:
Prototyper — generates new ideas and experiments.
Builder — turns prototypes into production systems.
Sweeper — simplifies, refactors, and makes systems fast.
Grower — pushes products toward product-market fit.
Maintainer — keeps mature systems reliable, secure, and scalable.
The interesting part isn't the categories themselves. It's that they aren't tied to roles. Some designers are Prototypers. Some engineers are Maintainers. Great teams are a mix of these archetypes, and that mix changes as the company evolves.
The real question is sharper: which engineering roles survive the next five years, and how do you position yourself, or your company, today?
The shift is already happening inside teams, faster than the public debate admits. Coding agents changed how code gets written. Autonomous testing, AI review, and product and design agents are now changing who builds the product at all. When the work changes, the org chart changes with it, along with the skills that get rewarded and the seniority that holds its value.
This is a working conversation between three practicing CTOs, each wiring AI into their engineering org from a different angle. They will talk about what is genuinely changing inside their teams: the roles they are hiring for, the ones they quietly stopped hiring for, and where this all lands.
Three talks anchor the night.
This is for the people living it: engineers, founders, EMs, PMs, designers, and the leaders deciding how to staff what comes next. If you build or hire, you leave with a sharper read on where the work is going and a real answer to which archetype you are betting your team, or your own career, on.
We are keeping the room small on purpose. Candor does not survive a crowd. If you are serious about this, RSVP now and grab a seat while they last. Speaker names announced shortly.
P.S. Know someone rethinking their career, or a leader rebuilding their team around AI? Forward this. The best conversation in the room is often the person you brought.
Co-hosted by:
Clera is an AI recruiting agent that helps startups hire. Tell Clera who you're looking for and get exceptional candidates from a network of vetted engineers, PMs, and operators - no sifting through applications, just warm intros.