Elon Musk scraps 'Researcher' title at xAI, declares all staff must be 'engineers'
The shift came after xAI employee Aditya Gupta posted a job listing on X (formerly Twitter), stating that the company was hiring “researchers and engineers.”
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In a classic Elon Musk move that turned a tweet into policy, the billionaire founder of xAI has banned the use of the title “researcher” across the company — insisting that all technical staff, regardless of specialization, will now be called “engineers.”
The shift came after xAI employee Aditya Gupta posted a job listing on X (formerly Twitter), stating that the company was hiring “researchers and engineers.” Musk quickly and publicly replied, rejecting the term “researcher” as academic and outdated.
we at @xai are looking for researchers and engineers for scaling up our rl environments with user feedback and preference in the loop. apply here (or drop me a dm):https://t.co/5jwtimaFZ1
— Aditya Gupta (@ag_i_2211) July 29, 2025
“There are only engineers. Researcher is a relic term from academia,” Musk posted. “This false nomenclature… is being deleted from xAI today.”
Gupta promptly amended his original post to reflect the new directive: “correction: looking for solid engineers.”
Musk went further, drawing a comparison to SpaceX. “SpaceX does more meaningful, cutting-edge ‘research’ on the advancement of rockets and satellites than all the academic university labs on Earth combined,” he wrote, adding, “But we don’t use the pretentious, low-accountability term ‘researcher’. Engineer.”
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2025
There are only engineers.
Researcher is a relic term from academia. https://t.co/yNZSdVXGhY
The sudden move highlights Musk’s preference for a lean, execution-oriented company culture—and his skepticism of academic titles and hierarchies. However, it also reveals a disconnect: xAI’s own careers page, as of now, still uses the term “researcher” multiple times, inviting candidates with “AI research” backgrounds and dividing roles between “engineering & research.”
Conclusion: A Culture Shift by Tweet With a single post, Musk has reshaped xAI’s internal structure and branding—at least in language—underscoring his belief that doing outweighs defining. Whether the industry follows suit or pushes back remains to be seen, but at xAI, the title “researcher” is officially obsolete.
