GLOSSARY

Terms and definitions used in the Tech Hiring Report 2022

Technology jobs come with a certain amount of specialized terms. Here’s a brief glossary of those terms as well as the classifications we used in this report.

Applicant sources

Career Page: Applicants attributed to a Company’s Career Site.

Internal: These are applicants who applied through the company’s Internal Job Board.

LinkedIn Job Posts, Indeed Job Posts, and Other Organic Sources: Applicants who applied for a job through one of these Job Boards. This excludes applicants that were Prospected/Sourced via LinkedIn/Indeed.

Non-Organic: Depending on the context, these are all of the Non-organic Sources not mentioned in a list. If Referrals are not among the categorizations, they are included here.

Other: These include events and sources that could not be resolved. Some of the sources not resolved were frequently ‘mail drops’ or Application Tracking Data Migrations.

Referrals: These are applicants referred to the position by an employee of the company.

Sourcing: These are applicants Prospected by an (internal) Recruiter, an (external) Agency, or a Sourcing Platform (e.g., Vettery). The vast majority of these applicants are prospects from Internal Recruiters.

Big tech

We use Big Tech as a category to distinguish between the largest technology-focused companies in the United States and other tech companies. It specifically excludes companies with large tech teams where there are significant operations requirements (e.g., On-demand companies like Uber and Lyft or Marketplaces like Etsy).

New Big Tech: This includes companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Nvidia, and Twitter.

FAANG: (Meta [Facebook], Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet [Google])

FANG: (Meta [Facebook], Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet [Google])

Traditional Big Tech: This includes more established tech companies like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Oracle, and Dell.

Non-big Tech / Other Companies: All the companies that don’t fit into the previously defined categories.

Certifications

AWS: Amazon Web Services. This certification reflects the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.

Azure Cloud Certification: This includes multiple Microsoft Azure Expert-Level Certifications. We included them all in an effort to be comprehensive.

CISM: Certified Information Security Manager. This is an InfoSec certification offered by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association.

CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional. This is an InfoSec certification offered by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2).

Google Cloud Certification: Offered by Google, this is formally known as the Google Cloud Certified Professional certification.

PMP: Project Management Professional. This certification is offered by the Project Management Institute.

Six Sigma: Often referred to as “Lean Six Sigma,” this is a certification that has multiple levels (akin to belts in karate) and is offered by multiple bodies. It is a certification used for Project Management, Quality Assurance, and Quality Control jobs.

Company types

Fortune 500: We use Fortune 500 to denote some of the largest U.S.-based companies based on revenue. The list includes Publicly Held companies, along with Privately Held companies for which revenues are publicly available. Examples include Walmart, Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, Bank of America, and Target.

Others: This captures a range of different Private company types, including but not limited to Family Owned businesses, companies funded by Private Equity, and Partnerships (e.g., consulting companies and law firms).

Private: Companies that not are not publicly listed.

Public: Companies that have been publicly listed but that are not large enough to be in the Fortune 500. Examples of companies that are Public include Twitter, Zoom, and JetBlue Airlines.

Startup: These are Privately Held companies that have raised a series of (often venture) funding. They are typically at an early stage (and consequently of smaller size) but rapidly growing.

Unicorn: These are Privately Held companies that have reached a $1 billion evaluation. Examples of Unicorns include GitLab, DataRobot, Stripe, SpaceX, Instacart, and Databricks.

Job seniority

Entry-level: These job descriptions represent traditional Entry-level and fresh Graduate jobs requiring less than 1 year of experience.

Junior: These job descriptions represent recent Graduate and Individual Contributor jobs typically requiring fewer than 4 years of experience.

Mid-level: These job descriptions represent Mid-career jobs typically requiring between 4 and 8 years of experience. These may or may not have managerial responsibilities.

Senior: These job descriptions represent Senior jobs, typically requiring more than 8 years of experience or include significant management and leadership responsibilities (i.e., jobs with leadership titles such as Director or Vice President).

Undefined Seniority: These are job descriptions with requirements spanning multiple seniority classifications or requirements that are ambiguous.

Job type

Backend: These are jobs with primary responsibilities of implementing backend systems.

Data: These are jobs with primary responsibilities in Data Science, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence Engineering, and Machine-learning Engineering.

Frontend: These are jobs with primary responsibilities of implementing frontend frameworks. These often require experience with modern Javascript web framework or other web technologies (e.g., CSS, HTML) but do not include Mobile Engineering jobs.

Fullstack: These are jobs with primary responsibilities of implementing both frontend and backend systems.

Hardware: These are jobs that have a primary responsibility in Hardware Engineering, including Integrated Circuit Design and Engineering as well as PCB/FPGA (printed circuit board, Field Programmable Gate Array) Design.

InfoSec: These are jobs responsible for security of software systems. Some common synonyms include Cybersecurity, Information Technology (IT) Security, and Information Security.

IT Support: These information technology jobs are Technical Support Jobs, including jobs at help desks or IT desks.

Infrastructure: These are jobs with primary responsibilities in Tech Infrastructure, including DevOps Engineering and Site-Reliability Engineering.

Mobile Engineering: These include jobs where the focus is on developing frontends that run on Mobile or tablet devices (either natively or in a browser).

Product Management: Jobs where the primary responsibility is to manage or lead product development. These do not include Product Owners. 

Project Management: Jobs where the primary responsibility is to manage or lead a technical project.

Quality Assurance: These are jobs that are responsible for software testing (i.e., QA), including implementing automation of different testing functions.

UI/UX Design: These include jobs involved in User Interface Design and User Experience Research. This excludes Frontend Developers (e.g., UI Developers or Application Developers).

Remote

Historically Remote Companies: These are companies that advertised remote jobs in 2019.

Remote Collaboration: This is often phrased in the responsibilities or requirements section of a job post using language such as: ‘Being able to or having experience collaborating with remote colleagues/distributed teams.’

Remote Jobs: These are jobs described as remote in the job description, in the location, or the job title. We filtered out jobs like ‘Remote Systems Engineer,’ which would focus on network connectivity (remote systems). We also excluded jobs that were temporarily remote.

Remote Management: This is frequently phrased as a requirement for experience managing remote/distributed teams.

Tech Hiring Report
2022

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