So I started building a taxonomy to map job postings into departments and functions that is consistent across labs, making it easier for me to understand where each lab is hiring and for what. Out of curiosity, I expanded to see what's hot, etc. in technical areas too. It ended up being both job search and personal research project.
Coming up with a standard taxonomy is challenging. I'm still figuring out matching jobs to functions/departments, looking at other labs, and thinking of alt ways to organize this, eg., I see that companies associate job postings to specific teams, but I still don't have good descriptions of the scope of those teams to create crosswalks. I'm also looking at other companies.
So, sharing it here for others who may find it useful or want to comment. It'd be great to have feedback from those who have insight into how these companies organize their departments/functions, and from technical job seekers too, if this is something that helps them better understand job opportunities. If people find it useful, it could become something I maintain over the longer term (particularly if I don't end up finding a job at one of these labs).
arspesk•15m ago
One bit I’d love to see if you keep maintaining it: a layer for ambiguity / cross-functional weirdness. A lot of postings look like engineering, research, product, policy, and GTM all got blended into one JD. That can be a great role, but it is also where candidates waste a lot of time because the title does not match the actual day-to-day.
Even a simple “function confidence” or “role blend” field could help: e.g. 70% infra eng / 20% research support / 10% product ops.
Nice project — especially because the taxonomy problem is harder than it looks from the outside.