A transfer market for engineers: what to track before the headline
Six signals that help explain an AI engineer move: sources, dates, career context, role, team and compensation evidence.
1. Start with the original announcement
A move becomes useful information when you can inspect its source. Prefer a person's own announcement or a company statement. A reported move can still belong in a tracker, but the page should say that it is reported and link to the report. Transfer keeps curated announcements separate from movements inferred from career histories.
2. Separate announcement date from start date
A post published today may describe a role that began earlier. A LinkedIn career entry may list only a month. Those dates answer different questions. Use announcement dates to follow the news and employment dates to study career transitions. Do not silently substitute one for the other.
3. Read the full career path
The last employer is only one part of a career. A researcher might have worked at the same lab twice, taken a break, or founded a company in between. Keep those chapters visible. The people directory links each profile to its documented history so returning employees are easier to recognize.
4. Look at the work, not only the title
Research, engineering, product, sales and GTM describe different contributions. A title is a clue, not a complete skills assessment. Job-title categories can overlap; a leader may also conduct research. Missing public evidence should remain unknown rather than become a low-performance score.
5. Count observed moves carefully
A thick connection between two labs reflects records in the collected dataset. It does not prove the destination hired that many people in total or that the origin lost them all in one period. Collection scope, dates and gaps in the source profiles affect every count.
6. Keep money claims attached to their evidence
A multi-year compensation package, a signing bonus and a company licensing transaction are different things. Avoid dividing a company deal by the number of engineers and calling the result their salary. Transfer's scenarios are editable assumptions; individual compensation remains undisclosed unless it is sourced.