Job titles exist in the context of the business and don't mean a lot outside that context, and putting stock into it is not worthwhile. I have worked at busine

Job titles exist in the context of the business and don't mean a lot outside that context, and putting stock into it is not worthwhile. I have worked at businesses where "senior engineer" was equivalent to a "staff engineer" and we had no juniors, so "engineer" was equivalent to being an senior anywhere else. I've also worked places where "VP of engineering" was basically a PM. Title inflation is a thing and big tech has kind of figured it out, somewhat with their own internal rankings that match salary bands and responsibilities. What I've also seen is demand on HR or executives to reclassify roles as "senior" or "staff" from unknown companies because employees felt just being called "engineer" was harming their resumes and future prospects because it didn't reflect their work. Point being, we put too much stock in these things. Ask people what they've done or what their role is and weight it accordingly. If you don't have enough knowledge about the hierarchy of roles in a business than you can't use the title as an indicator into what their role is, you actually have to talk to them about it.