My official title in CMU is Senior Research Programmer . It is equivalent to a PhD student in the research track.
I feel embarassed when people call me "Professor Chan" or "Doctor Chan" because I just don't have patience to take a PhD. I also tried my best to explain to everyone who thought that I was a doctor or professor. That is usually a painful business.
In the Sphinx project, my current role is a mix between maintainer, developer, coordinator and project manager. (I also do testing and forum mediation.) I don't know which title(s) are better.
It was also said that I am in charge of the project and I was also being Mastermind of Sphinx . Of course, these make me very embarrassed. (But thanks, I am very glad to hear that.)
Recently, Evandro Gouvea thought of a brilliant idea about this title problem, he called me The Grand Janitor of Sphinx . Oddly, I think this might be the best name for me and I like it. So if you have read this page, please kindly use this name to address me using that title. ;-)
CMU Sphinx's development are essentially democratic. Everyone has their say to check in something. They also has their say to critize other people's check in. This is independent of the rank, the experience of the person.
So why I am the Grand Janitor then?
If you treat the process of development as a production process. Then Sphinx has to go through the following stage in development:
Development -> Testing -> Distribution
The distribution is a 7-8 steps process that require expertise to finish. In these days, it becomes most of business. So, (unfortunately) I am in the role of kicking other people to make the release to be there. This process requires a lot of clean up of the code. That sort of explain the "Janitor" part.
The "Grand" part, hmm I don't know, send a mail to Dr. Evandro Gouvea at egouvea at dot cmu dot edu. He might give you the official explanation.