Do I ask to have my job title updated as soon as possible?

Repeat after me, my title does not matter.

The real question is: you are "doing the work of a mid-level developer", are you being paid the salary of a mid-level developer?

If you are, it doesn't matter what they call you. I'd rather be called a junior engineer and be paid a senior engineer's salary, than be called a senior engineer but be paid a junior engineer's salary.

Unless the title includes a pay raise as part of getting that title, the title isn't worth anything.

Job Title (Industry Job Title)

I once held a job where the job title was: Key Holder. Not a very useful title when it came to writing up a resume so I put the following on the resume: Key Holder (Shift Manager).

If your employer does not use a job title system that is mapping to industry standard titles you can do something similar: Junior Software Engineer (Software Engineer II). Prospective employers will be curious what your company calls a Software Engineer I, which if that comes up during the interview you can explain that your current company uses less increments than industry standards resulting in less precise job titles.

Make sure listed responsibilities match

In the section describing what you have done, make sure you focus on the type of responsibilities that match with the industry job title you claim you were doing. For example in my Key Holder case, I made sure to mention I was responsible for managing the store for the entire shift, responsible for counting the till at the end of the shift, responsible for the state of the store at the end of the shift, and had limited decision making authority.

Wouldn’t it be harder to get for both a raise and a title change at the same time? It's asking two things instead of one.

It depends. How does your company process raises and title changes? Consider the following process:

1. You ask your manager.
2. Your manager agrees and asks HR.
3. The HR rep is OK with it, and asks their manager.
4. Their manager says yes and asks the rep to ask your department head.
5. Your department head says it's OK.
6. The next step is to get sign off from the CEO.

Note that that involves five people other than you. It's not a complicated question. If you ask for both together, they can say

1. Yes to both.
2. Yes to title; no to raise.
3. No to title; yes to raise.
4. No to both.

If the raise is not in budget, they may give you the title to just give you something. If they're giving you a raise, it's just as easy to give you the title. This makes it relatively easy to get the title when asking for a raise.

Now think about what happens if you need the same process to give you just the title. If any of those five people feel the same way as Questor's answer about it, they can decide that you're wasting their time and refuse the title change.

You're only asking for one thing that doesn't seem that important. You can't tell most of them why you're asking for the title change, as it's a reason that is undesirable to the company. They want to give you a title change or raise to make you happy so that you stay at the company. If it's going to make it easier for you to leave, that's bad for the company. As far as they know, you're just being silly about it.

Asking for two things means that they may give you the less consequential thing just because you asked for it. If you ask them separately, they may not give you the less consequential thing because it takes them about as long to review just the title change as both at once.

Another issue is that if you ask during the regular period when they review performance and hand out raises and title changes, they're processing a bunch of them at once. For most of these people, they don't normally have to be aware of you. If you ask separately, they're processing a single change, which makes it seem more impactful. Why are you special that you're getting a title change that you apparently didn't deserve during performance reviews?

They may also balance these changes. Perhaps they want to promote (e.g.) 20% of their employees each year. If you ask while they're doing that, you can be one of the 20%. If you do it separately, they already promoted their 20% this year. It's a pain to track that you received a title change early. They may refuse simply for that.

They're more likely to view a request for a title change and a raise as a single thing. Junior going to mid-level, getting a raise to go with the new position, sounds like one change. Asking for the title change separately means that you're getting two things this year. The raise that you already got plus the title change that should have gone with the raise.

All that said, if you ask now, your manager may be able to present it as something that the company missed doing during performance reviews but should have done. You might get it. If you're supposed to get a merit-based raise next year, you might get it more easily then. I don't know. Your manager probably knows better than either of us.

Titles can have an internal company meaning.

Where I work a promotion, change in title whatever you wanna call it (junior -> engineer -> lead etc...) also includes a significant pay raise.

Is the title meaningful? no. Do responsibilities change with a promotion? Somewhat? but you are already doing a meaningful percentage of the bigger hat work in order to get a bigger hat promotion... So not really

Is there a pay raise associated with a title change? that has meaning.

Its possible that your current employer includes a pay raise that goes hand in hand with internal promotions... As such they give a promotion and a pay raise... Or jsut a apay raise.

I would recommend asking your manager for more information.

In my experience, you can get small pay increases without a title change, which tend to come with more significant pay increases. I've also seen companies where a new title doesn't necessarily come with a pay increase. When it comes to increasing the title, some companies expect you to demonstrate the skills and competencies required for the new title before granting it. Sometimes, companies have a policy where you can only get one increase per year, at least under normal situations, so an incremental pay increase would prevent a title change and perhaps a larger pay increase that comes with that title. Understanding how your company views pay increases and title increases is key.

However, I disagree with Questor's answer. Having an accurate title could, in some situations, be important. Although different companies have different role names and titles with their own meaning, accuracy can be important if a company discloses your title during reference checks or employment verification. However, not all companies disclose this information. It could have some meaning to a person checking on your past employment.