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SKILL_PATH // SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Ship AI features. No dedicated AI team needed.

The engineer who goes from demo to production.

Most companies don't have an "AI team." They have engineers who need to add LLM capabilities to existing products. RAG for the help center. An agent handling support tickets. Structured extraction from uploads. The engineer who can ship an AI feature end-to-end is the one getting the staff promotion.

WHERE THIS ROLE EXISTS
Amazon
SDE building AI into products
ServiceNow
Platform engineer integrating LLMs
Any company
The engineer who adds the AI feature
YOUR PRIORITY SKILLS

Your target skill profile — what to learn and how deep to go.

1

Elite Prompting

Expert

System prompt architecture is day-one work for every AI feature

2

Harness Design

Expert

The scaffolding that turns a demo into production code

3

RAG System Design

Proficient

The most common production pattern — in every enterprise job posting

4

Structured Output

Proficient

Tool use, function calling, JSON schema — LLM meets application code

5

Eval Frameworks

Proficient

Unit tests for LLMs — every feature you ship needs an eval suite

60-DAY MILESTONE

Ship an AI-powered feature to production with an eval suite that runs in CI.

2-YEAR DESTINATION

Senior / Staff AI Engineer

$160–420K

"Engineers who can ship AI features end-to-end without a dedicated AI team get the staff promotion."

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