<p>Having spent the last two days at QCon, I had several chats with engineers who wanted to know what ‘AI Engineering’ as a role meant.</p>

<p>Pete Hamilton’s written about why we’ve created the role which is where I pointed most people. The tl;dr is you do different work than Product Engineering, and we’re betting on the specialisation only becoming more relevant in future.</p>

<p>Explaining this to people, their next question was “that makes sense, but why would I switch? what would this mean for me, in terms of my career?”</p>

<p>When I switched role to SRE, Norberto (my manager at the time) gave me a list of pros-and-cons around what it would mean for my career. He emphasised parts of the role that would develop certain skills, and was honest about what I’d lose moving away from normal engineering.</p>

<p>I’ve tried writing-up a similar list for anyone considering the switch to AI Engineering, hoping to return the favour! It covers:</p>

<ul>
  <li>Why AI engineering is one of the most powerful career accelerants available right now</li>
  <li>What you’ll learn from battling AI’s technical challenges</li>
  <li>That you’ll build less visible product than you might in other roles and what that means</li>
</ul>

<p>Link to the post is in 👇</p>