Applied AI Learning
Recent blog posts
Applied AI Engineer: What the Role Is, What You Build and How to Get Hired
What an applied AI engineer actually does, the skills hiring teams test, and how the role compares with ML engineer and forward deployed engineer.
mathshian•31 Oct 2026•4 min readHow to Prepare for a Forward Deployed Engineer Interview at an AI Lab
A preparation plan for forward deployed engineer interviews at AI labs and AI-first companies: what rounds test, how to practise and what to build first.
mathshian•27 Oct 2026•4 min readAI Solutions Engineer: Role, Skills and How to Move Into It
What an AI solutions engineer does, the skills the role needs, and how it differs from sales engineering and forward deployed engineering.
mathshian•25 Oct 2026•3 min readCareer roadmaps
Step-by-step paths into forward deployed engineering and adjacent AI roles, with the skills, tools and projects for each stage.
Forward Deployed Engineer Roadmap 2026
- 01Programming foundationsPython, SQL, Git and the command line
- 02APIs and integrationsREST, auth, webhooks and data pipelines
- 03LLMs and retrievalPrompting, embeddings, RAG and evaluation
- 04Agents and toolingTool use, orchestration and guardrails
- 05Cloud and deploymentDocker, CI/CD, monitoring on AWS, GCP or Azure
- 06Working with customersScoping, demos, documentation and handover
AI Engineer Roadmap
Build production applications on top of foundation models.
Machine Learning Roadmap
Math, classical ML, deep learning and MLOps.
Data Science Roadmap
Statistics, analysis, modelling and communicating results.
Data Analytics Roadmap
SQL, spreadsheets, BI tools and business reporting.
Interview questions
Question banks with worked answers, grouped by role and round.
All question banks →