Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

If you're already a software engineer, you're probably about 80% of the way to becoming an AI engineer and don't even know it. Here's what I mean: a friend of mine works as an AI engineer at a big startup and makes great money, and when I asked what his job actually looks like day to day, he said it's about 20% AI and 80% normal software engineering, building the systems around AI models so they actually work in production.

So the part everyone's scared of, the AI stuff, is the small part. The bigger, harder part is what you already do every day as a software engineer. Becoming an AI engineer isn't a career restart back to zero, it's adding one layer on top of the skills you already have.

#techwithtim #aiengineer #softwareengineering #programming