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Comment by KevinNinja | Hacker News Reader

How difficult is it to lend AI engineer/Data engineer (fresh grad) position for someone without masters/Ph.D? What do you recommend to person like this?

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While I disagree with stuxnet79 about needing an advanced degree, you'll likely not find much without some kind of experience. In lieu an MS or PhD, you may want to start in entry-level development at a shop that also has some machine learning, big data analysis group and work your way in their over the course of a few years. After a few years you may be in a better position, experience-wise, than many M.S. grads i've seen.

Goodluck

To add some evidence - I co-chair PyDataLondon (3,000 members, UK's largest Python u/g, UK's most active data science group). I survey our members, our monthly attending group are 40% PhD, 40% MSc, 20% other, few have 5-10 yrs industry experience, the majority have 2-4 years. I'd argue that you need at least a relevant MSc + a couple of years experience to begin to talk of being a data scientist/AI engineer. Coming through data engineering in support of data science is a great route to get practical experience where there's a lot of job demand, at least in London.

Thanks for input. I have a BS in CS. I took couple of AI/ML centric courses in my undergrad. I worked on couple of ML centric open source projects, one of them featured on the front page of HN. And I've good stats on kaggle also. I'm applying for a job in top ML firm. I'm fresh grad. Should I apply for Software engineer or research engineer/Data scientist? Is my experience enough for research engineer/Data scientist?

Thanks!, I have a BS in CS. I took couple of AI/ML centric courses in my undergrad. I worked on couple of ML centric open source projects, one of them featured on the front page of HN. And I've good stats on kaggle also. I'm applying for a job in top ML firm. I'm fresh grad. Should I apply for Software engineer or research engineer/Data scientist? Is my experience enough for research engineer/Data scientist?

Its hard to say as I don't know your complete background or the level of the role at this firm. If they're at top ML firm and you're applying for a research engineer/Data scientist role then you're probably competing with a hefty bunch of experienced candidates (many of which i'm sure are on Kaggle too). If you're still lacking a background with professional experience then i'd suggest starting at a lesser role to get yourself in the door.

Thanks for help. That makes sense. I guess I'm gonna apply for software engineering role.

Unless your experience is exceptional and you are acing interviews left and right, I'd recommend getting a Masters at minimum. The unfortunate reality is that few will take you seriously without at least one advanced credential above a BSc.

With no experience you will need at least a Masters. Last I checked half of data scientists in the industry held a PhD and the other half held a Masters degree. You can get away without it if you somehow have significant experience in the field (experience always trumps everything else), but that's pretty rare.

Sorry, didn't see this until now.

It's hard for me to say without knowing which firm or reading the job description, but to me research engineer implies a PhD level of knowledge. You won't get that from some open source projects and kaggle competitions.

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