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Comment by ugh123 | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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