I'm working in the field (and winning contests) without a bachelor. As was said here [0]

"Overall, machine learning systems can be thought of as a machine learning core — usually an advanced algorithm which requires a few chapters from Ian’s book to understand — surrounded by a huge amount of software engineering."

[0] https://blog.gregbrockman.com/define-cto-openai

So that's what I mostly do - write code, try new ideas :) Surely, I had to refresh my knowledge in some areas like probabilities, and have a general understanding how math works, but anyone can do that.