I started working at a prominent AI company in 2020 with no formal background in AI/ML. I was able to bring outside understanding of language and theory of mind into use with large LLMs and create a role as a prompt engineer. My résumé was basically doing interesting things and helping make their models more useful.

Even though I'm not a formal researcher, I've been able to contribute to research projects and be included in papers because the field is so new.

The most important criteria I look for when I interview applicants is what they have built. Github repos, papers even cool Product Hunt projects can have impact.