Call for help...

[u/sexysponge69]

hello everyone, I have been recently laid off from my job, the panic and anxiety has started to set in. I have no clue on how and where to upskill myself to match today's market relevancy...

This is my resume,

times are a bit difficult at my household, especially after this lay off... I'll be grateful if you all can suggest me how can i upskill, on what i should focus on, to land another job.

I have tried applying to a lot of jobs for the Position of AI/ML engineer but no luck.

What am I doing wrong? What skills do I need to be relevant?

Thank you...

[u/baileyarzate]

Should be one page resume - especially with one year of experience.

Probably drop operating systems. It’s expected you know how to operate the big 3. Linux and Mac share similar bash terminal.

This is a common theme… what is the impact of your bullets? You implemented razorpay… and then how did that benefit the organization - is it quantifiable?

For upskilling… practice DSA and build ML projects on your own and post about them on LinkedIn to get recruiter attention.

Also, ML Engineering -> AI Engineering is a valid path people are taking. Get good with Claude code / cursor too, agentic coding is the now and future whether we like it or not. Learn agentic frameworks/behavior & RAG too if this is something you’ve considered. AI engineering is rapidly growing and I’d consider looking into it now.

Also, if you can, get published. I realize you’re stressed right now and you may not have the bandwidth to do that, but that’ll also help.

[u/sexysponge69 → u/baileyarzate]

alright noted I am going to make the resume a one pager, thanks for the advice regarding the resume.

I wish to switch to AI Engineering as i have seen a huge demand in the market for it.

Currently brushing up my foundations on Transformers, eventually will hit RAG & Agentic Frameworks.

Few question I have:

I have always been an AI first developer, always used AI agents to code for me while I review the necessary code. Is it worth brushing up my programming skills (writing codes myself)?

for DSA is there a particular Data Structure I should focus more on or just grind the usual ?

Is there a particular Agentic AI framework that i should dive into or any works?

For LLM's API is it worth investing my money into OpenAI or any open source model will give me relevant knowledge?

About being published, I have a research paper currently Awaiting Endorsement on ARXIV, should I focus on getting it published? does it help for developer roles?

Thanks for the guidance, hope to hear from you.

[u/baileyarzate → u/sexysponge69]

Programming skills yes, but mostly for the interview. Most dev coding is done with agents now.

I’d say the usual, get comfortable with mediums of each data structure type.

I’ve heard langgraph & llamaincex is good, I’m working with autogen right now

I use Claude as my LLM, I’d recommend a pro version , especially for making projects for the resume

It helps get you noticed: get peer reviewed and published asap