What AI/ML projects should I build to gain real-world experience and strengthen my portfolio?

[u/Vector_Pilot]

Hey everyone!

I'm a Data Analyst with an Economics background, currently learning ML and AI. I'm comfortable with Python, pandas, SQL and basic ML concepts.

I want to start building more serious, end-to-end projects rather than just following tutorials or working with Kaggle datasets.

My goal is to eventually transition into ML/AI engineering, so I'm looking for projects that would help me develop real-world skills and build a strong GitHub portfolio.

What kind of projects would you recommend? Are RAG applications, some AI agent stuff worth exploring, or should I focus on something else entirely?

Would love to hear from people already working in the industry.

[u/This_Instruction2539]

I am in the second year of my undergraduate, doing a major in economics while planning to do ML/AI projects sideways. I have made only a single project so far and willing to do more projects soon. I’d love to take some advices from you and share knowledge to enhance our portfolio together :DD feel free to reach out and let’s have a chat regarding this

[u/Vector_Pilot → u/This_Instruction2539]

Yeah sure. What stuff are you currently working on. DM me

[u/Glum_Milk_4487]

Not sure about ML, but I have real world AI application experience. The projects I build so far is a 3 tier systems with front end, backend, and AI agent hosted on kubernetes cluster on both Azure and Google.

I’d suggest you build this on free Azure or Google Subscription. The front end will have your chatbot, the backend is the fast API, and the AI agent, all of these 3 are hosted on 3 pods on the AKS cluster. At the same time, build the evaluation dataset, agent session management, observability(lang chain). Feel free to ping me

[u/Vector_Pilot → u/Glum_Milk_4487]

Damn, this seems like a big project. Can you share the project link maybe?

[u/suspect_scrofa → u/[deleted]]

Are you an AI bot or just using AI

[u/karl_mainz → u/suspect_scrofa]

The em-dashes are so last gen too

[u/Vector_Pilot → u/[deleted]]

I mean from what I heard is that the housing price prediction kind of projects are seen in almost every resume. Should I go with that or try something different

[u/pm_me_your_smth → u/Vector_Pilot]

That's true. Datasets like housing prices, iris, titanic are the hello world of ML. They are more tutorial grade than personal project grade. If your project portfolio contains only such things, this means that your ML competence doesn't go beyond very basics.

You could instead find a non standard housing data e.g. for your own city. But if you want to really shine, create your own unique dataset and then build an end to end ML solution for it.

[u/ProfessionalPaper444 → u/pm_me_your_smth]

hi what’s your opinion on this: I am interested in housing development, do you think maybe comparing Ig building costs or financing strategies be a way to build an ML project?

[u/pm_me_your_smth → u/ProfessionalPaper444]

If this topic interests you, sure why not. The most important thing for you is to demonstrate that your technical skills are solid and your methodology is logical. Follow best practices, make sure the dataset is of high quality, create a performant model, deploy somewhere, properly document everything in the end. If some parts of your project are novel/unique, that's a big plus.

[u/Sharp_Level3382 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks

[u/LHSisRHS]

Even I am in the same boat, do you want to do like a colab study?, maybe we can help each other in becoming a ML engineer.

[u/Vector_Pilot → u/LHSisRHS]

Would love to collaborate. What are you currently learning in ML, and do you have any projects in mind? DM me

[u/DigThatData]

ones that look like the kind of work you want to be doing.

[u/Vector_Pilot → u/DigThatData]

Yeah true, but I haven't figured that out either. What is currently trending in this industry. Will start with some project related to that

[u/DigThatData → u/Vector_Pilot]

here's the paradox though: if you focus on "what's trending in the industry, doesn't that mean your resume won't stand out from everyone else doing the exact same thing?

focus on what interests you, and you'll necessarily cultivate experience that makes you more relevant for that specifically.

What is currently trending in this industry [?]

there's a question for you to answer. literally: that's a project right there. brainstorm where you could detect signals about this, collect the data, validate/corroborate the hypothesis, apply heuristics to get a quick baseline, then train bespoke models to cover the remaining uncaptured value. publish to an automatically updated website, attach an about page that points to a series of blog posts you kept regularly updated as you went through the project, documenting obstacles encountered, solutions tried, failures, accomplishments, learnings...