6 AI Engineering Career Paths: Pick Your Target Role First

Bashiri Smith · Facebook reel · 2026-09-10 · 0:09 · 13,903 views · Open on Facebook

Topics: Start Here: Roadmaps & Strategy, Resume, Job Search & Interviews · Level: beginner

Summary

This short reel lists six different AI engineering roles and gives a one-line description of each. Its main point is that "getting into AI" is too vague a goal. Each role needs a different set of skills, so choosing a specific role early helps you focus your learning and reach it faster.

Key points

• Machine Learning Engineer: trains and optimizes ML models.
• Applied AI Engineer: builds AI-powered products with LLMs and modern software engineering.
• AI Agent Engineer: builds autonomous agents that reason, plan and use tools.
• MLOps Engineer: deploys, monitors and scales AI systems in production.
• AI Research Engineer: improves models through experiments and cutting-edge research.
• AI Solutions Engineer: designs AI solutions that solve real business problems.
• Each path needs different skills. The sooner you pick your target role, the sooner you become an AI engineer.
• The creator claims these roles can pay $100K–$200K+.

Resources mentioned

• The Complete AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 (Exact Courses + Step-by-Step) · video · youtube.com · free
  Bashiri Smith's free YouTube training on upgrading your skills and becoming competitive for AI engineering roles, with specific courses listed step by step.
  Also in: SWE-to-AI Engineer Plan for 2027: LLMs, RAG, Agents, Evals, Job Search (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Pointer to Bashiri Smith's Complete AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Software Engineer to AI Engineer Before 2027: A 5-Step Career Plan (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) and 19 more
• BASWE.Ai Engineer (Skool community) · community · skool.com · paid
  The creator's paid community and program, with an AI learning roadmap (including the full ops and evaluation track), daily calls with engineers and recruiters, resume and portfolio help, and a job-search pipeline.
  Also in: Basic RAG Pipeline in 60 Seconds: From Documents to Grounded Answers (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Pointer to Bashiri Smith's Complete AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), How to Evaluate a RAG Pipeline: Retrieval vs. Generation (Interview Answer) (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) and 76 more

Try this

• Pick one of the six AI engineering roles as your target before you start learning.
• Find out which skills your chosen role needs and focus on those.
• Comment "ROADMAP" on the post to get the creator's AI Engineer roadmap.