🔥 AI Engineer Skill Path for Software Developers (2025)
🎯 Goal:
Become a Production-Ready AI Engineer who can integrate, deploy, and maintain AI models within real-
world software systems.
📆 Step-by-Step Learning Plan
✅ Month 1: Core AI & ML Foundations
• What is Machine Learning?
• Types: Supervised, Unsupervised, Reinforcement
• Key concepts: Overfitting, Bias-Variance, Cross-validation
• Learn Python + Pandas + Numpy
• Tools: Google Colab, Jupyter Notebook
Resources:
• Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning (Coursera)
• Kaggle Learn: Python, Pandas, Intro to ML
✅ Month 2: Deep Learning & Neural Networks
• What is Deep Learning?
• Neural Networks: Feedforward, CNN, RNN, Transformers
• Frameworks: TensorFlow & PyTorch
• Train & test small models on datasets like MNIST, CIFAR-10
Projects: Image classification, text classification
Resources:
• DeepLearning.AI Deep Learning Specialization
• fast.ai: Practical Deep Learning for Coders
✅ Month 3: Model to Microservice
• Learn how to expose models using APIs
• Tools: FastAPI, Flask, Node.js (optional)
• Wrap models into inference services
• Add input validation, error handling
Project: Serve a trained model via REST API
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Resources:
• Full Stack Deep Learning
• YouTube: Deploy ML with FastAPI / Flask
✅ Month 4: MLOps & Deployment
• Dockerize your model and API
• Learn CI/CD basics with GitHub Actions
• Deploy to Heroku, AWS Lambda, or GCP
• Monitor metrics (latency, memory, throughput)
Tools: Docker, Kubernetes basics, MLflow
Project: Deploy and monitor a chatbot or fraud detection model
Resources:
• MLOps Zoomcamp
• Google Vertex AI Quickstart
✅ Month 5: Data Engineering & Pipelines
• Build ETL pipelines
• Clean and prepare data using Pandas & SQL
• Automate workflows with Apache Airflow / Prefect
• Monitor data drift and logs
Project: Create a scheduled pipeline that retrains a model
Resources:
• DataTalksClub: Data Engineering Zoomcamp
• Hands-On ML with Scikit-Learn
✅ Month 6: Real-Time Inference & Business Integration
• Learn batch vs real-time inference
• Use Redis/Kafka for streaming
• Apply Explainable AI techniques
• A/B test models and measure ROI
Project: Real-time recommendation engine with dashboard
Tools:
• Redis
• Kafka
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• SHAP / LIME for explainability
🧠 Bonus Skills
• Prompt Engineering with LLMs (OpenAI, Claude)
• HuggingFace Transformers
• SQL for analytics
• REST & gRPC APIs
📌 Final Project (Capstone)
Build and deploy a full AI system:
• Model training pipeline
• REST API for inference
• Frontend integration (React or CLI)
• Auto retraining + monitoring + logging
🏁 Outcome
By following this plan, you’ll be able to:
• Build & train ML/DL models
• Deploy models as microservices
• Integrate AI into real products
• Own end-to-end MLOps workflows
• Speak both software and AI fluently