3 years in Generative AI, stuck on interviews. Need fresh paths, what’s your move?
Hey y’all, I’m three years deep as an AI Engineer but in reality, that means I’m a dev who wraps SaaS apps with AI magic.
My workload has been:
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Rolling out RAG-based systems, multimodal pipelines, NLP flows.
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Using LangChain, Autogen, CrewAI, mostly Python and SQL.
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Automating multi-agent solutions on Azure.
Thing is, I never built a basic ML model from scratch. I know frameworks. I know pipelines. But I can’t code a loss function off the top of my head.
Now I’m eyeing a new role, something higher paying, with stronger mentorship and a steeper learning curve. But interviews? Crickets.
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One company liked my experience but said they needed someone who already knows more than me.
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Another wanted a “full-stack AI dev” with deep AI theory and front-end chops I just don’t have.
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Plus, there’s this brutal 90-day notice period hanging over me.
So I’m stuck. I don’t want to stall. I want to grow but not with a company that expects wizard-level skills.
Here's where I need you:
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What job titles or companies should I target to learn, not just deliver?
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How do I frame my “framed experience + humility” pitch so I draw employers in, not push them away?
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Anyone been through the 90-day NP hell, how did you handle it while hunting?
Tough love welcome. I’ll be logging replies, grateful for every insight.
Not experienced enough to comment but just wanted to know your opinion on learning the basics, the true basics like discrete math, linear algebra, CUDA etc.
How much time do you think developing a working knowledge of the basics would take?
Is it really required as per your interview experience?
How does golang help with deployment if at all.
It does help when you know the basics, you can understand the research papers better while reading and show that you're up to date in the interviews.
I can't say how long it takes to develop working knowledge since everyone has their own pace. It depends on what is the expectation from the interviewer, simply, it's luck,if the person interviewing is someone who concentrates more on this, then yes. From my experiences, I've seen that there is no correlation between a job description and the questions they ask in the interviews. I was once asked to solve leetcode medium problem for a prompt engineer role.
I haven't worked using golang much but as far as I know, it makes things simpler
