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AI Expert Roadmap From Scratch (Beginner)

The 12-month path from "I've used ChatGPT a few times" to "I'm employable as an AI engineer," with the hype removed.

This is not a coding tutorial. The hands-on coding lives in AI Systems From Scratch - tensors, training loops, LoRA, RAG, serving. This path is the meta-layer: what to learn in what order, the math you actually need (and don't), how to read papers, how to build a portfolio, how to evaluate jobs, how the first 90 days go.

Read this first if you're trying to figure out where to start. Read it alongside AI Systems From Scratch once you've picked a direction.

Table of contents

  1. Where are you starting from
  2. The 12-month arc, honest version
  3. Math you actually need (and what you don't)
  4. The Python + Linux baseline
  5. ML mental model in one page
  6. Transformers in one page
  7. The Hugging Face ecosystem map
  8. Picking a specialization
  9. Reading papers without drowning
  10. Building in public
  11. Your portfolio: 3 projects
  12. Evaluating job postings honestly
  13. Open source as resume
  14. Interview prep: what they actually ask
  15. First 90 days on the job
  16. Done - the next 12 months

How to use this path

  • Read in order, once, fast. ~3 hours.
  • Then come back to specific pages when the decisions actually need making.
  • Pair with AI Systems From Scratch for the coding side.

What this path is not

  • A tutorial. Almost no code.
  • A motivational deck. No "AI will change the world" pep talk.
  • A guarantee. The market is real, brutal, and changing monthly.

What you get instead: an honest map.

Print this path

Want to read offline or archive? Open the printable version — every section of this path concatenated into one page, styled for paper. Use your browser's Print → Save as PDF.