The pathway
How you actually get there, here
How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.
- 1
Graduate Software Engineer (with ML interest)
0-1 year in a general software role before specialisingSkills to master
- Strong programming fundamentals (Python), understanding of software development lifecycle, basic cloud exposure, Git version control.
You're ready to move on when
- Successfully delivered small software projects.
- Demonstrated interest in ML concepts and deployment.
- Comfortable with Linux command line and scripting.
- 2
Junior Data Engineer (moving to MLOps)
1-2 years in data engineeringSkills to master
- Data pipeline building (ETL), SQL, distributed data processing (e.g., Spark basics), cloud data services (e.g., AWS Glue, S3).
You're ready to move on when
- Experience building and maintaining data pipelines.
- Understands data quality and schema management.
- Familiarity with data warehousing concepts.
- 3
Junior DevOps Engineer (moving to MLOps)
1-2 years in DevOpsSkills to master
- CI/CD pipeline setup, infrastructure automation (Terraform), containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), cloud infrastructure management.
You're ready to move on when
- Experience with production system deployments and monitoring.
- Strong understanding of Linux and networking.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting language (Bash, Python).