Software engineering with additional math and data wrangling is what we call applied artificial intelligence (AI).

If you work in a research department and never have to actually put an AI model into production, you may get away without significant software engineering skills. These positions, however, are few and far between, and the majority of them need a PhD.

But if you are an AI engineer working in the applied domain, you are going to perform a lot of software engineering work. So the most rational way is to become a software engineer first and then master the AI-specific skills and progressively migrate into AI/ML. That’s what I did.

In college, I studied machine learning, the most promising branch of artificial intelligence. Most of it was theoretical research and I wasn’t able to obtain a job as an AI engineer straight out of University.

As a result, I began my career as a Java programmer, working mostly on cloud-based distributed apps, until transitioning to native mobile development for the Android and iOS platforms in 2013. This provided me a lot of software engineering knowledge which eventually equipped me to handle applied ML. Then I progressively crossed over into applied machine learning.

Finding a graduation employment as a software engineer is more simpler and also makes more sense. Enterprise AI/ML is still a new topic, and most businesses have no idea what it is all about. As a result, they're looking for an experienced project manager rather than a newbie who'll need to be mentored.

Hi Aspirant,

Since AI Engineering is a field of research and practice that combines the principles of systems engineering, software engineering, computer science, and human-centered design to create AI systems in accordance with human needs for mission outcomes. Also AI engineers have a sound understanding of programming, software engineering, and data science.   So we can say that AI is almost entirely within the realm of software engineering, at least for now and in near future.  Thus, we can say that Software Engineer has more scopes(which automatically includes AI as well).

For more information about careers as AI developer or Software Developer, refer the link below

https://www.careers360.com/careers/ai-developer

https://www.careers360.com/careers/software-developer

Hope this clears your doubts.

Good luck!!!