Chris Bradbury has recently moved from Facebook owner Meta to join UK-based recruitment consultancy Better Placed as a Senior AI Recruitment Consultant. With experience on both sides of the Atlantic, here are his thoughts about the best current pathway for developers seeking a career in machine learning.
After six years helping companies from Singapore to San Francisco scale their AI teams, and a stint worked internally for Meta (Facebook), I’ve joined Better Placed Tech where I am recruiting for machine learning and data science roles across the UK.
With demand in the industry far outstripping supply and ever-rising costs to attend university, what can an aspiring machine learning engineer / data scientist do to get their foot in the door?
From my recent experience, I’ve found that most of the US businesses demanded a college degree for all candidates. A masters degree is a minimum, but a PhD in Computer Science from an Ivy League university is ideal.
As I’m now solely focussing on the UK market, I’m keen to hear about other routes into the industry and how diverse it really is.
I noticed that software development has taken huge strides in the last 10 years to push for self-taught developers, apprenticeships and intensive code camps, or online short course providers like Udemy, Udacity and Coursera. But are these really a substitute for university?
Ironically, I’ve spoken to a few hiring managers who are totally put off by seeing these courses on a candidate’s CV. They think that if the engineer was a capable one, they wouldn’t need to supplement their learning with a short course, and it suggests they’re not ready to design, develop and ship machine learning models in a fast-paced environment.
Many clients I’m now working with in the UK desire a masters degree as a minimum. They think this will give a person a solid understanding of the software engineering theory and fundamentals they will need if they’re to build robust and scalable models in the real world.
However, I am seeing a shift with some companies being more accommodating and open-minded when it comes to education.
For instance, a London-based AI start-up is willing to interview candidates on the strength of their GitHub repository, and a machine learning task at interview stage.
This, for me, is a step in the right direction as some people just don’t have the access to higher education. This means candidates will now get the chance to prove themselves and be judged on the quality of their code.
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