Half the 'how to become an AI engineer' advice tells you to start with linear algebra. After years on backend, here's the honest, narrower path — what to learn, what to skip, and what the job actually looks like in 2026.
If a junior can ship a feature in a day with Claude Code, what's the senior engineer actually for? The skills that get you promoted in 2026 — and the ones that quietly stopped counting.
Anyone with Cursor and an afternoon can ship a prototype. The gap between that and a production system isn't speed — it's the judgment to know what's actually right. The case for taste as the 2026 differentiator.