Are you thinking about investing in artificial intelligence development at your company? If so, now is the time to actually run your project.
Consider these:
- According to Gartner's 2019 survey, 37% of organizations have already introduced AI in some form. That's a 270% growth over the last four years!
- AI can be used in virtually every industry. According to the same Gartner’s survey, 52% of telcos use chatbots and 38% of healthcare providers make use of diagnostics assigned by algorithms
- As research by MMC Ventures suggests, “AI may be the fastest paradigm shift in technology history.” Demand for AI experts has doubled in the 24 months leading to the publication of this research.
It’s also getting increasingly more difficult to find suitable AI talents in the marketplace. Demand is simply too high. And because there are so many uses of AI in business, AI developers and other AI experts are often knowledgeable only in some specific part of the huge artificial intelligence industry. In other words, there are no generalists, but only people with a specified area of expertise.
All this can make the hiring process tricky. You might ask yourself: which AI developer should I choose? Can I trust this specific AI expert to handle my project?
To help you answer these questions, we’ve prepared our specialist guide on how to hire best AI developers and other top AI experts. Read along!
What is the role of an AI developer in a project?
The role of an AI developer in a project is multifaceted and depends on the specific needs of the project. Broadly speaking, an AI developer is responsible for designing and implementing AI applications or systems that help solve complex problems, make predictions, or automate processes. They utilize machine learning, deep learning, and other AI technologies to bring intelligent functionality to applications and systems.
AI developers begin by understanding the project's needs and goals, determining where AI can add value. They then design, develop, and train AI models to meet these needs. This might involve creating a chatbot for customer service, a recommendation system for a retail app, a predictive model for forecasting sales, or a natural language processing (NLP) tool for processing large amounts of text data.
AI developers also work closely with other team members, including data scientists, machine learning engineers, and software developers, to integrate AI functionality into larger applications or systems. They play a crucial role in transforming data insights into real-world applications that can drive business value.
Moreover, in the context of remote work or hiring from specific locations like India, an AI developer can contribute to the team by leveraging their expertise while working remotely, often providing a cost-effective solution. India, for instance, has a large talent pool of AI developers, which makes it an attractive location for hiring AI professionals.
When you're hiring AI developers, whether it's for AI and ML development or AI app development, you're seeking individuals with expertise in artificial intelligence and its various subfields. This could include machine learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, robotics, and more, depending on the project requirements.
In summary, an AI developer is instrumental in any project that requires AI solutions, contributing their expertise to design, develop, and deploy AI applications that meet the project's goals. Their role is integral to leveraging AI technology for problem-solving and innovation in various business domains.
What skills do best AI developers have?
When thinking about the skills a good AI developer should have, once again you will need to think about what exactly are you planning to achieve with your project. Of course, there are some general skills that every AI expert should possess but additional ones might be required to meet your specific needs. We dive into both of these skill set categories below.
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Programming: Strong proficiency in programming languages like Python, Java, and R is essential. Python is particularly popular due to its simplicity and the numerous AI and machine learning libraries it supports, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Scikit-learn.
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Machine Learning and AI Frameworks: Familiarity with various AI frameworks and libraries is vital. This includes libraries for machine learning (Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch), natural language processing (NLTK, SpaCy), and computer vision (OpenCV).
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Mathematics and Statistics: AI developers need a strong foundation in mathematics, particularly in areas like linear algebra, calculus, probability, and statistics. These are essential for understanding and implementing AI and machine learning algorithms.
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Data Manipulation and Analysis: Experience with data manipulation and analysis tools like pandas, NumPy, and SQL is crucial. AI developers often need to preprocess, clean, and analyze data to prepare it for model training.
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Neural Networks and Deep Learning: Understanding the workings of neural networks and deep learning is important for developers working on complex AI applications.
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Problem-Solving: AI is all about solving complex problems. Good problem-solving skills are a must-have for any AI developer.
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Cloud Platforms: Knowledge of cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud is important, as many AI workloads are handled on the cloud. These platforms offer tools for machine learning, data processing, and storage that AI developers can leverage.
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Data Visualization: Skills in data visualization tools like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Tableau can be useful for visualizing data and presenting results.
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Communication Skills: AI developers often work in teams and have to communicate complex ideas to non-technical stakeholders. Thus, good communication skills are critical.
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Continuous Learning: The field of AI is constantly evolving. The best AI developers are those who continuously learn and adapt, staying up-to-date with the latest AI research and development trends.
What educational background should an AI expert have?
Unlike it’s the case with some other software development specialties, self-learning how to work with AI is really difficult and often doesn’t bring results as good as graduating in one of the relevant disciplines. This is because working with complicated AI software requires both theoretical knowledge of complex ideas (including high-level mathematics), as well as a long practice done alongside the theory.
The best AI developers and other top AI experts are usually graduates of computer science, maths, statistics, or some kind of engineering. And we are talking here about people with master’s or even PhD.
The route to becoming an AI expert is usually filled with taking both theoretical and practical courses on:
- Various levels of maths, including probability, statistics, algebra, calculus, logic, and algorithms.
- Probabilistic graphical models, including neural and Bayesian networks.
- Physics, engineering, robotics.
- Cognitive science.
- Computer science, programming languages, coding.
- Data analytics, database management.
Soft skills of top AI experts
Besides the technical knowledge, be it of the programming languages used for AI software development or complex math algorithms, a set of important soft skills should also be considered when hiring AI engineers. Some of the ones especially worth mentioning are:
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Attention to details
AI is supposed to eliminate potential human errors, so it would be a real shame if the software built fails because of the developer’s oversight! Make sure the AI engineer you hire always triple-checks every piece of the puzzle and understands the importance of small details.
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Innate curiosity
Most influential developments are always done by people who are curious enough to try new things. Without curiosity, there is no innovation.
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Always up-to-date
In such a fast-paced and constantly changing area as AI software development, regularly following news and trends is crucial to being ahead of the competition.
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Patience
AI software development is still a relatively new thing which means there are a lot of unanswered questions and unsolved issues. It may sometimes take months before the best solution of a problem is found, which means only patient people should try to grasp AI engineering.
How to find the best AI developers for your project?
Because the spectrum of AI skills and specialties is so vast, when planning to hire AI developer, you should focus on finding a person who truly fits your project and company. Engineers who have already worked in your industry will probably have a better understanding of what you might be expecting.
Think also of what exactly your product needs in terms of AI.
Do you want to have speech recognition introduced? Look for someone that has already worked with this kind of AI software, potentially even an AI expert with a linguistic background.
Or maybe you need an AI-powered customer service chatbot? Then find an AI expert who has already developed one in the past!
If you want to significantly speed up the process of hiring an AI expert, you can also reach out to our team at Ideamotive. After the initial consultation, we will be able to present you a carefully reviewed list of candidates perfectly matching your requirements.
Some great interview questions for hiring AI experts
Getting ready for a technical interview with your top candidates? Here are some interview questions worth asking:
- In your own words, what is SGD?
- Why do we call naïve Bayes “naïve”?
- What is 1x1 convolution? What is it used for?
- What would be your approach to grouping documents into semantic groups according to their content?
- What are some regularization techniques in Deep Learning?
- How would you approach building an Amazon-like ecommerce recommendations system? (“People who bought this item, bought also…”)
- What's the connection between Gaussian Mixture Models and k-means?
How to develop successful AI software?
AI engineers are surely the core element of the AI development process — without their work, the solution planned would be just a theoretical concept, not an actual product. However, most AI projects also require other people to be involved in them, such as product owners or IT project managers. Other people working with data, such as data engineers who can establish a secure data pipeline, are also necessary.
To get your expert AI team assembled quickly and efficiently, contact us at Ideamotive. We operate an industry-leading network of top IT talents from all over the globe, always looking for new challenges. If you wish to onboard them and start creating a truly great product, contact us today and we’ll get you connected with the exact people you need — ones with experience in your industry and the type of AI solution you are developing.
The AI boom and the rise of new tools
The AI boom has had a profound impact on the technological landscape, ushering in a new era of innovation and digital transformation. As the demand for AI-driven solutions continues to grow, cutting-edge tools like ChatGPT-4 have emerged as game-changers for businesses and individuals alike.
When hiring AI developers, it is essential to consider expertise in utilizing advanced tools like ChatGPT-4. AI experts proficient in these state-of-the-art technologies can help your organization stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on the vast potential of AI, driving innovation and delivering exceptional results. Ultimately, by investing in skilled professionals with knowledge of the latest AI tools, you can ensure the success of your AI projects and reap the benefits of this rapidly evolving field.
