State of Generative AI Interviews

I interview candidates for GenAI roles. Sharing my observations

I’ve been interviewing candidates for GenAI focused roles, and guess what, their job titles are not “AI Engineer”. I already shared this with my 2024 ML Interviews cohort: link and wrote about it wayyy back in Jan 2024: article. If you’ve been following, you know how to search for job titles not limited to AI Engineer (so little of the overall size!)

When we think of AI these days in 2025, applications powered by large language models (LLMs) often come to mind. There are other types in addition to just textual generation, such as image/video/audio, and multi-modal (e.g. text-to-image), and so on, but for simplicity I will focus on textual generation — LLM or multi-modal models.

LLMs — large language models — are machine learning models. AI is powered by machine learning models. So interview questions of course involve machine learning fundamentals. Just because it has new-fangled nicknames doesn’t make the interview process easier. If anything, the expectations are higher (high paying jobs don’t fall out from the sky).

What’s different about GenAI focused roles?

Even if you might not focus directly on model training, you or your team might be involved with fine-tuning (i.e. machine learning model fine-tuning), or arguing why it doesn’t work in your use case. Basic machine learning theories are expected, with a focus on generative models, surrounding software systems, and evaluation.

What if you don’t want to focus on the model side, but only on software engineering that calls the model APIs? Your interview will still require strong software engineering skills, compete with the candidates that are experienced and want to gain AI experience. On top of that, even if you’ll be expected to know a bit less about models than some role variants, you’ll still be expected to know enough. What areas should you focus on to stand out?

Diagram from my book, Machine Learning Interviews, highlighted to focus on GenAI

In my previous Machine Learning Interview courses, I’ve created sections on GenAI already since 2024, so attendees were already able to get the newest information from someone (me) that works in a company that is being used by countless Fortune 500s and startups for their GenAI workflows.

This October 15-16 I am returning with a completely GenAI focused course on O’Reilly.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

• Evaluate your current skills to close any gaps that may prevent you from succeeding in the interview process

• Prepare for technical interviews for GenAI roles

• Prepare for coding exams with tried-and-true resources

• Beef up your resume structure targeted at AI roles

• Frame your past projects and present your portfolio in the best light, even without previous work experience

Sign up here: https://learning.oreilly.com/live-events/generative-ai-interviews/0636920095524/

Can’t attend live? Sign up anyway and get a recording, only available to registered attendees.