InterviewsVector
Capability spine

Arc 01 · Software Engineer

Engineering Baseline for AI Work

Turn a software project into a reproducible experiment, with explicit data, environment, cost, and verification boundaries.

Exit capability: Run an AI experiment another engineer can reproduce and audit.

Mapped lessons
6
Published now
6
Full-arc estimate
8 hours
Last edited
2026-08-11

Lesson sequence

Live units open into complete labs. Planned units stay visible to show the dependency path, but intentionally have no detail route.

  1. 01

    Draw the AI System Boundary

    Live

    Separate deterministic software, probabilistic model behavior, data, and human judgment before choosing tools.

    Design reviewFoundation55 min estimateArtifact: AI system boundary map

  2. 02

    Reproducible Experiments, Not Reproducible Notebooks

    Live

    Make code, data, seeds, dependencies, and hardware assumptions inspectable.

    Build labFoundation80 min estimateArtifact: Experiment manifest

  3. 03

    Data Contracts for Models

    Live

    Specify schema, meaning, time, lineage, and allowed use before training or retrieval.

    Systems labFoundation70 min estimateArtifact: Versioned model data contract

  4. 04

    Define the Measurement Before the Model

    Live

    Translate a product claim into offline, online, safety, latency, and cost measures.

    Concept labFoundation65 min estimateArtifact: Measurement contract

  5. 05

    A First AI Workload Cost Model

    Live

    Estimate tokens, accelerator time, storage, and network movement before committing architecture.

    Build labFoundation75 min estimateArtifact: AI workload cost model

  6. 06

    From Experiment to Service Boundary

    Live

    Extract a tested model contract from exploratory code without copying notebook state into production.

    Build labFoundation75 min estimateArtifact: Inference contract