How To Design Generative AI Features For Adobe Acrobat (& Break Into Machine Learning Engineering Roles) - w/ Nikhil

In this episode, featured not-expert is Nikhil Pentapalli. Nikhil is a Sr Machine Learning Engineer at Adobe, working with building cutting-edge Generative AI features on Adobe Acrobat. Nikhil references his experiences and learnings from working with document intelligence for almost 5 years to walk us thru the best ways for current students and professionals to get hired for their first job as machine learning engineers. We also deep-dive into the best strategies to set oneself apart by building projects implementing Machine Learning and interview process for most MLE positions. Nikhil also takes us thru a day in the life at Adobe and what the future holds for Gen AI capabilities for Adobe Acrobat, the most popular PDF tool in the world - and his take on the impact of AI in the not-so-distant future.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Resources:ML / DS / GENAI Complete Roadmaphttps://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vRvrcbJ06_L89mk2vtxXUBcbB__1LpJw5PNGOmUoy-Wa1PJlgtMUwiYXTMp_fSYEnaW1KPzGUreTt4i/pubRAG / LLMs Roadmap with prereq'shttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dsmNuMVSHP8rqQTEli2H1GqzBi4d0IBqd-McRFvp-KE/edit?gid=0#gid=0E2E - Ragshttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dsmNuMVSHP8rqQTEli2H1GqzBi4d0IBqd-McRFvp-KE/edit?gid=0#gid=0Timestamps:(00:00) Introduction + Background(02:16) Build projects or practice algorithms for breaking into MLE roles?(04:38) Importance of building ML projects(08:24) Starting career as an MLE at Reliance(13:29) Transitioning to the US for Masters(16:52) US Internship Experience & Early Projects(20:04) What EXACTLY did OpenAI do to take the world by storm?(24:30) Starting at Adobe - 1 application, 1 offer letter(27:11) How to prep for MLE interviews (resources in video description)(30:28) Working at Adobe(33:59) Innovations in Adobe Acrobat(37:49) Generative AI in Creative Applications(43:28) Designing UI/UX for Generative AI apps(47:07) Future of Adobe Acrobat with GenAI capabilities(51:26) How to correctly use ChatGPT(56:11) $300k/year prompt engineers(58:47) Outro + Gratitude