Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer

Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer

If you are looking to become a Machine Learning Engineer, there are some key qualifications you will require. This job is responsible for organizing and assessing data, doing experiments and tests and optimizing and monitoring the learning process for designing machine learning systems and applications.

In this career, you will use various algorithms to numerous codebases. Software development experience is ideal for a Machine Learning Engineer. This job combines statistics, math and web development. If you can grasp these subjects, you will have the perfect background to succeed in Machine Learning Engineering Jobs.

However, don't stress if you don't have that background experience. You can still work towards a career in machine learning. The first thing you will need to understand is the basics of machine learning methods. 

Discover How To Code With Python

Working with Python will be a proficiency you will want to master if you are planning to become a Machine Learning Engineer. Familiarize yourself with C++ and Python and the libraries they are associated with. These are some of the most popular programming languages among Machine Learning Engineers and Data Scientists.

Utilize Github and SQL to allow you to easy access to company data and offer collaborative work opportunities with your crew.

Now is a great time to familiarize yourself with Google's software library TensorFlow. This enables users to write in C++, Python, Swift and Java and can be utilized for numerous tasks including speech and image recognition. It executes on GPUs, CPUs and additional kinds of processors. It has numerous tutorials and is documented well. You will be able to find a host of free tutorials online.

PyTorch is a framework that is recommended for beginners. This can be used alongside the imperative programming model that Developers are familiar with. It enables Machine Learning Engineers and Developers to rely on Python statements. It is also used to implement deep neural networks.

There are a variety of programming languages you may wish to learn to help you with your machine learning career. They are described below:

Java

Java is one of the original general-purpose languages that Data Scientists rely on. It is ubiquitous and popular with many businesses and large international companies. They rely on Java to build backend applications and systems for web, mobile and desktop.

R

This was released in 1995 as a free, open-source programming language. R provides a high-quality range for domain-specific packages. It is a descendant of the S programming language. It offers almost every data visualization and statistical application a Data Scientist may require including advanced plotting, non-linear regression, neural networks and more.

MATLAB

MATLAB is commonplace for statistical analysis. It is a proprietary numerical computing language that is ideal for Data Scientists working with high-level math situations including signal processing, Fourier transforms, matrix algebra and image processing. MATLAB has become used widely among academia and industry thanks to its mathematical ability.

SQL

SQL is an acronym for "Structured Query Language." It has been around for decades and is used as the core for retrieving and storing data. SQL manages data as a domain-specific language in relational databases. It is a necessary skill for Data Scientists who utilize SQL for querying, extracting data, updating, manipulating databases and editing.

Julia

Julia is one of the newer programming languages compared to the others listed. However, it has made a lasting impression due to its simplicity, readability and ultra-fast performance. It is designed for computational science and numerical analysis. Julia is known for solving difficult math operations and has earned a successful reputation in the financial world. It is becoming a top language for AI. Julia is also being used for risk analysis by large banks.

Scala

Scala is flexible and user-friendly. It is a popular programming language for working with large data volumes. Scala combines functional programming and object-oriented programming. It uses static types to avoid bugs within complex applications. Scala can facilitate parallel processing on a wide scale. It can work with Apache spark to offer excellent cluster computing performance.

Take A Machine Learning Course

Did you know that being a Machine Learning Engineer is one of the highest-paying jobs you can get without requiring formal schooling? However, it would be tricky to debut in this field without some type of course, online classes, or bootcamp. Thankfully, there are tons of highly popular programs out there to give students a comprehensive understanding of this career in a short amount of time.

Discover How To Gather Proper Data

If you want to process huge amounts of data at one time, AI is where it is at. When you are considering creating AI software, think about tasks that rely on data points such as marketing and customer service. Next, build software that ensures data-heavy jobs are easy and quick to complete.

You may determine that creating your own machine learning gear is best in terms of long-term cost savings at the beginning. You can use a public cloud platform to create a machine learning tailored infrastructure. All of the popular cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS offer virtual machines with underlying ML accelerators. 

Online Machine Learning Communities Are Your Best Friend

Join Kaggle an online community for machine learners and Data Scientists. This platform enables users to build models, publish and find data sets within a web-based science environment. You will be able to communicate with additional Machine Learning Engineers and others.

This is a smart way to learn from others who are in the field. Kaggle offers a variety of challenges for machine learning. Take part in their official competitions that offer cash prizes. There are even free competitions that offer experience.

Create Your Personal Machine Learning Project

When you’re first starting out, try reviewing and recreating basic projects provided by Scikit-learn, PredictionIO, Awesome Machine Learning, and similar resources. Once you have a solid grasp of how machine learning works in practice, try coming up with your own projects that you can share online or list on a resume.

Take on a project that interests you and requires a simple AI algorithm and build that algorithm from scratch. There might be a learning curve, but you will learn a lot along the way and the long-term benefit is significant.

You won't want to waste a ton of time collecting data. Try to use data sets that are publicly available. Rely on Quandl and the UCI Machine Learning Repository and similar places. If it is too hard to develop a project idea, get some inspiration from Github and similar websites.

Apply For Machine Learning Jobs and Internships

Even though completing competitions and personal projects will impress employers, you won't learn the specific business-related machine learning skills that companies require. To obtain experience, look for entry-level jobs and internships that are related to product-focused machine learning for best results. The Junior Machine Learning Engineer title is an entry-level job.

How Fast Is Machine Learning Growing?

Machine learning is one of the fastest-growing technological jobs according to a report from Indeed. Due to its high salaries and excellent demand, being a Machine Learning Engineer was voted to be one of the best jobs for the future.

Machine Learning Engineer has higher growth and salaries compared to Software Developer jobs. There are many job opportunities in this field.

A Computer Vision Engineer was ranked behind the Machine Learning Engineer as another AI job. It consists of slightly slower growth. However, experts feel this career will continue to expand in the coming years as more businesses increase their AI use.

What Is the Salary of a Machine Learning Engineer?

Machine Learning Engineers earn an average salary of $140K.

Even entry-level Machine Learning Engineers are handsomely rewarded. According to PayScale, the average entry-level Machine Learning Engineer makes $93,575 annually. Meanwhile, almost all Senior Machine Learning Engineers take home nearly $155,000 per year.

What Makes Machine Learning Important?

Machine learning allows us to utilize algorithms to create models to discover connections. It's important because it allows businesses to streamline their decision-making without needing humans to intervene.

The concept is essentially a mathematical approach. The system analyzes data such as texts, sound files and images, looking for specific patterns. The system discovers on its own which patterns to watch for by analyzing thousands of samples. Next, the system learns the implicit rules for identifying "x" such as a face or some other image or sound.

Government agencies including utilities and public safety organizations have a great need for machine learning. They understand how valuable and essential this technology is since they gain real-time insights from this data. Most businesses can become extra efficient with this type of knowledge, allowing them to enjoy advantages over their competitors.

Who Relies On Machine Learning?

Machine learning is vital for automating various work and different processes. It was created from recognizing patterns and the thought that computers are capable of learning without being programmed to complete certain tasks. Experts specializing in AI wanted to test the theory of having computers learn from data. There is an iterative aspect of machine learning that is essential as models are given new data, they can adapt independently. The computer learns from previous computations. This allows it to create repeatable and reliable results and decisions. 

Numerous machine learning algorithms have been utilized for ages. The recent development is the ability to apply complex math calculations automatically to big data in a much faster and repetitive fashion.

What Kinds Of Things Is Machine Learning Used For?

The demand for this industry continues to climb. It is currently utilized by numerous industries including retail, oil and gas, the automotive industry and self-driving vehicles, the transportation industry and others. Certain machine learning applications include fraud detection, making transportation routes more efficient, discovering new sources of energy and identifying identity theft. There are many ways to use this important technology.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry is also using machine learning regularly. With wearable sensors and devices that can assess in real-time a patient's health, this data can be lifesaving. Machine learning technology can additionally help medical experts identify trends by analyzing data. It can indicate red flags and may pave the way for improved treatment and diagnosis.

Retail Applications

Machine learning is being widely used across various retail platforms. It can use your purchasing record to recommend products you may enjoy. Retailers use machine learning to analyze data and rely on this information to personalize their shopping. It can also be used to optimize prices, deliver customer insights, launch a marketing campaign and for planning merchandise supply.

Banking & The Financial Industry

Financial businesses including banks rely on machine learning to prevent fraud. It provides insights to allow banks and financial institutions to identify investment opportunities. This technology can also alert investors about when to trade. Data mining can help identify individuals with high-risk profiles. Warning signals of fraud can also be found thanks to cyber-surveillance.

What Machine Learning Jobs Are Available?

There are a variety of jobs for those who are specializing in machine learning such as:

  • Data Scientist
  • NLP Scientist or Natural Language Processing Scientists
  • Machine Learning Engineer
  • Software Engineer
  • Data Engineer
  • Business Intelligence Developer
  • Machine Learning Researcher

Let's breakdown some of the job titles to offer a more precise look:

Business Intelligence Developers use machine learning and data analytics to interpret, analyze and collect large portions of data to develop actionable insights. This information can help business executives make better decisions. This job relies on knowledge from multidimensional and relational databases and programming languages including Perl, SQL, Scala and Python. It is an asset to have business analytics experience with services including Power BI.

Data Scientists are commonly confused with Machine Learning Engineers. However, their specialty is to create specific outputs for humans. Data Scientists compare and analyze data to create actionable insights. These insights are used by companies to make decisions by the business executives. They rely on machine learning, analytic technologies and predictive modeling to analyze, interpret and collect copious amounts of data.

Machine Learning Engineers design numerous machine learning experiments with a variety of programming languages including Java, Scala, Python and others. They utilize the correct machine learning libraries. Certain skill sets needed for this position include statistics and probability, programming, system design, machine learning algorithms and data modeling. Machine Learning Engineers create the necessary outputs for machines.

Natural Language Processing Scientists or NLP Scientists are responsible for giving machines the functions to comprehend human language. They allow machines to converse with humans in our own languages. They create machines to learn speech patterns with the capabilities of translating spoken words into many languages.

A successful NLP Scientist will be fluent in the grammar, spelling and syntax of at least one language along with machine learning to help the machine achieve the same skills.

What Is the Best Way To Get A Machine Learning Job?

Machine learning is a never-ending career as you will enjoy constant upgrading as technology progresses. It is exciting to see how you can help make a difference for large and small businesses.

To succeed in this field, you will have to understand how various algorithms produce data, how to collect data and how to diagnose these results. You will need to demonstrate to organizations the business value of these insights.

This knowledge comes with work experience, taking courses and building your skills over time. It is helpful to have a background in software engineering, computer programming, deep learning, or robotics to help you maximize your role as a Machine Learning Engineer.

Many programs offer training in these fields along with traditional education. You can build up your machine learning expertise from the comfort of your own home. There are certificate courses to help you become more proficient in development, math, science and other skills to help you with your machine learning skills.

Enroll in a top-notch machine learning course to gain the foundational skills that you need to succeed. You will obtain a comprehensive understanding of how machine learning works and what artificial intelligence is all about. This will provide you with the technical perspective that you can use at work. You will learn how to solve real business issues and apply machine learning to utilize data to help leverage the decisions to solve these issues.