How to Skill Up Your Use of AI in a Tech Role

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping every corner of the tech industry—from software development and DevOps to data analysis, product management, and IT operations. Whether you're a developer, analyst, engineer, or tech lead, skilling up in AI isn’t just about staying ahead—it’s now about staying relevant.

Here’s how to deepen your AI fluency and integrate it into your day-to-day role, step by step.

1. Understand the AI Landscape

Before diving into tools or code, start with a high-level understanding of what AI actually is—and isn’t. Focus on concepts such as:

• Machine learning vs deep learning.
• Large language models (LLMs) and how they power tools like ChatGPT or Claude.
• Generative AI, agentic AI, and their practical applications.

🧠 Tip: Platforms like Coursera, Udacity, and edX offer free foundational courses. Try “AI for Everyone” by Andrew Ng for a non-technical overview.

2. Explore AI-Powered Tools in Your Workflow

The fastest way to skill up is to use AI daily. Most tech roles already have AI-infused tools available:

• Developers: Try GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Replit Ghostwriter to assist with coding, refactoring, and documentation.
• Data professionals: Use tools like ChatGPT or Claude for generating SQL queries, explaining models, or brainstorming data visualizations.
• Product managers and designers: Use AI to write user stories, summarize customer feedback, or ideate features.
• IT & DevOps: Automate documentation, script generation, or incident triage with AI assistants.

🔍 Goal: Identify 1–2 repetitive tasks you perform daily and test whether an AI tool can assist or accelerate them.

3. Learn How to Prompt Effectively

Prompt engineering is quickly becoming a core skill in tech roles that leverage AI. Learn how to:

• Write clear, goal-oriented prompts.
• Use personas or role-based prompts (e.g., “Act as a code reviewer…”).
• Chain prompts for complex tasks.
• Refine outputs with iterations and follow-up questions.

🛠 Tools to practice: OpenAI ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Poe

4. Follow AI Communities and Industry Trends

The AI space evolves rapidly. To keep up:

• Follow top voices on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Substack (e.g., Ethan Mollick, Simon Willison, Lilian Weng)
• Join communities like Hugging Face, Papers with Code, or LangChain Discord
• Subscribe to newsletters like The Rundown AI, Import AI, or Ben’s Bites

📬 Bonus: Set up alerts for key topics like “agentic AI” or “AI in software engineering” using Google Alerts.

5. Start Building With AI

To move from user to creator, build something:

• Create a personal assistant using GPT-4 API or Claude.
• Build a Slackbot that automates part of your workflow.
• Train a small model with open datasets using platforms like Kaggle or Google Colab.

Even small projects give you valuable hands-on experience and showcase your AI skills to peers and employers.

Final Thought

You don’t need to become an AI researcher to thrive in a tech role—but you do need to understand how AI can amplify your work. Start small, stay curious, and integrate it into your daily habits. The sooner you build your AI muscle, the more valuable, efficient, and future-ready you’ll be.

At Burai, we’re focused on AI solutions to get work flowing – taking you from siloed teams to seamless execution.  To learn more about how we can enable AI for your role in tech, click here to request a demo.