Role Chooser

This chooser helps you pick a lane based on what you enjoy and what companies will expect.

Quick decision guide

Choose Backend Engineer if you like:

• APIs, data modeling, performance
• distributed systems tradeoffs
• reliability and operability

Choose MLE if you like:

• modeling + data + iteration
• product metrics and model quality
• shipping models to production (not just notebooks)

Choose MLOps if you like:

• platforms, pipelines, deployment, monitoring
• reliability for ML systems
• enabling other teams to ship models

Choose Data Engineer if you like:

• SQL + modeling + pipelines
• cost, quality, lineage
• making data reliable for analytics/ML

Choose Data Scientist if you like:

• experimentation, causal reasoning
• stakeholder influence
• turning messy questions into measurable decisions

Choose DevOps/SRE if you like:

• incidents and reliability
• automation, CI/CD, infra as code
• systems performance and debugging

Choose SWE generalist if you want optionality:

• strong coding + fundamentals
• enough design to pass mid-level loops
• later specialization based on projects

Interview expectations by lane

• SWE/Backend: coding + system design + behavioral
• MLE: coding (varies) + ML theory + ML system design + behavioral
• MLOps/DevOps/SRE: systems + ops + design + behavioral
• DE: SQL + pipelines + modeling + behavioral
• DS: case studies + stats + experiments + behavioral

Fast sanity test

If you can’t describe (in 2 minutes) what you ship and how it runs in prod, you’re not ready for senior roles in Backend/MLE/MLOps/SRE.

Next steps

Pick the role page in this folder and follow its plan.