# 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.