OpenAI asked him this question. I still can’t believe it.

Last week I caught up with one of the participants in our 6-week AI Project Challenge.

Let’s call him Robert (name changed for privacy).

Robert said something that stuck with me:

“Our skill set is supposedly in very high demand, but I’ve never had a harder time finding a job.”

Here’s the story:

Robert has years of experience. He’s been building transformer models since 2020.

He’s managed RAG pipelines with a 10-person team. He understands the math, the architecture, the deployment — all of it.

Yet, he was interviewing at OpenAI…

…and someone there asked him: “How does your background as a data scientist make you qualified to work in AI?”

I couldn’t believe it.

A Data Scientist, who was doing this work before most people even heard of transformers, is now being asked to justify his credentials.

And, out of all places, at OpenAI 🤦‍♂️

Here’s what I think happened: everyone became an AI expert overnight.

Product managers. Consultants. Executives.

LinkedIn is full of them.

And somewhere in the shuffle, the people who actually built these systems got left behind — because their title says “data scientist,” not “AI engineer.”

Here’s the truth.

AI products are data science products. OpenAI, Anthropic, every major model — applied statistics and linear algebra at scale. Data scientists understand this better than anyone.

The problem isn’t skill. It’s positioning.

If you have a data science background and you’re struggling to break into AI roles, you’re not behind.

In fact, you’re ahead.

You just haven’t connected the dots in a way the market can see yet.

Here’s how to start:

1. Retitle your narrative, not your skills. Rewrite your last three roles in AI language. “Built a classification model” becomes “designed a supervised learning pipeline.” Same work. Language the market understands.
2. Build one visible thing. A GitHub repo. A write-up. A demo. Hiring managers Google you — give them something to find.
3. Bridge the gap explicitly. Say it directly: “I’ve been doing AI engineering since before it had that name. Here’s the proof.” Don’t assume they’ll connect the dots. Connect them yourself.

The market is confused right now. That’s frustrating — but it’s also an opening.

The people who learn to speak both languages, data science and AI engineering, are the ones who will be impossible to overlook.

That’s the work worth doing right now.

Make the connection,
Kirill