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AI & Automation Engineer Roadmap
Developers who want to build autonomous agents, implement RAG systems, and automate workflows using LLMs and tools like N8N.
Timeline
3 to 5 months.
Avg Salary
$100,000 - $180,000+
Freelance
Massive. Every business wants to 'add AI' to their workflow.
Remote Work
Extremely High.
Stage 1: AI Foundations & APIs
30 DaysUnderstand how to talk to LLMs programmatically.
Week 1: Prompt Engineering
Learn how to write deterministic prompts.
Few-Shot PromptingChain of ThoughtSystem Prompts
Week 2: OpenAI & Anthropic APIs
Connect to LLMs using code.
Function CallingStreamingToken Management
Stage 2: RAG & Vector Databases
30 DaysGive your AI long-term memory and company data.
Week 3: Embeddings
Convert text to numbers for semantic search.
Text-Embedding-3Cosine SimilarityChunking Strategies
Week 4: Vector Databases
Store and retrieve embeddings.
PineconeSupabase pgvectorChromaDB
Stage 3: Agents & Automation
30 DaysBuild AI that can take actions.
Week 5: LangChain & LlamaIndex
Frameworks for building complex AI apps.
AgentsToolsMemoryRetrieval
Week 6: N8N & Workflow Automation
Build no-code/low-code AI pipelines.
WebhooksN8N AI NodesZapier Integration
Projects to Build
- PDF ChatbotUpload a PDF and chat with it using RAG.Target: Embeddings & Vector DBs
- Automated Customer SupportAn N8N workflow that reads emails, generates a draft reply via LLM, and saves it in Slack.Target: N8N & APIs
Common Mistakes
- • Training custom models when a simple prompt + API call would work.
- • Ignoring context window limitations and token costs.
- • Not understanding Vector Embeddings and how semantic search works.
Portfolio Tips
- Build tools that save actual business hours (e.g., automated invoice parsers).
- Include a breakdown of your token costs and latency in your README.