Opinion

June 18, 2025

How should junior engineers level up in the age of AI? I polled CTOs to find out

While junior engineers should learn to work with AI, they shouldn’t wholly rely on it, especially as there are still limits on what it can do

If I were a junior engineer entering the workforce now, I’d be a bit confused about where my career is going. There’s a conversation happening around what foundational skills junior engineers need to learn when they have AI coding tools at their disposal. There’s also a question over whether an over-reliance on AI will lead to juniors losing touch with the fundamentals of engineering. 

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Miriam Partington

Miriam Partington was a senior reporter at Sifted, based in Berlin. She covered the DACH region and the future of work, and wrote Startup Life , a weekly newsletter on what it takes to build a startup.

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