As AI and low-code platforms automate the “how,” the engineer’s value is shifting decisively to the “what” and the “why.”
The future engineer’s primary technical role will be that of a System Architect Their role will be to design and connect complex systems, orchestrating a mix of cloud services, microservices, and multiple AI models. Their core technical skill will be system design, not just routing and repetitive coding.
With this shift, the human responsibility for the system’s impact increases. As engineers write less of the code but direct more of its creation, the role expands to formally include Ethical Oversight. The engineer becomes the indispensable human steward responsible for ensuring these complex, often opaque, AI-driven systems are secure, unbiased, private, and aligned with human values.
The most valuable skills for this new era are the ones that AI cannot replicate:
- Critical Thinking and nuanced problem-solving.
- Empathy and a deep understanding of user needs.
- Business Acumen and a product-minded focus on outcomes.
- Collaboration, both with cross-functional human teams and GenAI programming tools.
This elevated engineering role, with its own unique challenges and responsibilities, is the subject of this book.
Structure & Design Philosophy¶
The book contains numerous examples as programs, including implementations of many concepts. Each chapter is generated from a self-contained Jupyter Notebook.
We assume a working knowledge of Python.
This book is open source, and the latest version will always be available online.