ROADMAP · ~14 hours over 2 weekends
Interview cram · 2 weeks out
You have an AI-eng interview in the next 1-3 weeks.
Who this is for
You have an AI-engineering loop in the next 1-3 weeks. You’ve built with LLMs but haven’t formalized what you know into interview-shape answers.
This isn’t a substitute for engineering practice — if the roadmap here reads
as unfamiliar territory rather than review, defer the loop, use
/roadmap/swe-to-ai for 3 months, then come back.
What to actually do
- Weekend 1: Read the 6 interview cards. Answer each out loud (record if you can). If any takes > 3 minutes to explain, read the linked lesson.
- Weekday evenings: One lesson per evening.
- Weekend 2: Whiteboard the system-design question. Read the LLM Gateway lesson. Whiteboard the LLM Gateway design.
- Day before: Re-read the case file. Don’t read anything else.
Company tag hint
If you know your interviewer’s employer, filter /interview by company. Most companies have a repeated question or two.
THE PATH
11 stops, in order
Phase 1Warm up1 stop
- 1
Lesson
What is an LLM, really?10-minute refresh. Skip if you can explain temperature vs. top-p already.
Phase 2Rapid-fire cards5 stops
- 2
Interview card
What is a token, and why does the same prompt cost different amounts on different models?Come in able to explain this in 15 seconds without pausing.
- 3
Interview card
Temperature and top-p both control randomness. What's the difference, and when would you reach for each?Same. If both of these throw you, spend a day on Foundations first.
- 4
Interview card
Give me three cases where semantic search over embeddings retrieves the wrong document — and explain why.The RAG failure-modes question comes up in ~70% of loops now.
- 5
Interview card
What's the difference between an eval and a benchmark, and why would a team run both?If you say "we tested on MMLU" in an interview and mean "eval" you'll lose points.
- 6
Interview card
How would you defend a customer-support agent against prompt injection when it can send emails and read a customer database?The security round question. Own the "architectural, not regex" answer.
Phase 3System design1 stop
- 7
Interview card
Design a chatbot that answers questions about our internal documentation. Walk me through the components and where the failure modes are.The system-design round question. Design chat over docs from scratch.
Phase 4Whiteboard-ready depth4 stops
- 8
- 9
Lesson
Evaluating a RAG system without lying to yourselfYou will be asked "how would you know your RAG works." Have an answer.
- 10
- 11
Case file
The eval pipeline that lied for a monthRead the failure-mode retrospective. Interview gold.
NOT COVERED HERE
What this roadmap skips
- The full roadmap. If you have 6 months, use `/roadmap/swe-to-ai`.
- Deep math. If they're asking you calculus on an AI-eng loop, it's not an AI-eng role.
- Prompt engineering as a technique. Interview questions are about principles, not tricks.