How Can One Become A Good Machine Learning Engineer?

Today we live in the age of machines where almost every small and big chore is performed by machine learning techniques, isn’t it? We can see the latest innovations of machine learning in the form of self-driving cars, online recommendation engines such as product and service recommendations, friend recommendations on Facebook; discounts, offers, and sale recommendations on Amazon; Cyber fraud detection, etc.

It is known that data is the lifeblood of all industries and businesses. Data-driven decisions can make a difference between keeping up with the competition or falling behind. Here comes the important role of machine learning tools and techniques as they can be the key to unlocking the value of a customer and corporate data and meaningful decisions that can keep a company ahead of the competition. The goal of machine learning is to make AI solutions smarter and faster to deliver better results for the tasks.

Machine learning is becoming so popular and is being implemented in many sectors such as Manufacturing, Retail, Travel and hospitality, Healthcare and life sciences, Energy, Financial services, etc. Therefore there is an increased demand for machine learning engineers who are seeking courses like the Machine learning course in Bangalore and many others to kick start their career in this domain. This article will focus on how one can become a good machine learning engineer and become more popular.

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is known as a subset of artificial intelligence that involves training a machine to learn more intelligently and quickly. It is also known as an optimization process for AI technologies to provide better and faster training to AI solutions. Basically, Machine learning focuses on making computers learn more and faster from their experiences. It allows software applications to become more accurate at predicting outcomes without being specially programmed to do so. Machine learning techniques and algorithms use old/historical data to provide new output values and insights.

Nowadays machine learning experts/engineers are high in demand as AI technologies are capable of having a huge impact on society and advanced business practices and can revolutionize everyday tasks such as planning, logistics, operations, and production. It provides a view of trends in customer behavior and business operational patterns and can support the development of new products and services. Here, Machine learning engineers are the IT professionals who focus on researching, creating, and designing self-running AI systems to automate predictive models.

The types of machine learning can be categorized into four basic approaches: supervised learning, Unsupervised learning, Semi-supervised learning, and Reinforcement learning. Choosing between these algorithms depends on what type of data is to be predicted by Data scientists.

How to Become a Good Machine Learning Engineer?

As every stream requires some fundamental skills to become an expert, the Machine Learning field also requires some key skills and qualifications to become a perfect Machine Learning Engineer. These engineers are responsible for designing ML systems and applications including organizing data, executing tests and experiments, optimizing and monitoring processes to help develop strong performing machine learning systems.

Here are a few important steps that can help you gain expertise in this domain.

Achieve Basic Qualifications- The very first step toward any career journey is to achieve at least basic qualifications. The perfect blend of statistics, mathematics, and web development is the background you require to start a machine learning career. You also need to learn basic machine learning tools and methods to implement, use, and optimize ML algorithms.
Develop Your Programming Language skills- Machine Learning engineers are required to learn and develop their programming language skills with Python, R, SQL, Java, Scala, Julia, MATLAB, etc. With these languages, you will learn to code and program machine learning algorithms, which also help you access company data and work collaboratively with your team. So you might consider learning these languages for a bright and successful machine learning career.
Opt for any Machine Learning Course- This step is considered the most important step towards the journey of becoming a good machine learning engineer. Machine learning courses can be taken online and can help candidates apply ML algorithms to real-world business problems. Machine learning concepts enable students to use real data and select the relevant machine learning models. It also helps them learn to leverage the tools and frameworks to make decisions.
Learn Data Science Fundamentals- To become a machine learning engineer it is also necessary to learn data science fundamentals to keep them apart from traditional software engineers. These engineers should also know how to gather, clean, optimize and query data sets; understand data models, and make a connection between findings from data science and the building blocks of software engineering.
Gain Knowledge of Tools and Concepts- Besides learning fundamentals and certifications, sound knowledge of Machine learning tools, concepts, and technologies are also required to become a skilled professional in this domain. Get familiar with tools such as Hadoop, Apache Kafta, R, Weka, MATLAB, TensorFlow, Spark, etc. Also try to get knowledge for natural language processing, neural networks, informational retrieval, and regression models.
Get Practical Knowledge with projects- It is the best way to become a perfectionist, always try to do more and more practice with real-time machine learning projects. Once you have a solid grasp of how machine learning works in practice, try coming up with your own projects that you can share online or list on a resume. It can help you learn a lot along the way and the long-term benefits are significant.
Join Online Machine Learning Communities- To learn and practice better, you can also join online machine learning communities and groups of data scientists and machine learners. You can communicate with other machine learning engineers, find and publish datasets, and can create models in a web-based data science environment.

Besides all these important steps, candidates must also try to apply for machine learning internships and jobs; Learn how to get the right data from the right sources, or join any online course or Bootcamp to become a skilled and best machine learning engineer. So it’s never late to learn and practice to find your niche.