What Does an AI Engineer Do Now? - Aparna Dhinakaran, Arize AI
AI engineers now build agent systems that automate the entire dev lifecycle, not just write code
“As an AI engineer, you no longer just write a function, you build a loop that allows that function to be created.”
Aparna Dhinakaran argues the AI engineer role has fundamentally shifted: instead of writing functions, reviewing diffs, or setting up metrics, engineers now configure agent systems to perform those tasks autonomously. The entire dev-eval-release-monitor cycle must itself be automated by the AI engineer. Arize is productizing this with a tool called Signal, which ingests traces and telemetry to identify patterns and drive the cycle automatically.