Design AI Projects Recruiters Care About

Hosted by Dr. Aki Wijesundara

Sun, Jan 11, 2026

10:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

368 students

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AI Engineering Bootcamp & Certificate
Aki Wijesundara, PhD and Manu Jayawardana
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What you'll learn

How to choose AI project ideas that signal real skills

Learn how to select problems that demonstrate system thinking, not just model usage.

How to scope projects to real-world constraints

Understand how to show tradeoffs around data quality, cost, latency, and failure modes.

How to present AI projects clearly to recruiters

Learn how to document decisions, architecture, and outcomes in a way that’s easy to evaluate.

How to avoid common portfolio anti-patterns

Identify project choices and presentations that look impressive but fail to differentiate.

Why this topic matters

Many AI projects look impressive on the surface but fail to signal real engineering or product skill. Recruiters look for clear problem framing, sound system design, and evidence of thoughtful tradeoffs, not flashy demos. This session breaks down how to scope AI projects, show real-world constraints, and present your work in a way that clearly communicates your decisions and technical judgment.

You'll learn from

Dr. Aki Wijesundara

AI Founder | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI researcher, educator, and founder with a PhD in Machine Learning and experience at Google's AI Accelerator, where he contributed to advancing real-world applications of machine learning and large language models. As Co-Founder of Snapdrum, he helps organizations design, build, and deploy applied AI systems that move beyond prototypes to production-scale impact.

Aki has taught over 5,000+ engineers, founders, and product leaders worldwide how to build production-ready AI systems using LangChain, RAG pipelines, and MLOps frameworks.

He serves as AI Advisor to the United Nations, contributing expertise on responsible AI implementation and policy.

His work bridges cutting-edge research and practical implementation across text, voice, and multimodal AI.

Alongside Snapdrum, Aki serves as CTO of Krybe, an AI voice automation startup, and CTO of Tilli, an edtech company redefining how learners engage with AI-powered education.

Previous students from

Google
Meta
NVIDIA
OpenAI
Amazon Web Services

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