Kaushal Patel
Kaushal had been a software engineer for 6 years.
Mid-level → Senior AI Engineer · $150K CAD · +50%
Kaushal had been a software engineer for 6 years.
Mid-level, stable job and decent pay...
But he knew he was stagnating. It was becoming "uncomfortably easy" in his words.
He tried to get promoted internally.
The company preferred hiring externally over trusting the people already there.
So he decided to take control over his career... because he didn't progress much in the last 6 years.
He came to the program not because he was desperate… he had a job.
But he realized waiting around for his employer to recognize him was a losing strategy.
Since he'd been heads down at the same company for years, he had no idea what to expect in interviews in today's market.
And technical skills weren't the only gap.
Being so focused on day to day work, he didn't know how to sell his skills.
Every time a company asked about a project he worked on, the main points he talked about were implementation details... nothing related to the business impact or ROI.
The next 2-3 months were mostly about filling knowledge gaps and preparing for interviews.
Learning how to talk about his skills, frame his experience as value to show up confident.
We also leaned into AI tooling and the AI interviews companies conduct nowadays.
One of the last interview stages had him build a POC in an hour using AI tools.
And he passed the interview with ease and got the offer: Senior AI engineer, $150k CAD, 50% salary increase.
The new company also pays him to stay on the edge of AI tools and sends him to conferences.
Work-life balance built into the culture from day one.
“Before this, my value was whatever my manager would say yes to. This helped me see what I actually bring to the table and I can speak to it now in a way I never could before.”