How to Get an AI Job in 2025 (Beyond OpenAI & Big Tech)

Source: Nate’s Newsletter Date: 2025-07-10 URL: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/how-to-get-an-ai-job-in-2025-beyond

Summary

The article argues that targeting Series A AI startups beats pursuing big-tech roles: equity upside potential is higher, competition is less saturated, and role scope is broader. The recommended approach is “spearfishing” — deep company research, building a concrete artifact (fixing an open-source bug, building a custom dashboard) that demonstrates value before any interview, and cold-email outreach to hiring managers with a quantified proof of work. The author’s data point: roughly 70% of AI roles fill through networks and direct outreach rather than public postings.

Implications

• Hiring dynamics for AI roles. The 70% network/outreach figure, if accurate, means public job boards systematically undercount available AI positions. Teams building out AI functions should expect inbound quality to track outbound investment, not posting volume.
• Series A as the signal layer. The recommendation to target Series A specifically reflects where the current AI buildout is concentrated — post-seed enough to have product direction, pre-scale enough to still have equity leverage and hiring urgency. This is where agentic infrastructure companies are most actively hiring.
• Demo-first hiring. The “build an artifact before the interview” advice is becoming standard career counsel in AI precisely because the work is evaluable — you can run a model, fix a bug, or instrument a dashboard against a real system before anyone offers you a salary. This raises the bar for candidates but also compresses hiring cycles.