AI is the hottest word in the job market, and many workers want to know how to pivot to AI.
While many tech workers are upgrading their skills to stay on the cutting edge, others are moving into AI-focused roles from entirely different industries.
Many companies are pouring dizzying amounts of money into AI, cutting some roles while adding new ones related to the technology.
Against this backdrop, a shift to AI could be a way for workers to future-proof their careers as the job market restructures. According to LinkedIn’s Jobs On the Rise 2026 report, AI engineers, consultants, strategists, and researchers rank among the top five fastest-growing jobs in the United States.
There’s no single path to AI, and Business Insider spoke to four employees who took very different paths. Learn how they pivoted their careers.
Natasha Crampton, Microsoft Chief AI Officer
Natasha Crampton is Microsoft’s first head of AI. microsoft
Natasha Crampton started as a lawyer and now microsoft’s First chief AI officer.
Her job involves working with engineering, sales, and research teams to ensure principles are followed when building AI systems. This also includes external work, such as supporting the development of new legislation and standards in this area.
In addition to law, Crampton studies information systems and said he has always been interested in the intersection of technology, law, and society. During the strictly legal phase of her career, she said she always worked on technical issues, such as helping Microsoft draft contracts.
He said people looking to get into technology from other fields should start by using it themselves. She added that many technical skills are learnable, so coming from a different background shouldn’t limit your ability to develop that background. She said a “huge amount of value” lies at the intersection of technical knowledge and insights from the social sciences.
Georgian Tutuianu, Hubspot AI Engineer
Georgian Tutuianu is an AI Engineer at HubSpot. Tutuianu in Georgian
Tutuianu, a Georgian, has gone through several transitions in engineering at HubSpot, from structural to traditional and software to AI.
Tutuianu said his ability to get into the technical weeds was an asset during the interview process, indicating that he has experience with AI.
He also His resume emphasized that There is a section dedicated to personal projects. Tutuianu included one AI project, but said that was enough. He said it came up naturally in the interview, as he was asked about his experiences using and building AI agents.
“It was an interesting project that we could talk about, and that was enough,” Tutuianu said.
Tutuianu said there was no algorithmic element to the interview, although he also had to take home a coding assignment and then review it with the recruiter.
“These interviews are not the typical software engineering practice of, ‘Solve this algorithm in front of me,'” Tutuianu said. “It’s more like, ‘Can you make something that we value? Show us.'”
Jai Raj Choudhary, StackAI Engineer
Jai Raj Chaudhary said moving to San Francisco changed his opportunities. jai raj chaudhary
Jai Raj Choudhary moved from a data-centric job to become an AI engineer at AI agent startup StackAI.
The 24-year-old said he reached out to StackAI’s co-founder multiple times on LinkedIn to land the job. Choudhary said he messaged his co-founders and started posting about StackAI and offering advice to the company, as he had used the company’s platform when he was a student.
He said he believed he received the offer from StackAI because of his understanding of data quality, client edge cases, matrices, and failure modes of the AI models and LLM systems being used.
He said moving to San Francisco, where there is a 9-9-6 culture, opened up more opportunities in the field.
“It’s not a casual 9-to-5 job,” Chaudhry said. “We work 9-to-9, six days a week. We wake up in the morning and think about the problems our clients had, and then we go to bed and think about the things that haven’t been solved yet.”
Another big change was taking a job at a startup that helped me grow and focusing on continuous learning. Chaudhary said he spent many hours every day studying.
Britt Molenas, Microsoft Senior AI Gamification Program Manager
Britt Morenas said she brings all of her English degree to bear in her role at Microsoft. Britt Morenas
Britt Morenas, a 37-year-old senior AI gamification program manager, studied English, communications, and marketing in college. She joined Microsoft as an executive assistant about 13 years ago and was a contract employee for the first five and a half years.
She then moved on to roles focused on gamification. That means using game mechanics to teach and sell Microsoft products.
She spent about a year getting certified to learn about game mechanics and became a full-time employee in the position. Six years later, she had the opportunity to learn about AI in a gamified way and spent three months learning about it.
Her advice to others looking to transition is to not let fear keep you from stepping out of your comfort zone. He also said that when it comes to the role of AI, we need to learn how it works, not just use it. Morenas added that he has no regrets about pursuing an English degree, as it is more important than ever to understand how English can be applied to AI.
“A lot of it is English rather than AI,” Morenas said.
Have you pivoted to the role of AI? We’d love to hear from you. Contact the reporter by email at aaltchek@insider.com or via our secure messaging platform Signal (aalt.19).