Anyone can claim to be an up-and-coming AI engineer. Here are my receipts instead.
"Up and coming." "Promising." "One to watch." Every job board and every LinkedIn feed is full of people describing themselves with adjectives. I do not want to do that, because adjectives are unverifiable noise. So this post is something else: my first year of building in public, in receipts, with links. Judge the trajectory, not the adjectives. The receipts 2022 — the degree, done at night. I…
In his first year of building in public, this individual provided concrete evidence of their progress in the field of AI engineering through a series of tangible projects and accomplishments. Starting with a degree in Computing and IT from the Open University, completed while maintaining a full-time job, this person demonstrated determination and commitment.
In 2025, they built a set of production-ready workflow templates for n8n, with an alert monitor running 1,892 times with a 99.7% success rate, and a lead qualification system with 247 runs and a 99.2% success rate. These templates were open-sourced as n8n-automation-templates.
In 2026, they created a job search engine that automated their own job hunting process, evaluating over 1,500 postings and submitting 12 applications. The engine is accessible on remote-job-engine and job-sweep. Additionally, this year saw the development of a composable ETL framework, a SQL playground with 55 templates and 115 tests, a file automation toolkit, and a finance analytics dashboard. All of these projects included comprehensive test suites.
In October 2026, the individual published three technical articles, a bilingual portfolio site, and a live demo, replacing dead links. The emphasis on tests and honest lessons learned, including the lack of a professional software engineering title, makes these receipts more valuable than any certificate.
Having experienced the process firsthand, the individual seeks opportunities to apply their skills in AI, automation, or data engineering as a junior or associate. They offer a résumé of their accomplishments through the provided links on reaver1000.github.io, inviting potential employers to consider their unique approach to building in public.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
