The Golden Age of AI

As you know on President Trump’s first full day in office, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison and SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son, rolled out the Stargate project that pledges to spend up to $500 billion on powerful new data centers that will build OpenAI artificial-intelligence models. 

For many years, Stargate was mostly known for being a cult film and TV franchise centered on an alien technology that lets people travel across the universe. After this week, it may be better remembered as a parable about the reach—and limits—of human ambition. Also, money.

What career opportunities does President Trump’s new AI infrastructure joint venture present to engineers?

President Trump’s recent responses to the panelists at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos provide insights into the Stargate venture providing many new engineering jobs. For example, when moderator Borge Brende, President, and CEO of WEF asked about the relationship between the U.S. and China over the next four years? President Trump responded, “I think that we are going to have a very good relationship. All we want is fairness. We just want a level playing field.” This points to the U.S. being in a greater power position, which will result in increased prosperity in general and more engineer career opportunities in specific. Not only the engineering opportunities as part of the more than 100,000 projected jobs created from the $500 billion Stargate AI project, but also many other new, ancillary engineering positions. 

Additionally, a recent survey provides support showing that 82% of all electronics engineers have deployed or are building AI products https://www.rdworldonline.com/think-ai-is-a-bubble-avnets-survey-of-1200-engineers-reveals-it-has-penetrated-almost-every-stage-of-product-creation/

As a result, there will surely be a lot of AI software engineering positions created for those proficient in such programming languages like Python, ChatGPT, C++ and Java. Moreover, there will be a diverse array of other overlapping engineering jobs generated including data analysis, machine learning, plant, and project engineers (for construction of the huge data centers) and energy related engineering positions (esp. since this huge AI data centers will require vast amounts of new energy). 

The partnership involves OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, but Elon Musk criticized the effort. Should engineers worry about this disagreement?

Elon Musk among others is skeptical that Stargate has the cash. Additionally, Microsoft CEO and OpenAI backer Satya Nadella weighed in, saying he was “good for the $80 billion” that his company was set to spend on its own infrastructure projects in its fiscal year. (Microsoft, along with Arm Holdings and Nvidia, is a “technology partner” in Stargate to help create the venture’s infrastructure, but it’s unclear what that means in terms of funding.)

Though Musk has offered some criticism of Stargate, this project would not have been conceived without Musk’s blessing. As I shared in a December 2, 2024 article in Design News, “Follow the Musk.” Elon Musk carries enormous weight in this administration not only for DOGE, which offers continuous improvement and cost cutting, but also with futuristic technical achievements. 

Therefore, I would be very surprised if Musk was not an integral part of Stargate becoming a reality. He is the de facto Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for President Trump. Furthermore, disagreements always happen among titans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Softbank Founder & CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Elon Musk all have huge egos. As a rule of thumb, you will never get such power brokers to agree on everything. Therefore, I would not worry about any disagreements at this time. 

Advice for engineers seeking to build a career in AI

I recommend pursuing AI prowess in a non-conventional manner. Growing fields such as AI are changing so quickly that formal classes or degrees will often have a one-year lag time for relevancy. This means that by the time the curriculum for the class or degree becomes institutionalized, that class or degree will no longer be as relevant.

Instead, engineers should consider joining associations, symposiums, lectures, work groups, and online learning to acquire needed cutting-edge skills, as they will be a more robust way to learn develop AI knowledge. 

Also, my recruiting team regularly complains that young engineers, scientists, and technology professionals lack strong interview skills. That is why my firm developed the “Real Benefit Exercise” for our engineering candidates. We studied top salespeople to see what they were doing right in closing their deals. Then we isolated those behaviors that were easiest to replicate by our engineers during job interviews. We found that the best ones spoke in terms of benefits to the customer. In this case you should view your interviewer as your customer and what you have to offer is a solution to their needs. Please go to https://strategicsearch.com/services-for-job-seekers/the-real-benefit-exercise/ to view and apply for free.” 

Additionally, for those looking to break into AI or advance their careers, my AI recruiting practice specializes in connecting top talent with leading companies—learn more at Strategic Search AI Recruiting.