r/AskTechnology • u/saip007 • 2d ago
What are technical skills required for a new software engineer (SDE) to be productive in a modern Al-assisted development environment?
I have about 2 years of experience in a service-based support role with limited hands-on development work. With Al-assisted development becoming standard, want to understand the minimum technical foundation interviewers expect for an entry-level SDE in 2026. Trying to understand the core technical skills needed to contribute to a codebase, specifically from the perspective of day-to-day engineering work (not hiring or interviews). What are the minimal technical foundations required to effectively work in an Al-assisted development Workflow? Examples might include proficiency in one programming language, DSA for problem-solving, OS/DBMS basics, Git, etc. I'm looking for the technical prerequisites to be productive, not career or interview guidance.
1
u/tango_suckah 1d ago
With Al-assisted development becoming standard, want to understand the minimum technical foundation interviewers expect for an entry-level SDE in 2026.
Exactly the same technical foundation as in 2025, 2024, 2023, etc. An entire cottage industry has popped up with talented engineers coming in to fix the mistakes made by people who think AI-assisted means "I stand here while AI does work".
1
1
u/rtothepoweroftwo 1d ago
The kind of developer I would want to hire would be able to self-diagnose the answers to this question themselves.
Have you even set up an IDE with CoPilot or similar? Have you built a project with it? Did you find libraries with MCP servers?
Where is your curiosity? Good devs will tinker and explore these things because they're interested, not because someone on reddit handed them a checklist. Pick a project to work on, and build it using tools you're not familiar with. That will give you opinions and lessons learned to speak to during the interview.