gremlin/Getty Images Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers interesting career opportunities to both technology whizzes and business mavens. Unlike prev
gremlin/Getty Images Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers interesting career opportunities to both technology whizzes and business mavens. Unlike prev
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers interesting career opportunities to both technology whizzes and business mavens. Unlike previous types of technologies, there are two tracks one can pursue — either building AI or employing AI to build their businesses.
Recent research conducted by Aditya Challapally, Microsoft’s applied science lead, explores these two tracks to AI success.
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For IT professionals, it means delivering solutions rapidly to stay ahead of increasing fast business changes — the technical career track. “IT professionals should actively explore new tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, and others to stay on the cutting edge,” Challapally told ZDNET. In many organizations, I’ve seen developers quickly gain a reputation as 10x-coders simply by leveraging these tools effectively, and that advantage tends to persist even as others catch up.”
From a business perspective, generative AI cannot operate in a technical vacuum — AI-savvy subject matter experts are needed to adapt the technology to specific business requirements — that’s the domain expertise career track. “As AI models become more commoditized, specialized domain knowledge becomes increasingly valuable,” Challapally said. “What sets true experts apart is their deep understanding of their specific industry combined with the ability to identify where and how gen AI can be effectively applied within it.” Often, he warned, bots alone cannot relay such specific knowledge.
Interviewing 50 business leaders on their need for AI acumen, Challapally found that in-depth knowledge of AI is in high demand — and the needs for technical chops and business savvy are converging. “Leaders rated this as even more important than traditional project management or business-related duties like bringing a compelling product vision or coordinating well,” he said.
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Business leaders cite the most intense need at this time “is for professionals who bridge both worlds — those who deeply understand business requirements while also grasping the technical fundamentals of AI,” he said. Rather than pure technologists, they seek individuals who combine traditional business acumen with technical literacy. These are the type of people who can craft product visions, understand basic coding concepts, and gather sophisticated requirements that align technology capabilities with business goals.”
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For those on the technical side, it’s important “to master the art of prompting these tools to deliver accurate results,” said Challapally. “I really think that the real strength for IT professionals now lies in their ability to manage various coding agents and tools efficiently.”
At the same time, he’s noticed that “some experienced developers tend to underestimate these new tools, dismissing them as gimmicks for novices. However, these tools can significantly streamline smaller workflows and coding tasks, and those who do take advantage of them find them extremely helpful.”
Top professionals, he continued, “dedicate time each week to experiment with emerging models, frameworks, and tools, even if they discard the vast majority of them.”
Challapally provided the following advice to technology professionals:
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On the business side, things aren’t yet at the point where hard technical skills may no longer be necessary for application development. “AI today is pretty good at building simple apps — getting about 80% of the way there,” said Challapally. “But finishing that last 20% still needs real technical know-how for debugging and making things work in the real world. This might improve to 95% soon, but only for straightforward applications.”
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For business professionals, Challapally provides the following advice:
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