Standout AI Projects: A Hands-On Career Workshop in New York

**Almost everyone in tech now has an AI project on their resume. Hiring managers have seen the same demo ten times.**

Tools like Claude make an AI project quick to build, so most of them look alike. This session is about the one that gets picked.

Sandhya Kapoor has led engineering organizations of 500+ people at Meta and PayPal. She’ll show you how the hiring side actually reads an AI project and where most go wrong. Then the room designs a production-grade GenAI system together, stress-tests it, and turns your own project into a story you can tell a recruiter.

**The idea behind it:** using AI is now expected in every tech role. What gets you hired is a production-standard project on a real problem from your own domain, and being able to defend it in conversation.

PLUS: Network with fellow New York-area engineers, builders, and technology leaders over food and refreshments.

**What we’ll cover**

🔹**Warm-up: what would make you hire me?** The room plays hiring manager and picks which AI project gets the call.

🔹**Market read.** What LinkedIn hiring data and 9,000+ live US job descriptions show about where AI hiring is growing.

🔹**The hiring manager’s view.** What separates a GenAI builder from a production AI engineer, and the most common mistakes, role by role.

🔹**System design case study.** Design a production-grade GenAI system live, one decision at a time. You get a starter repo and complete the core part yourself, then compare it with Sandhya’s solution.

🔹**Stress test.** Where the design breaks in production: reliability, evaluation, security, hallucination, scale, observability, cost. These are also the follow-ups a system design interviewer asks.

🔹**Resume and project storytelling.** How to write up the project and talk about it in a recruiter screen.

🔹**Hands-on exercise.** Draft a blueprint for your own portfolio project and a 30-day plan to build it.

🔹**Q&A and Networking.** Bring your question for Sandhya, meet the other alumni in the room, and network over food

You'll Walk Away With

✔ A blueprint and 30-day plan for your own portfolio project
✔A production-grade GenAI architecture you can defend in a system design round.
✔ Straight answers to your questions, and new connections in the room
✔ Connections with fellow engineers, product leaders, and AI practitioners

**Workshop Format**

**30% Industry Insights**
How hiring managers read an AI project, where AI hiring is growing, and lessons from real-world production deployments.

**40% Interactive Learning**
Guided exercises that help you think like an evaluator: pick the project you’d hire, design a production-grade GenAI system live, and stress-test it together.

**30% Discussion & Q&A**
Open conversation on challenges, trade-offs, and practical implementation, with your questions answered directly by Sandhya.

🎟️ Book Your Spot Now

Seats are limited to maintain an interactive workshop environment.

Whether you're evaluating AI initiatives, building enterprise AI solutions, or looking to understand where the next wave of AI adoption is headed, this workshop will provide practical insights, hands-on learning, and valuable connections with fellow professionals.