How to Become a Java AI Engineer

A practical skill path for Java engineers moving into AI — foundations, Spring AI / LangChain4j, RAG first, tools and MCP, agents when needed, guardrails, eval, and portfolio proof.

What The Role Is

Production Java + LLM features

Not The Shortcut

Prompt-only “engineer” with no APIs

Foundations First

Java 21+ · Spring Boot · REST/JPA

Java AI Stack

Spring AI — Boot-native advisors & clients

RAG Before Agents

Chunk · embed · index · retrieve · cite