# Anyone can claim to be an up-and-coming AI engineer. Here are my receipts instead.

> Source: <https://dev.to/reaver1000/anyone-can-claim-to-be-an-up-and-coming-ai-engineer-here-are-my-receipts-instead-4m26>
> Published: 2026-10-16 08:32:32+00:00

"Up and coming." "Promising." "One to watch." Every job board and every LinkedIn feed is full of people describing themselves with adjectives. I do not want to do that, because adjectives are unverifiable noise. So this post is something else: my first year of building in public, in receipts, with links. Judge the trajectory, not the adjectives.

**2022 — the degree, done at night.** I started a BSc in Computing and IT with the Open University while working full time. I finished it in 2026. Not a receipt for talent — a receipt for stubbornness, which is more reliable anyway.

**2025 — n8n templates that run in production.** I built a set of workflow templates for n8n and put them to work. The alert monitor has run 1,892 times at 99.7% success. Lead qualification: 247 runs, 99.2%. Data sync: 312 runs, 97.8%. They are open source: [n8n-automation-templates](https://github.com/Reaver1000/n8n-automation-templates). A template that runs weekly for months without you touching it is worth more than any certificate.

**2026 — the job search engine.** I automated my own job hunt: 30+ ATS boards, deduplication against every posting I have ever seen, hard rule filters before any LLM call, then LLM scoring against my honest profile. Over 1,500 postings evaluated this year; 1,539 parked; 12 apply-worthy. Public and scrubbed: [remote-job-engine](https://github.com/Reaver1000/remote-job-engine) and [job-sweep](https://github.com/Reaver1000/job-sweep). The full story is [on dev.to](https://dev.to/reaver1000/i-built-an-ai-that-finds-and-scores-my-next-job-49je), and auf Deutsch too.

**September 2026 — the quality wave.** One month, four repos, all with tests: a [composable ETL framework](https://github.com/Reaver1000/etl-data-pipeline) (errors as data, whitelist mapping, CI), a [SQL playground](https://github.com/Reaver1000/sql-query-builder) (55 templates, 115 tests, now a [live demo](https://sql-query-builder-uzsrs2gl2af8avqsxappchw.streamlit.app)), a [file automation toolkit](https://github.com/Reaver1000/python-automation-toolkit) (20 tests), and a [finance analytics dashboard](https://github.com/Reaver1000/finance-dashboard). The lesson post is [here](https://dev.to/reaver1000/errors-are-data-what-building-a-small-etl-framework-taught-me-3mhn).

**October 2026 — the paper trail.** Three technical articles, a bilingual portfolio site, and a live demo instead of dead links. You are reading the third article.

**Build things you actually use.** My n8n templates monitor services I care about. My job engine found the shortlist I am actually working through. Tools you use daily cannot fake it.

**Tests or it did not happen.** Every framework repo has a test suite. The SQL playground has 115 tests that execute all 55 templates. This is not rigour for its own sake — it is the difference between "code exists" and "code works."

**Write it down.** The articles are not marketing. They are the honest lessons, including the ones that cost me: six perfect-looking job candidates that died when I read the actual posting bodies.

I have no professional software engineering title yet. Thirteen years in operations — Lloyds Banking Group, Deutsche Post, sysadmin, currently Amazon print production — and a degree, and all the receipts above, and no job title in software. That is the next receipt, and it is the one I cannot publish myself. Someone has to give it to me.

If your team needs a junior or associate who already works like this — AI, automation, or data, fully remote from Germany or UK — everything is on [reaver1000.github.io](https://reaver1000.github.io). The receipts are the résumé. The next one is yours to write.