Day One Ready: What New Engineers Need to Know About AI — Engineering Now Unlocked

Day One Ready: What New Engineers Need to Know About AI — Engineering Now Unlocked

From ServiceNow Insights by ServiceNow Community

May 13, 2026 · 30 min

About this episode

The episode discusses what new engineers need to know about AI and its impact on their roles.

Day One Ready: What New Engineers Actually Need to Know About AI | Engineering Now Unlocked Starting your first engineering role — or coming back for a return offer — and wondering what AI actually changes about the job? This episode gives you the real answer, from two engineers living it every day. Jordan Shelton and Cynthia Mathenge sit down with Ian Thurlow (Senior Manager, Data Platform Software Engineering) and Andrew Yan (Software Engineer, Data Foundations) to talk about what day one looks like now, what AI tools actually do for early-career engineers, and what fundamentals still separate good engineers from great ones. If you’re about to start an internship, just got your return offer, or you’re a manager thinking about how to set new engineers up for success — this is the conversation you need before day one. What you’ll learn ✔ What AI actually changes about day-to-day engineering work (and what it doesn’t) ✔ Why the fundamentals matter more than ever — not less ✔ How to build a network at a company like ServiceNow, even if you start remotely ✔ How to use AI as a sounding board, not a crutch Chapters 00:00…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jordan Shelton, Cynthia Mathenge

Guests: Ian Thurlow, Andrew Yan

Topics covered

  • AI in engineering
  • early-career advice
  • networking
  • engineering fundamentals
  • AI tools

Keywords

  • AI
  • engineering
  • early-career
  • networking
  • fundamentals
  • ServiceNow

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ServiceNow

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