Originally published on AI Tech Connect.
What reviewers actually score The take-home is the deciding stage, not a formality. As of mid-2026 it is the only round where a hiring team watches you ship working software unsupervised — the closest proxy they have to your first week on the job. They scan for production signal, not theory. How you structure data, connect systems, handle failure, and measure quality matters far more than whether you can recite the transformer architecture. Retrieval is the gravitational centre. Most 2026 take-homes orbit retrieval-augmented generation, structured output, tool-using agents, evaluation and deployment — and across both markets, retrieval-augmented generation is consistently among the most in-demand AI-engineering skills. An eval of your own system is the biggest differentiator. A tiny…
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