Practical Project Roadmap to Learn Generative AI and LLM Engineering

A structured learning roadmap for Generative AI and LLM engineering recommends building hands-on projects rather than relying solely on tutorials. The four-stage path progresses from core LLM usage to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), fine-tuning, and model evaluation. Beginners are advised to start by building a lead-qualification system that uses prompt engineering and structured outputs to assess sales leads. The next stage introduces RAG, where users connect an LLM to a custom knowledge base of company documents to answer grounded questions. Advanced stages cover fine-tuning open-source models using techniques like LoRA and QLoRA, as well as evaluating model performance against a baseline.