Ten Books Recommended for AI and LLM Engineers to Build Skills in 2026

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A curated reading list of ten books on AI engineering, large language models, and production ML systems has been compiled for developers and engineers looking to strengthen their fundamentals in 2026. The list features works by prominent authors including Chip Huyen, Paul Iusztin, Maxime Labonne, and Sebastian Raschka, among others. Titles cover a broad range of practical topics such as building LLM-powered applications, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and deploying AI systems at scale. The recommendations are aimed at software engineers and ML practitioners who want to move beyond surface-level AI tool usage toward designing and shipping robust AI products. The list was published on DEV Community and includes affiliate links from the author.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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