🔹 Core Skills (Still Mandatory – Baseline Expectations) These are no longer differentiators , but minimum requirements : Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA) Time–space tradeoff analysis Problem-solving approach (not just final code) System Design Fundamentals Scalable architecture Component interaction and bottleneck analysis Debugging Skills Identifying logical and runtime errors Validating AI-generated code (AI often makes logic mistakes) 🔹 AI-Era Differentiator Skills (New Expectations) These skills separate strong candidates from average ones : Prompt Engineering Writing effective prompts to guide AI tools Refining prompts for better code, tests, and explanations AI-Assisted Coding Using AI for boilerplate code Accelerating development without blindly trusting output AI-Assisted Debugging Using AI to trace errors in large codebases Asking the right questions to AI for root-cause analysis Error Handling & Validation Detecting hallucinations or incorrect assumptions by AI Ve...