12-Month Career and AI Development Plan

12-Month Career and AI Development Plan | Generated by AI

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Question: Based on Zhiwei Li’s resume, job search goals, and 2026 plan, what are the recommended action items for the next 12 months (May 2026 – May 2027)?

Answer:

Based on a thorough reading of all three pages — resume, job search intent, and 2026 plan — here is a comprehensive, prioritized 12-month action plan tailored to Zhiwei’s specific background and goals.

🗓 12-Month Action Plan (May 2026 – May 2027)

1. 🎓 Complete the Associate Degree (High Priority)

Timeline: May – December 2026

Currently 13 of 17 courses passed. Remaining written exams include: Computer Network Technology, Switching and Routing Technologies, Mao Zedong Thought & Theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, College Chinese, and Overview of Xi Jinping Thought.
Remaining practical exams: Fundamentals of Computer Programming, Computer Fundamentals, Database and Its Applications, Web Design and Production, Mobile Application Development Technology.
Action: Start reviewing for October 2026 written exam session around August. Prioritize the 5 written subjects in Q3. Schedule practical exams accordingly.
Completing this degree removes a major resume gap and strengthens visa applications for Hong Kong and Singapore.

2. 💼 Land a More AI-Centric Job Role

Timeline: May – September 2026

Based on the job search page, Zhiwei is actively looking to move from “AI tooling at the edges” to a role where AI, agents, and LLMs are the core work.

Target roles: AI Engineer, ML Engineer, Founding Engineer at AI startup, Staff Engineer (LLM/agent systems).
Target locations/salary: 30,000–45,000 CNY/month in mainland China; 40,000+ HKD for Hong Kong; 9,000+ SGD for Singapore.
Action:
- Apply to 5–10 targeted companies per month, focusing on AI-native firms, fintech startups, and big tech AI teams in Shenzhen/Guangzhou/Hong Kong/Singapore.
- Leverage HSBC Copilot top 6% ranking as a strong differentiator.
- Explore contractor-to-permanent at HSBC if the queue clears, but don’t wait passively.
- Update LinkedIn, GitHub profile, and blog portfolio page actively to attract inbound interest.

3. 🤖 Advance AI / LLM Technical Skills

Timeline: Ongoing, milestone-focused

Following the plan to “learn from Andrej Karpathy” and expand model training experience:

May – July 2026: Go deeper into nanoGPT internals — understand training loop, dataset preprocessing, tokenizer, and evaluation code at a production-engineering level.
August – October 2026: Train a larger model (GPT-3 scale) using rented GPU clusters (H100/H200 pods on RunPod or Lambda Labs). Document the experience as blog posts.
Ongoing: Study Whisper (speech recognition), nanochat, llama.cpp inference optimization, and quantization techniques (GGUF, GPTQ).
October – December 2026: Experiment with RAG pipelines, agent orchestration (LangGraph or similar), and fine-tuning small open-source models on custom datasets.
Q1 2027: Aim to contribute meaningfully to 1–2 open-source AI/LLM projects (beyond one-PR level).

4. 📜 Earn the NVIDIA NCP-GENL Certification

Timeline: Target September 2026

The 2026 plan explicitly lists this. This certification (NVIDIA Certified Professional — Generative AI for LLMs) will:

Add a recognized credential that complements self-trained ML skills.
Strengthen resume for AI Engineer applications at enterprise companies.
Action: Study NVIDIA’s official curriculum from July onwards; schedule the exam for September.

5. 🌍 Progress Toward Hong Kong / Singapore Work Visa

Timeline: 12-month groundwork

The 3-year plan mentions obtaining a Hong Kong or Singapore work visa and selling the house.

Action for next 12 months:
- Complete the associate degree (strong credential for visa).
- Actively apply to Hong Kong and Singapore companies that offer visa sponsorship.
- Research HKSAR Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS) and Singapore Employment Pass (EP) eligibility based on current and future salary offers.
- Consider whether selling the Guangzhou property should happen before or after relocation confirmation — create a concrete decision timeline by Q1 2027.

6. 🛠 Build and Ship 2–3 Meaningful AI Projects

Timeline: May 2026 – May 2027

Zhiwei already has ww, iclaw, and zz. The next 12 months should produce demonstrable, deployed AI work:

Project idea 1: Build a multi-agent coding assistant that works inside locked-down enterprise environments (extend iclaw), targeting corporate AI adoption. Write it up as both a blog post and an open-source project.
Project idea 2: Create a personal AI workflow automation tool (using LLMs + calendar/email/task management APIs), documenting it publicly.
Project idea 3: Use Rust (per the 2026 enterprise plan) to rewrite the CLI toolkit (ww) for speed and portability — this also demonstrates systems programming breadth.
Each project should have a GitHub repo with 100+ commits, a dedicated blog post, and a demo video or README with benchmarks.

7. 🦀 Learn Rust for CLI / Systems Work

Timeline: June – October 2026

The 2026 enterprise plan explicitly says “Use Rust to implement the CLI tool.”

Action: Complete The Rust Book + Rustlings exercises by August. Start rewriting the ww CLI toolkit in Rust by September. Publish it on crates.io by November.
Rust knowledge also opens doors to LLM inference engine contributions (llama.cpp ecosystem uses C/C++ but Rust is increasingly used in tooling).

8. ✍️ Maintain and Grow the Blog & Knowledge Base

Timeline: Ongoing — weekly habit

Currently at ~400 posts, ~70,000 page views/month (Cloudflare Analytics), with Singapore as the top visitor country — a strong signal of international reach.

Action: Publish at least 2–3 original posts per month on AI engineering, model training experiments, career reflections, and technical deep-dives.
Maintain the 8,000+ AI answer notes on the blog — this is a unique asset.
Expand into English-only content targeting the Singapore/HK tech community (since that’s the primary visitor base).
Consider starting a newsletter or Substack to convert readers into a professional network.

9. 📈 Improve Compensation and Financial Position

Timeline: H2 2026 focus

Current comp is described as “below where I’d like to be.” Target is 30,000–45,000 CNY/month on the mainland.

Action: Use the job search process (item 2 above) to generate competing offers by September–October 2026.
Even if staying at HSBC, use external offers to negotiate a raise.
Continue long-term and regular investing strategy in crypto and US stocks (already achieving ~20% annual returns).
Begin concrete planning for property sale if relocation is targeted for 2027–2028.

10. 🇬🇧 Improve English Proficiency (Optional Stretch Goal)

Timeline: Ongoing

IELTS 6.5 done (January 2026). Reading score is already 8.5.

To strengthen Singapore/HK visa applications and be competitive at global companies, a score of 7.0+ overall would be beneficial.
Action: If retaking IELTS is needed for visa purposes, target a retake in Q1 2027. Focus improvement on Writing and Speaking (likely the lower-scoring bands).
Continue English practice via Filipino/African/European tutors online.

📊 Summary Table

Priority	Goal	Target Quarter
High	Land a more AI-centric job	Q2–Q3 2026
High	Complete Associate Degree	Q4 2026
High	NVIDIA NCP-GENL Certification	Q3 2026 (September)
Medium	Train larger LLM (GPT-3 scale)	Q3–Q4 2026
Medium	Learn Rust, rewrite CLI tools	Q2–Q4 2026
Medium	Build & ship 2–3 AI projects	Ongoing
Medium	HK/SG visa groundwork	Ongoing
Ongoing	Blog posts & knowledge sharing	Weekly
Ongoing	Financial optimization	Ongoing
Stretch	IELTS 7.0 retake	Q1 2027

The most important thing to do in the next 12 months is convert your AI depth into a better-paying, more AI-centric role while completing the associate degree — these two moves will unlock the 3-year Hong Kong/Singapore goal significantly faster than any other single action.

References:

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