Breaking into a Career in AI with Chris Bremer

With a background in technical solutions and a true passion for working with people, Chris Bremer went from working with technology in creative roles to working as a technical program manager who helps his team innovate LinkedIn’s Generative AI (GenAI) platforms. Based in California, Chris shares his thoughts on how AI is changing the global workforce and strategies to harness the power of collaboration to drive innovation on his team.??

In 2012, Chris was working at a startup in Los Angeles as a director of brand integration. This role was exciting, yet he craved a larger playground—a place rich with diverse talent and expansive opportunities. Encouraged by a colleague who saw potential in him as a program or product manager, he started hunting for a new career path. His search led him to a product manager position at Lynda.com , where he quickly made his mark. When LinkedIn acquired that company soon after, he joined our world, diving into technical program management and eventually the realm of AI—a field where he has thrived ever since.??

As a staff technical program manager on the data team, Chris has been key to LinkedIn’s strategy of delivering a better user experience by infusing AI across core services. From AI assistance with profile building to collaborative articles , job recommendations, and more, LinkedIn’s engineering philosophy and commitment to responsible AI are designed to bring the benefits of powerful and responsible AI to everyone, all of which benefits from Chris’s support and guidance.?

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Evolving Roles at LinkedIn??

When he began his journey at LinkedIn as a technical program manager, Chris was on the team dedicated to building LinkedIn Learning, a brand new part of LinkedIn at the time. While on this team, he stretched his ability, stepped out of his comfort zone and helped build a training platform for all LinkedIn Premium members. This was one of his favorite projects that he’s been a part of as it allowed him the opportunity to create the learning content interface from zero to one and ran the whole gamut of the process—an experience he deeply enjoys. While in that position, Chris worked closely with the data team, whose work fascinated him; so, when he had the opportunity to fully join that team, he jumped at the chance. ?

In his new role, Chris focused on growing his skills and working with another dynamic team on a new initiative: building unified data foundations across sales, marketing and support, and as of late, working on the GenAI features at LinkedIn. ?

Staying Curious, Finding Joy?

Chris’s current role involves leading complex projects across GenAI, product engineering, data engineering, and data science. His team is rethinking and evolving the tools available on LinkedIn's platform to help members be more productive and successful. As a global workforce, we are in a transformational moment, and as he tells his kids, it's like going from when there were only horses to suddenly when there were automobiles—a huge leap into the future.??

?When working on GenAI projects, he adopts a growth mindset, encouraging everyone on his team to iterate often, fail forward, and think outside the box. Chris emphasizes the importance of his role in teasing out the different facets of his teams’ various outputs, synthesizing all the information into one unified direction. He feels that his success as a manager stems both from his growth mindset and a genuine interest in technology; most of all, he believes the joy he derives from working and connecting with people—and the open communication he fosters among team members—is essential to them achieving their goals.?

?Open communication is key to a growth mindset, and having a genuine interest in technology is critical, but the essential thing to have in a GenAI-focused role, in his opinion, is to enjoy working with people and understand how to connect with them to foster communication.?

Being “lucky to be in a position where curiosity is one of my job requirements,” Chris constantly asks people across teams what they are working on, imagining the multiple ways all their different backgrounds can be used in the AI space. To him, the most successful people on GenAI projects are those who are open-minded and willing to go on an experimental journey to solve meaningful problems and, at times, throw outdated procedures out the door. His team constantly experiments until something starts to gel, continually learning and relearning to discover what’s vital for members.??

Harnessing the Power Collaboration for Innovation?

LinkedIn fosters a culture of innovation in each role, which is especially vital in developing new AI systems. Chris has found that it’s best to be open to great ideas coming from just about anywhere, which is how you can generate the best projects. His team is encouraged to experiment, and he and his team can feel the support to do so from all angles of the organization. Not only is his team willing to go in new directions and be driven by curiosity, but they’re encouraged to contribute ideas to other teams’ work. The LinkedIn teams, across the board, encourage their work with GenAI, and his team passes that encouragement right back. He believes that cross-team collaboration at LinkedIn is where true innovation happens.??

Chris is often asked about responsible practices within AI . Testing LinkedIn’s AI is crucial—his team often must purposefully and strategically stress test AI applications before they can go public. To do so, they use a team from diverse areas of business and engineering backgrounds with different levels of experience that challenge their AI and try to get it to do the exact opposite of what they want it to do. This testing allows LinkedIn to create the parameters for responsible AI by putting the new technology through the wringer. From that stage, his team builds multiple layers of trust and defenses to ensure LinkedIn’s AI systems have proper guardrails.?

Climbing the Career Jungle Gym

Working in GenAI is not something Chris would have predicted at the beginning of his career. Before stepping into his current role, he had used ChatGPT or MidJourney to create random images or a funny poem here and there but had no formal experience in using LLMs. He often tells his team, “Your career is not a ladder but a jungle gym. No matter what stage of your career or industry you are in, if you have the opportunity to work on a GenAI project at any level, take a leap of faith and say yes. Even if you don’t already work with GenAI or have any sort of background in it, GenAI is here to stay, and getting experience with it will be incredibly valuable.” ?

GenAI has the potential to change the world, and Chris’s work at LinkedIn is dedicated to finding and delivering where this new technological force can give members a more meaningful experience. From building AI that aids people in finding a new role to creating better tools for LinkedIn’s suite of business solutions, LinkedIn is helping to connect the world’s professionals, making them more productive and successful, and better yet—transforming the way the world works.??

Are you thinking of integrating AI into your career path? Consider these three tips from Chris as you plan for what's next:

1. ?? When working in GenAI, keep an open mind, be willing to go on an experiential journey, and sometimes throw old ways of doing things out the door. Stay resilient and be ready to learn and relearn processes.??
2. ?? Think about your career path not as a ladder but as a jungle gym. Don’t be afraid to take what you might view as a sideways idea or even a step back as an entry point into a role that will foster learning and growth.??
3. ?? Remember that great ideas come from everywhere. Seek out ideas from all directions: top, bottom, or sideways.??

AI is unlocking new opportunities at LinkedIn every day. If Chris’ journey inspired you, check out these?open roles ?on the team.

To learn more about life at LinkedIn, follow along with #LinkedInLife on LinkedIn, and Instagram .?