How AI changed my role as a Software Engineer
Written by Sergiu Banulescu, Senior Frontend Engineer
From implementation to problem solving
AI changed the way I work more than I expected.
At first, I mostly saw it as a way to write code faster or get quick answers when I was stuck. But over time, I realized the bigger change was somewhere else: I can now get involved in a much larger part of the process.
As a frontend engineer, I used to spend most of my time around implementation. Now I can move much faster between an idea, UX, technical decisions, visual concepts, prototyping and the actual implementation.
It feels less like "here is the task, now build it" and more like being able to explore the solution from several different angles before committing to one.
From idea to something real, much faster
Probably the biggest improvement for me is how quickly I can test ideas.
Before AI, trying a different approach could mean reading documentation, searching through Stack Overflow, building a small proof of concept and then deciding if it was even worth continuing.
Now I can explore several options much faster.
I use AI for things like:
- Exploring different implementation approaches
- Understanding unfamiliar code or technologies
- Quickly prototyping an idea
- Debugging and finding edge cases
- Handling repetitive code
- Experimenting with UI, animations and visual concepts
The main benefit is not that AI gives me the final answer.
It is that I can get from an idea to something I can actually evaluate much faster.
Experience still matters
One thing I noticed pretty quickly is that AI does not make engineering knowledge less important. Actually, I think it makes experience even more valuable.
AI can give you five different solutions in a few seconds. The difficult part is still knowing which one makes sense, which one fits the existing codebase and which one is going to create problems six months later.
The better I understand the problem, the more useful AI becomes.
How I see the role changing
For me, software engineering is becoming less about manually writing every line of code and more about deciding what should be built and how everything should fit together.
I still write code, but I spend more time thinking about architecture, UX, trade-offs and the overall solution.
So AI has not really made my role smaller.
If anything, it has made it broader.
