This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sajani Lokuge, a 26-year-old AI content manager at an industrial AI software company. She is based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Loading audio narration…
I studied software engineering and started my career as a UX designer. I worked my way up to lead UX designer. I used to work in a very technical role involved in making the product — and now my job is mostly about broadcasting AI.
Roughly 10 months ago, I transitioned to an AI content manager at my company, where I head the AI communication and content strategy.
This is part of an ongoing series about workers who transitioned into AI roles. Did you pivot to AI? We want to hear from you. Reach out to the reporter via email at [email protected] or secure-messaging platform Signal at aalt.19.
The switch happened because my company needed someone who could explain what we were building to internal and external audiences.
I had already spent years inside the company doing design work and translating technical problems to users. I was also building a public platform on LinkedIn around design careers and AI, which now has about 26,000 followers.
My career has always been about making complex systems understandable to people who have to use them, and this was the next logical step in that.
Now, I develop AI adoption messaging. I produce and moderate our AI global town hall, which is a monthly executive broadcast that goes out to all our employees worldwide.
I also produce and host a video podcast series called “Voices of Industry,” where I sit down with senior leaders across domains, and talk about how they’re adopting industrial AI.
Some weeks, I lean into the video production part, and it’s a lot of traveling. Some weeks, I do more strategic communication. Others I do more sales enablement.
My skills were transferable
The whole job of a UX designer is to figure out what someone is trying to do and why they’re getting stuck. That skill transfers directly to AI communication because if I’m planning a town hall or producing a podcast episode, I have to do research first and figure out who’s going to watch, what they know, and what questions they’re going to walk away with.
Empathy is another transferable skill that is very important for any UX designer. Designers watch users struggle and learn to make decisions that are best for the person. That’s most of the job when I’m explaining AI to people who don’t speak the technical language.
The job titles are shifting, but the underlying work and skills of a UX designer aren’t going anywhere. Instead of designing screens and interfaces, I’m designing how people understand a new category of products. The principles are the same.
I learned on the job
Posting about AI got me visibility, but I still had to build my technical fluency. It wasn’t about learning how to code, but understanding our AI products so that I could interview industrial leaders and translate what we were building into something that a non-technical audience could follow.
The first three months in my new role, I embedded myself into AI product teams. I sat in their stand-ups and I asked questions that probably sounded dumb — until they weren’t.
Most of my upskilling was structured around the work itself. I think a lot of people wait to learn, and then do the work. In my experience though, the work and the learning happened at the same time.
Don’t wait to feel ready
I was very comfortable and happy in my previous role as the lead UX designer. I wasn’t looking to leave, but when this opportunity came up, I couldn’t say no.
My advice to people who want to make a similar pivot is: Stop waiting to feel ready. The people inside AI organizations are figuring it out in real time, too. If you’re a designer, you already have most of what this role requires. The AI part is learnable.
Don’t get an AI certificate and hope someone hires you. You have to produce work that proves you can explain AI to an audience. That’s how I got noticed.
Before the role even existed, I’d been publicly posting about design careers and AI for months. By the time the role was being created, the leadership team already had a sense of how I thought, what kind of work I produced, and what my strengths were.
My advice for designers specifically is not to treat your portfolio as this static folder of past projects, but more as a living body of public work. Write publicly. Show people like how you think about AI before they even interview you.
