How to Use AI in Your Tech Career: Advice From an Engineer, a Designer, and a Content Strategist

Software engineer Chidera Igwe has one rule for AI-written code. If he cannot explain it, it does not ship. Tape that to your monitor.

The rule came up during an X Space hosted by HostFi on Friday, September 25, 2026, titled “How to Leverage AI in Your Tech Career.” It ran at 5 p.m. West Africa Time (WAT) on the @hostfi_app account, anchored by our very own Darling Fubara. Three professionals from different corners of tech shared how AI fits into their daily work. Their answers make a practical guide for anyone who wants to use AI well and retain their edge.

Meet the Speakers

1. Chidera Igwe is a software engineer with more than five years of experience in fintech, logistics, and compliance. He is also part of the HostFi team.
2. Daniels Sharon is a product designer who has worked across fintech, SaaS, and B2B. She builds no-code websites and uses AI every day.
3. Emediong Ekanem is a content strategist and AI video creator. She uses AI for strategy, freelance work, and video production.

Your New Coworker Is a Pair Programmer

Every developer knows the feeling of a week swallowed by repetitive tasks. Chidera hands a lot of that work to AI. He also uses it for coding, research, and documentation, and he leans on it for debugging, code reviews, and writing tests. It can even help spot problems in an application or its infrastructure. Speed is the biggest gain he has seen.

He has a name for the arrangement. AI, he says, is a “pair programmer.” A pair programmer makes suggestions, and the engineer decides what goes into the final product. Productivity goes up, and the responsibility for quality stays with the human.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Let's be real. When AI gives you garbage, the problem is often on your side of the screen. Chidera admits that when a result misses the mark, the culprit is usually his own prompt, or a gap between what he meant and what the AI understood. Context matters, and he reviews it again and again before anything reaches production. In fintech, where he works, the stakes are even higher. Sensitive data and compliance rules shape everyday decisions, so he is careful about what an AI tool gets to see.

The second trap is blind trust. Test AI output against your edge cases and use cases. Chidera also suggests setting review guidelines for the AI so it can flag issues, then cross-checking the results yourself. If you cannot explain the code it wrote, leave it out of production. He does not lose sleep over relying on AI too much, because he keeps the thinking for himself. “Hand it all over”, he warned, “and your skills will slowly weaken.”

Is AI Actually Coming for Your Job?

Chidera answered this one with history. Computers could calculate faster than any person, and the result was more job opportunities and faster delivery of work. He expects AI to follow the same path. As people get better with it, they find more problems to solve. In his view, you should be fine if you are the pilot and AI is the vehicle, provided you steer clear of purely repetitive work.

Sharon, on the other hand, sees AI changing the job itself. Deliverables are shifting, and so are the skills employers look for. Asked where she sees herself in five years, she said she may no longer be a product designer in the traditional sense. But she expects to be solving problems, whatever form that takes.

“Nobody needs to rush off and hunt for a new career”, she added. Everyone, however, does need to stay ready to adapt when the market asks for something new. She still focuses on users and business goals, and the job title may be the only thing that changes.

Stop Learning Tools Just Because They Are Trending

Tech Twitter will have you believing you must master five new AI tools before breakfast to stay employable. Designers are watching Figma timelines turn into Claude Code demands, and suddenly everyone is being told to become a “design engineer.” Sharon's advice for the panic? “Drink water and relax.”

Her next piece of advice was to attach a reason to every tool. She learned Framer to build websites without coding from scratch, and clients often ask for Framer sites. She has not learned Claude Code because she has not found a reason to yet. She learned illustration because it looked fun. Anyone who does want to become a design engineer, she said, should learn in a structured way and start with the basics. Random learning makes your skills harder to defend in a job interview or with a client.

Chidera gave the engineering version of the same idea. New AI tools and versions appear almost daily. Someone who understands their field, can solve problems, and can explain them clearly will stay steady when the next tool arrives.

Which Tools Are Worth Opening?

Sharon's toolkit includes ChatGPT, Claude, Google Flow and Antigravity, plus the AI features built into Figma. The task decides which one she opens.

Cost keeps many people away from AI tools, so her budget-friendly picks are worth noting. She finds Google Flow quite accessible for generating images, and she uses the free version of ChatGPT for lighter work such as basic research and writing. ChatGPT is her favourite overall, and she uses it almost every day.

She also uses AI in two specific ways in her design work:

1. Audience research: She asks AI about the people who will use what she is designing, including their demographics.
2. Safer images: She generates images with AI so she does not have to pick pictures from sites like Pinterest without knowing who owns them. That saves her from copyright trouble later.

Why AI Writing Feels Like Nobody Wrote It

Spend enough time online, and you will spot AI-written text within a few lines. It reads smoothly and sounds like nobody in particular. Emediong ran into this on the job. She writes scripts for a creator's social media videos, and the content has to feel relatable. When she leaned on ChatGPT, the creator told her the scripts lacked life. When she wrote them herself, they improved.

She draws a line between types of writing. Educational content may only need to inform, and AI can help there. A story, a book, or anything meant to connect with an audience needs the writer's own voice. She has tested the limits herself. She gave ChatGPT samples of her writing and asked it to copy her style, and the result still fell short of even 40% of it.

The same thinking runs through her content strategy work. AI can find links and build content calendars, documents, and presentations, which frees her for the rest of her workload. The ideas, however, still depend on how well she understands the brand and the problem. AI is only as good as the instructions you give it.

Employers Are Asking About Your AI Skills

A few years ago, many workers avoided AI, hoping that doing everything by hand would keep them indispensable. Writers had a second worry, since AI detectors were flagging real human work. Emediong recalled people saying their original writing had been marked as machine-generated.

She believes attitudes have shifted. In her experience, employers are more open to AI, and many want to know how you use it. She has been asked about her AI tools in interviews and given quick tests of her skills. For writers, employers also ask how you research keywords and how those keywords perform.

Her takeaway was that strong AI skills can set you apart from other candidates. Freelancers can benefit too. She said AI can help you build a portfolio that brings callbacks, as long as you know how to prompt well.

Can AI Video Win Over a Sceptic?

Darling volunteered as the sceptic. She admitted she is a hard sell on AI videos, especially when they promote products like beauty items. Emediong sees a big audience for them anyway. Facebook and TikTok are full of AI videos, and she said some creators earn money from them. Brands are moving in too. A traditional shoot means paying for locations and crews, and AI can bring that budget down.

With so many people making AI videos, creativity does the sorting. When a video makes her watch it again, she wants to know how the creator thought it through. Her advice was to think outside the box and try something different.

The Four Skills Most Worth Your Time

Across the session, four skills kept coming up:

• Problem-solving: Sharon called it the basic skill for anyone in tech, whether you design, code, or write. Chidera added that you should be able to explain the problem clearly.
• Prompting: Sharon said good prompts help you get what you want from any AI tool.
• Adaptability: Sharon and Emediong both pointed to the ability to change with the market.
• Communication: Sharon said many design difficulties start with clients wanting different things, and talking openly to find a middle ground helps.

Final Thought

Nobody on the panel told listeners to go all in on AI or to run from it. The advice was mostly to learn the tools you have a reason to learn, check every result, and keep your own judgement. Darling closed the Space by thanking the speakers and everyone who joined.

At the end of the day, whether you’re prompting AI to debug code, generating UI assets, or simply ideating scripts for a client’s YouTube, the goal is to deliver faster, remain indispensable and continue to earn globally. And for those doing exactly that, HostFi makes sure the money keeps pace through zero-fee deposits and in-app swaps, as well as virtual cards, without regional bank limits, for global subscriptions and tools. To catch the next conversation, follow @hostfi_app on X and download the HostFi app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.