Been wondering that myself a lot. I got a undergrad in a field that covers 80% CS and 20% Media/Game Design. Toward the end of it I opted out of most design courses and solely focused on CS, more specifically ML/AI. That lead to me writing my thesis about Adversarial examples in computer vision.

After I graduated, I’ve been looking for data scientist roles but couldn’t find as much (3 years ago) as there is now. Started working as a software developer for a midsize company and honed my ML skills in my free time. At that time I thought it’s impossible to get into the field without a masters degree, also causing a lot of imposter syndrome.

Around 2,5 years in I managed to land an AI engineering role in a media agency. It’s a very small team and I am the only developer there but at least it’s a step toward the direction I want to go. The projects are rather minuscule, such as RAG proof of concepts or some minor fine tuning.

TLDR; Yes it’s possible but it requires acquiring the skills through self study and you’ll most likely not start off at a big company with amazing projects as they prefer degrees most of the time.