So I was realistic about the companies I could apply to with no PhD/Masters (No Facebook AI Research for me). I also made sure I could have some sort of tangible projects completed. (Created a GAN to generate images of street signs, DL to predict steering angle for a car based on video feed, etc) Then I went around to meetups, workshops, conferences to meet people and learn. Then through talking to people in person I found some smaller companies that are implementing ML in interesting ways (self driving cars, building recommender systems) and applied to the two that I felt strongest about. The key though is that I met people from the company and talked to them about what they're working on and what I've been working on and if there's overlap, it shows that I can contribute to what they're working on. Every position has a requirement of some sort of degree, but I just ignore that and apply anyway if I've already met and talked to people at the company.

Good tips, thank you. I started in algorithmic trading with Java and Entprise-y stuff. Got bored and moved to front-end. Now looking to move to ML. Like you, no degree, but I apply anyway as long as I feel I have the right signaling.