PREVIOUSLY: AI ENGINEERING BOOTCAMP
The AI FDE Certification 1.1
An industry-standard certification for forward-deployed engineers and builders ready to ship production AI systems. To join us, apply for the course, and then we'll review your application and send the next steps.
Cohort begins soon, $5,250 per individual
AI Makerspace operates on an adaptive curriculum, updated cohort by cohort, so learners are never behind in their capabilities.
The full journey covers the entire modern AI stack — LLMs → RAG → Agents → Evals → MVPs → Use Cases → Production.
Register Now: AI FDE Certification
Cohort 11 from Sept 29 - Dec 10, 2026 [v1.1] will see:
- 🧭 Course and applications process redesign to align with active, advanced, mid-career AI Engineers
- 🛠️ Updates to the foundational AI Engineer dev stack to mirror more closely what we've found at large companies (e.g., VSCode, Claude Code)
- 🎯 Intentional use-case identification aligned with industry best practices
- 🔒 Unblocking the bottleneck of highly sensitive, private data via Synthetic Data Generation with Open LLMs
- 🔎 Agentic search variants of RAG (e.g., Direct Corpus Interaction (DCI), LLM Wikis)
- 🧩 Tools vs. Skills vs. MCP vs. Subagents vs. Universal Tool Calling Protocol (UTCP) vs. Code Mode
- 🔁 Harness & loop engineering for long-running agents (e.g., Ralph, Spec-Driven Dev)
- 🛡️ Security fundamentals including observability for detection & prevention
- 🥷 Adversarial security techniques (e.g., prompt optimization for prompt injection, context bombing)
- 🎥 Extending multimodality to video search & building multi-agent voice applications
To join us:
- View our course and complete your AI FDE Certification application.
- Your application will be reviewed by our team to share the next steps.
Grow Your Career and Systems You Can Build with an AI Engineer Certification
Get the industry-standard AI Engineer Certification you want for building better systems and thriving in the near future. Build, evaluate, and deploy agentic AI systems in production over 10 weeks.
From RAG to Agents to Evals to Production — AI Makerspace takes builders through the full arc of shipping real, agentic AI systems. Here's the story of the impact, the people, and the curriculum behind The AI Engineer Certification.
Why Software Engineers and Data Scientists Choose AI Makerspace
We don’t accept everyone into this learning experience and community. This program is designed for qualified technical leaders who are building systems. Because more tutorials, tools, token budgets, more “Intro to ChatGPT,” and prompt tricks aren’t the answer you’re looking for. You want the reps, and to add in systems thinking. Most importantly, you want to generate outcomes and ROI from what you build.
If you’re not ready yet, build your first application, or reference our previous training on how to do this. That’s the entry point.
To join us:
- View our course and complete your AI FDE Certification application.
- Your application will be reviewed by our team to share the next steps.
Student Dreams Achieved
and ROI Realized
Building, shipping, and sharing your solutions with a community goes the distance. See where some of our featured graduates land next and who drives a big impact in their organizations.
Juan Ovalle: Mistral AI
2023 Graduate, 2024–2026 Peer Supporter Landed a role on the Applied AI team at Mistral AI, crediting the program's mentors for the mindset and guidance that carried him there.
Arthi Kasturirangan: Informa
2024 Graduate, 2025 Peer Supporter Now VP of AI Engineering, building enterprise AI platforms and agentic systems. She was part of the team that shipped Elysia, Informa's internal AI system — a project championed by Informa's Chief AI & Innovation Officer.
Partnerships And Tools
This AI Forward Deployed Engineering Certification program is always current by training thousands of engineers and working at the edge of applied AI.
The instructors you'll learn and build with are certified AI engineers themselves and are actively in production and driving ROI in their roles. At AI Makerspace, we are practitioners and builders, and we provide a growing global community for you to build alongside.
Because we believe building, shipping, and sharing is the foundation of real learning. For larger teams to join, please explore our group rate of $3,200 per student, or explore our custom enterprise training.
Our team has contributed to ecosystems connected to:
- AI Aspire, Andrew Ng’s advisory firm
- Anthropic and Claude Certified Partner
- DeepLearning.ai
- LangChain
- Arcee AI
- Vibrant Labs
- LlamaIndex
Build. 🏗️ Ship. 🚢 Share. 🚀
Training you to build, deploy, and improve your own real AI systems is what we do. This is not more theory or hypothetical use cases.
Every week through the AI FDE Certification, you will:
- Build your own agentic application
- Ship a real working system
- Share what you’ve created to a group
We reduce the complexity of modern AI engineering into a structured, repeatable process.
You will learn to balance:
- Foundational patterns (RAG, agents, evals)
- Practical system design
- Real-world execution
The result:
At the end of these 10 weeks, you don’t simply understand AI systems; you have built a real one and know which one comes next. If you're up for the challenge, welcome!
- View our course and complete your AI FDE Certification application.
- Your application will be reviewed by our team to share the next steps.
The AI FDE Certification
Building Blocks
Hands-on learning with AI Makerspace follows these steps as the building blocks of a strong agentic and forward-deployed AI Engineering foundation.
All current curriculum and code we teach here are always adapted to be current. We introduce best practices or tools where they're needed. Meaning, you're welcome to bring your own stack!
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Module 01 — Retrieval Foundations
Dense vector retrieval and RAG fundamentals
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Module 02 — Agentic RAG Systems
Agents, tools, and decision-making systems
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Module 03 — Multi-Agent Systems
Coordinated workflows and deep research
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Module 4 — Memory and Context
Agents, tools, and decision-making systems.
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Module 05 — Evals
Measuring performance with real metrics
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Module 06 — Advanced Retrieval & Skills
Context engineering and agent capabilities
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Module 07 — End-to-End Systems
Building complete applications
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Module 08 — Production I
Servers, guardrails, caching
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Module 09 — Production II
Cost vs performance tradeoffs
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Module 10 — The Edge
Simulation, emerging tools, evolving systems
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Capstone Project and Demo
Build and present your own production-ready agent on Demo Day
Frequently Asked Questions
Onboarding
A standard macbook pro is recommended. 16 GB of VRAM or unified memory is the minimum recommended for the ability to run LLMs locally, safely, and privately. More VRAM can handle bigger models!
We recommend a visual Interactive Development Environment like Cursor, and setting this up is something that each person going through the training must do on your company hardware prior to kickoff
Because the AI advantage will not come from hiring a handful of AI experts, it will come from building AI capability across the teams already closest to the business.
The AI FDE Certification helps organizations turn experienced engineers into production-ready AI builders who can identify opportunities, design solutions, and ship real AI systems inside their existing environment.
Instead of creating dependency on outside vendors or a small group of specialists, companies develop internal AI champions like you who understand their systems, customers, and business goals.
Hardware Requirements and Time Commitment
A standard MacBook Pro is recommended. 16 GB of VRAM or unified memory is the minimum recommended for the ability to run LLMs locally, safely, and privately. More VRAM can handle bigger models!
The AI Engineering Certification is a 9 to 10-week-long program, while an average custom agentic AI training program is completed in 12 to 16 weeks.
All training follows our process and proven curriculum using the Building Blocks of AI Engineering and our five listed modules.
Expect 3 hours in class (1 lecture, 2 hours working with one another and experts), and 1-5 hours of solo working.
This project, which is typically your first AI deployment with us, takes from 4-20 hours.
Total = 48-120 hours to build your AI foundation
AI Forward-Deployed Engineering Certification Payment Terms
Individual seats for this certification are $5,250, and teams are also welcome. A payment for each registrant and trainee is due upfront and in full to join the cohort and begin the certification and work.
The AI FDE Certification is run through Maven to keep all of your payments, content, training dates, and 1:1s in one place.
There are no discounts for returning graduates or students at this time, and you're welcome to come build your idea or a pilot for your employer with us. Ask us about a group discount if you're sending a larger team.
Security Concerns
Production readiness is guaranteed. Security for your organization is a nuanced thing, especially considering the emerging state of the off-the-shelf security of new tooling as it arises.
We are well-versed in working with enterprise clients, including in sensitive and highly-regulated industries. Although we would prefer to showcase you as a client, we will always respect your privacy publicly and flow down terms within your NDAs to our instructional staff internally.
Student Outcomes and Testimonials
"Hands down one of the best AI programs out there and truly one of the few that shows you how to *actually build* an AI-native product (i.e. not just string together a prototype using some prompt engineering and some off the shelf saas tools). Vibes for the live sessions are also fantastic!"
Founder and CEO of Dual Logic
“The AI Engineering bootcamp has significant advantages for enterprise data teams. After having multiple team members complete the bootcamp, our approach to Generative AI projects has become more streamlined and effective, leading to faster prototyping. I strongly recommend this course to any data professional or team eager to upgrade their Gen AI skills and drive impactful innovation within their organization.”
Sr. Director, Data Strategy @ Kiewit
“Greg and his team were able to make complex subject matter easy to digest and very engaging. In just a few weeks time we were able to complete widely divergent projects to develop AI apps to solve healthcare challenges.”
Healthcare Technology Manager @ VA Medical Center
"A spectacular amount of information delivered in ten weeks. Lectures are extremely well prepared, and the combined expertise of Dr. Greg and The Whiz works magically. This is NOT an easy bootcamp unless you are already an AI engineer. But resources were plentiful, and our cohort developed a camaraderie and I believe some long lasting future friendships. Highly recommended."
Professor Emeritus, University of Utah School of Medicine
“AI Makerspace excels where others have come up short, empowering data scientists with the vital practical skills to flourish within the AI landscape. Through collaborations with industry trailblazers, they guarantee a concentration on the most pertinent and crucial expertise. They bring people up to speed on a subject that never slows down.”
Associate Director @ Berkeley Research Group
“The reactions from the team were overwhelmingly positive. They learned a lot and liked the way your Bootcamp is structured. Most importantly, they felt pride in completing the challenges… There was blood, sweat, and tears, but a huge sense of accomplishment! I will explore opportunities to work together in the future, so please keep me in the loop on what you’re building over there.”
AI & Data Tribe Director @ Hrvatski Telekom
Pre-Order the AI Engineering Bootcamp Book on Amazon Today
An exciting new option for self-paced learning of systems thinking and production AI is here.
Whether you're building your first AI application or deploying enterprise AI systems in production, this book provides a practical roadmap for understanding, building, and improving your modern AI solutions.
Launch Date: October 6, 2026
Price: $65 USD
🏗️ Build. 🚢 Ship. 🚀 Share.
To join us, apply for the course on Maven, and we'll review your application. If you want some extra support around enrollment, eligibility, or what is possible for you through our course, please start with a conversation.