Courses / Live bootcamps
Forward Deployed Engineer Bootcamp
Deploy AI systems inside a customer's walls and hand them over running.
- weeks, live on Zoom
- 12
- hours a week
- 15
- deployed projects
- 6
- minutes 1-1, every week
- 30
Who it is for, and what you receive.
Engineers with Python and SQL who have shipped something and want the customer-facing role that AI labs and enterprise vendors are hiring for fastest.
Before you start
Comfortable in Python and SQL; you have shipped something before.
Skills
- Python
- SQL
- data pipelines
- LLM workflows
- evals
- cloud deployment
- customer discovery
- documentation
A week, about 15 hours
- Live on Zoom
- 4h
- Recorded lessons and exercises
- 6h
- The project
- 5h
- 1
Six deployed projects
Each graded by Nova against a published rubric and signed off by the instructor at the gate.
- 2
The recorded lessons
The track's lessons and exercises, graded line by line, open for twelve months after the cohort ends.
- 3
Live on Zoom every week
A 90-minute live code review, a 60-minute squad lab, 60 minutes of office hours, and a 30-minute 1-1 with your instructor.
- 4
Your hiring plan
Opened in week 1 and reviewed in every 1-1: target roles, the gap map, the proof list, weekly actions, an interview log, the outcome.
- 5
The record
Every grade and every project with its repository at square1ai.com/u/{handle}, and the recording of your viva, verifiable by any employer.
- 6
The certificate
A credential ID that resolves at square1ai.com/verify to the real completion.
- 7
The hiring sprint
Weeks 11 and 12: CV and portfolio from graded work, applications, mock interviews scored against the role, demo day.
- 8
Nova for twelve weeks
A tutor with every submission of yours in its memory, at 2am as well as in class.
Twelve weeks in six blocks.
Each block teaches for a week, then you build and deploy a project, then a gate checks it before the next block opens. The project and its gate are the block's record entry.
Live time each week on Zoom: a 90-minute class where the instructor reviews real submissions, a 60-minute squad lab, 60 minutes of office hours, and your own 30-minute 1-1. Nothing is lectured live; the recorded lessons do that.
- 1
Discovery
Weeks 1 to 2Week 1
How forward-deployed teams work
- The FDE role at labs and vendors
- Discovery interviews and reading a data landscape
- Scoping a pilot
- The security questions a customer asks first
You build: Discovery plan and interview script
Week 2
Project 1: the pilot scope
- Meridian Logistics, the fictional customer for the whole programme
- Risk registers and success metrics
You build: Pilot scope and data map, deployed as a repo
Project 1, the gate at week 2
Pilot scope
Meridian Logistics wants to cut the time its operations team spends triaging exception emails. Scope a twelve-week pilot.
You hand in
- Scope document
- Data map
- Risk register
- A success metric measurable today
- All in a repo
The gate
The scope names the data, the owner, the metric and the risk.
- 2
Data out and clean
Weeks 3 to 4Week 3
Data out and clean
- Extracting from CRMs, Postgres, S3 and PDFs
- Cleaning with pandas
- Validation with Pydantic and expectation checks
- Idempotent pipelines
You build: Extraction scripts with tests
Week 4
Project 2: the pipeline
- Scheduling and reruns
- Data-quality reports
You build: A scheduled pipeline landing clean, tested tables
Project 2, the gate at week 4
Data pipeline
Pull the exception emails and the shipments they refer to into one clean table, every hour.
You hand in
- Scheduled pipeline
- Schema and validation checks
- Tests
- A data-quality report
The gate
Reruns idempotently; the tests pass; a bad batch is rejected.
- 3
The workflow
Weeks 5 to 6Week 5
The workflow
- Designing an LLM workflow around a real process
- Prompt and tool design
- Structured output
- Where a human reviews
You build: Workflow design and first end-to-end run; squads form
Week 6
Project 3: the workflow live
- Review queues and overrides
- Traces for every run
You build: The workflow on real records behind an internal URL
Project 3, the gate at week 6
The workflow
Classify each exception, draft the reply, and route it to a person for approval.
You hand in
- Deployed workflow with structured output
- Review queue with override
- Traces for every run
The gate
Every output carries its evidence and a reviewer can override it.
- 4
Proof
Weeks 7 to 8Week 7
Proof
- Evals from the customer's own cases
- Baselines
- Cost, latency and failure budgets
- Reporting to a sceptical stakeholder
You build: Eval harness on the workflow
Week 8
Project 4: the numbers
- Labelling real cases
- Writing the one-page report
You build: Eval suite and results report, published
Project 4, the gate at week 8
Proof
Show the workflow works on Meridian's real cases, and what it costs.
You hand in
- Labelled eval set from real cases
- Eval harness and baseline
- Cost and latency figures
- One-page results report
The gate
The eval covers the cases the customer cares about, against a baseline.
- 5
Inside their walls
Weeks 9 to 10Week 9
Inside their walls
- Deploying in a customer's AWS or Azure
- IAM, secrets, network isolation
- Audit logs
- Monitoring, alerts, a runbook
You build: Deployment plan
Week 10
Project 5 and the viva
- The isolated deployment
- Defending failure modes on camera
You build: The system deployed with monitoring and a runbook; the viva
Project 5, the gate at week 10
Inside their walls
Deploy it in Meridian's own cloud account with the controls their security team demands.
You hand in
- Isolated deployment
- IAM and secrets
- Audit log
- Dashboard and alerts
- Runbook
The gate
The viva: defend the deployment and its failure modes on camera.
- 6
Handover and hiring sprint
Weeks 11 to 12Week 11
Employer brief
- A real problem from a hiring partner, in squads
- Handover: documentation someone else can run, and training the customer's team
- Working to someone else's definition of done
You build: The employer brief in progress
Week 12
Hiring sprint
- CV and portfolio built from graded work
- Applications and follow-ups in the hiring plan
- Mock interviews scored against the role
- Demo day
You build: Project 6 delivered; demo day
Project 6, the gate at week 12
Handover and the employer brief
Hand the system to Meridian's team, and ship a real brief from a hiring partner.
You hand in
- Handover pack
- A recorded training session
- The employer brief delivered
- Demo day
The gate
The customer's team runs it without you; the brief's owner accepts the result.
What you can do by week 12.
A portfolio that looks like the job: six artefacts a forward-deployed hiring manager recognises, from scope to handover, on a customer that stands in for a real one. The method as a repeatable set of documents and pipelines, and a recorded viva defending a production deployment.
- 1
Run a discovery engagement with a customer and write a pilot scope that names the data, the owner, the metric and the risk.
- 2
Extract, clean and validate customer data from CRMs, warehouses and documents into a tested, rerunnable pipeline.
- 3
Design and build an LLM workflow on the customer's own data with structured output and human review points.
- 4
Prove a system with an eval suite built from the customer's real cases, with a baseline and a cost and latency budget.
- 5
Deploy inside a customer's cloud with secrets, permissions, audit logs, monitoring and a runbook.
- 6
Hand a system over so the customer's team runs it without you.
Roles this prepares you for
- Forward deployed engineer
- Solutions engineer
- AI implementation engineer
- Applied AI engineer
No placement rate is shown, because there are no graduates to count yet. The roles above are what the projects are built for.
Your record at week 12.
Every exercise and project is graded by Nova against a rubric you can read, and every grade is kept on one page an employer can open and run. This is what the programme writes to it.
- Graded, line by line
- Nova reads every submission against the brief and the rubric and returns a score, what you did well and what to fix.
- Six gates
- A block does not open until the previous project passes its gate. You always know where you are and what is next.
- A weekly 1-1
- Thirty minutes with your instructor, who has already read your code before the call.
- One page an employer can run
- Every grade, project and the viva recording at /verify. An employer opens it, runs the code and watches you defend it.
Record, Forward Deployed Engineer Bootcamp
Example
- Week 2Graded, gate signed
Pilot scope
The scope names the data, the owner, the metric and the risk
- Week 4Graded, gate signed
Data pipeline
The pipeline reruns idempotently and its tests pass
- Week 6Graded, gate signed
The workflow
Every output carries its evidence and a reviewer can override it
- Week 8Graded, gate signed
Proof
The eval covers the cases the customer cares about, with a baseline
- Week 10Graded, gate signed
Inside their walls
A viva: defend the deployment and its failure modes on camera
- Week 12Graded, gate signed
Handover and the employer brief
The customer's team runs the system without you
- Weeks 1 to 12Kept
Twelve 1-1 notes
What your instructor saw in your work each week, and what you agreed to do next.
- Week 12Kept
Your hiring plan and its outcome
Target roles, the gap map, applications, interviews and where you landed.
The entries, not the grades: those are yours to earn. The page lives at /verify and an employer needs no account to open it.
8 entries, twelve weeks. One email when applications open.
How we help you find a job.
The last block is not curriculum. It is the hiring sprint, and the proof you built in the ten weeks before it.
- 1
Your hiring plan, from week 1
Six parts you and your instructor keep: target roles, the gap map from real postings, the proof to send, weekly actions, an interview log, the outcome. Read before every 1-1.
- 2
The hiring sprint
Weeks 11 and 12: CV, portfolio, applications, mock interviews, and demo day in front of hiring partners.
- 3
A record an employer can run
Your six deployed projects and the recorded viva on /verify. An employer opens it, runs the code and watches you defend it.
- 4
The career agent
Paste a real job posting at /career and it maps the role to your graded work and what to do next.
- 5
The roles directory
Every role we prepare people for, what it pays and what it asks, at /roles.
One email when applications open.
Fifty seats, one instructor, twelve weeks. The waitlist hears the date and the price first, and nothing is charged before the cohort exists.