Architecture
Distributed systems and resilience patterns, decentralized architectural decisions, platform engineering, and integrating AI into your architecture practice.
Download SyllabusDate: June 10, 2026
Time: Wednesday, 09:30AM BST
Most teams are making the decisions that determine whether their AI systems survive production for the first time, with no external check on whether they're getting it right. These 5-week online cohorts are that check.
Join Hien Luu, Sr. Engineering Manager and author of MLOps with Ray, and a small cohort of senior engineers and software architects with a minimum of five years' experience.
Each week, apply a framework from QCon talks to real AI engineering challenges from your own work.
Next cohort: July 25, 2026
Limited places per cohort. Saturday, 09:00AM PDT
USD1,470
per cohort
Most companies reimburse for professional development.
Download our
"Convince your boss"
template.
InfoQ Certified AI Engineering Cohort facilitator
Facilitated by Hien Luu
Confidential peer group
Apply QCon frameworks
Access 100+ QCon videos
Get published on InfoQ.com
Earn an InfoQ certification
Separate real AI value from hype in your own organization. Identify where AI changes daily engineering habits and architectural tradeoffs, and where it doesn't.
RAG is the workhorse pattern of enterprise AI. Design retrieval architectures, knowledge graphs, and memory pipelines that stay grounded as data changes and queries get harder.
Build agentic systems that survive contact with production. Cover the full spectrum from single-purpose tools to multi-agent orchestration, including the tradeoffs between autonomy and control.
Design the platform layer that keeps AI systems running without overspending on inference. Decide what to centralize, what to federate, and how to route batch and real-time workloads.
Build the evaluation and operational disciplines that keep AI systems dependable in production. The session covers the group capstone presentations for to a new or existing AI feature. The best articles get published on InfoQ.com.
Choose the cohort that works best for you.
Start your 5-week learning journey today.
(PDT - Los Angeles time)
Most companies reimburse for professional development.
Download our "Convince Your Boss" template.
These online cohorts are for senior engineers building or operating AI systems in production who want to pressure-test their architectural decisions with peers from different companies, publish on a platform senior technical people read, and build a peer group that outlasts the 5 weeks.
Designed for:
Watch a curated QCon talk on your own time
Join a 4-hour live session with your facilitator and your cohort.
Apply frameworks in small-group exercises using real problems.
Take away something you can use at work that week.
Each week, you'll complete a time-boxed exercise applying the session's framework to a real challenge from your work.
Throughout the cohort, you'll also draft a technical article. Each week builds on the last. In Week 5, you present your article to the cohort. The best get published on InfoQ.com
Apply QCon frameworks to your actual work during 4-hour weekly live sessions.
Pressure-test your ideas alongside senior peers from diverse companies and industries.
Refine and publish a technical capstone article on InfoQ.com under your name.
Earn an InfoQ certification as proof of your strategic technical leadership skills.
Hien Luu is a Sr. Engineering Manager at Zoox, leading the Machine Learning Platform team. He is particularly passionate about building scalable AI/ML infrastructure to power real-world applications. He is the author of MLOps with Ray and the Beginning Apache Spark 3 book. He has given presentations at various conferences including QCon San Francisco, QCon New York, and QCon London.
Sr. Engineering Manager @Zoox & Author of MLOps with Ray, Speaker and Conference Committee Chair
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The Terms of Participation can be found at https://certification.qconferences.com/terms-conditions.
Registration fees are not refundable.
Yes, we've developed a template you can use to explain to your boss how you can benefit from the cohort participation.
Yes, in-person cohorts are offered at select QCon conferences, such as QCon London and QCon San Francisco.
Yes, you can opt to pay by invoice during the registration process by selecting the "Do You Want to Pay Later by Invoice?" checkbox.
Our Privacy Policy details how we collect, use, and protect your data. You can find it at https://www.infoq.com/privacy-policy.
Yes. The program is open to freelancers and the self-employed. When registering, simply enter your trading name or "Independent" in the Company Details section.
The program is a collaborative initiative between InfoQ and QCon, both of which are practitioner-driven brands owned by C4Media Inc.
InfoQ is a practitioner-driven community news site focused on facilitating the spread of knowledge and innovation in professional software development.
We do not offer scholarships or complimentary seats for the InfoQ Certification at this time. Should this change for future cohorts, we will announce it via our official channels.
We are dedicated to providing a safe and inclusive experience for everyone. Our Code of Conduct can be found at https://certification.qconferences.com/code-conduct.
Participants who registered for the online cohorts will receive an email with detailed instructions on how to join the sessions during the week prior to the start of the cohort.
To ensure an optimal experience, you will need:
The program consists of five live sessions held over five weeks, each lasting four hours, plus weekly assignments and a group Capstone project.
Each weekly session is a 4-hour live workshop. This is a significant time investment because we are not just watching talks.
We are undertaking the challenging, practical work of applying these frameworks to real-world challenges alongside your senior peer group.
This programme assumes you already have deep technical expertise. Each week is structured around a real decision you are working on, not a case study. The focus is the skills that senior engineers find hardest to get from inside their own organisation: pressure-testing decisions with peers, articulating tradeoffs to stakeholders, and making the kind of decisions that are difficult to reverse.
Some of the most valuable learning happens in peer discussion. Hearing how others think through similar challenges can be just as useful as the session content itself.
Learning with a peer group gives you different perspectives, helps you build confidence, and makes it easier to apply what you learn in your own work. That's why this program is designed around a confidential peer group, live exercises, expert facilitation, and group-based project assignments, and not just self-paced study.
This cohort gives you the confidential peer group and an experienced facilitator to do that work, and you'll earn the InfoQ Certified AI Engineering Program (ICAEP) certification as a result.
The Capstone project is the final milestone where you co-author a professional technical article (2,000–3,000 words) applying the concepts covered. Examples can be found on InfoQ.com.
Certification is awarded based on two factors: consistent attendance and active participation in the live sessions, and the successful completion of the group Capstone project.
This is for software engineers, AI/ML platform engineers, software architects, and technical leaders with at least 5 years of experience who are involved in setting technical strategy.
Certification is awarded based on active participation in the cohort and completion of the capstone assessment in Week 5.
Distributed systems and resilience patterns, decentralized architectural decisions, platform engineering, and integrating AI into your architecture practice.
Download SyllabusDate: June 10, 2026
Time: Wednesday, 09:30AM BST
RAG and context pipelines, agent design, AI platform and infrastructure decisions, and the evaluation and reliability disciplines that keep AI systems running in production.
Download SyllabusDate: July 25, 2026
Time: Saturday, 09:00AM PDT
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