We built this course after working with over five hundred students since August, 2023, 350+ of whom we put through the paces of our intense, 10-week flagship course, The AI Engineering Bootcamp: https://maven.com/aimakerspace/ai-eng-bootcamp

Only 175 received a certification: https://bit.ly/aie-cert-process

Why?

Because even though students could complete The AI Engineering Challenge, that didn't mean that they really understood the core concepts and code required to build 🏗️, ship 🚢, and share 🚀 end-to-end LLM applications.

You know, the important, boring bits.

- How do you actually construct a front end using tools from the React Ecosystem (e.g., Next.js, Remix, etc.)?

- What about a back end using Python (e.g., FastAPI, Flask, Django, etc.)?

- What about connecting them using AI-assist with industry-standard version control and branching?

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This was true before vibe-coding, when we used to use Chainlit for front ends and Hugging Face Spaces to deploy back ends.

These days, it's all about vibes.

It's all about AI-assist and using coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Devin, Manus, and the like.

But AI-assist doesn't help you understand how to fix things when they go wrong.

In fact, in a world of AI-assisted development, the iteration process itself includes vibe coding, especially early on in the development cycle.

But alas, sofware engineering is still software engineering, even if it's building AI applications, building with AI assist, or both!

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e.g., When things go bad, you still need to be able to revert back.

When you need to add a feature to upgrade your app - like PDF upload for RAG or basic Agentic RAG - you need to be able to do this without ruining your existing code.

Vibe coding gets people into trouble AI doesn't hold context like we do as humans.

This has many implications, from the second wave of MCP to the future of product management upstream of the actual engineering, but those are all advanced topics we cover in our 10-week bootcamp.

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This course is about giving you the time and space to get the fundamentals right; and to learn the best practices for coming up to speed in an AI-assisted world, insofar as they exist already.

There is a great leveling occuring; that is, the people who are sophisticated software engineers are picking up AI-assisted tools like coding agents off the shelf and using them often just as much as beginners.

In 2025 heading into 2026, the vast majority of developers and future developers are all starting from a similar spot, and there has never been more demand for these skills.

This course will make sure you understand what that spot is, and how you can make the most out of the opportunity space for your career as the AI-powered future ahead continues its steady drumbeat of progress into the new year.

Welcome to the The AI Engineer Onramp.