Work-Integrated Career Pathway

AI Engineering Immersive

Build a career at the intersection of software engineering and artificial intelligence. You'll train full-time, earn while you learn, graduate with two professional certificates, and real paid experience already on your resume.

Effective Tuition*

18 months

2 Certificates

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Overview

Program Length

18 months

Study Load

40hrs/week - months 1-4
20hrs/week - months 5-18

Work Load

20hrs/week - months 5-18

Delivery Mode

Flexible, on-demand curriculum
Weekly live sessions
Personalized mentor feedback

Faculty Ratio

8:1 Student to Instructor Ratio
1:1 Student to Mentor Ratio

Costs

Tuition: $29,900
Scholarship: $10,400
Earnings: $19,500
Effective Cost: $0

Skill Level

Beginner to intermediate
No experience required

Start Dates

The first Monday of every month

Credential

Software Engineering Certificate
Artificial Intelligence Certificate

Why Artificial Intelligence

AI Is No Longer a Specialty

It is becoming the foundation of how software gets built, how decisions get made, and how organizations operate. The engineers and researchers who understand how these systems actually work, not just how to use them, are in extraordinary demand. Graduates pursue AI roles with average salaries ranging from $100,000 to $135,000.

AI Engineer

$102,000 avg. salary

Designs, builds, and deploys intelligent systems that automate decisions and power modern applications.

Machine Learning Engineer

$112,000 avg. salary

Builds and maintains the models and pipelines that turn raw data into production-ready AI systems.

AI Research Analyst

$100,000 avg. salary

Evaluates AI tools, interprets model outputs, and translates findings into actionable organizational decisions.

What You'll Learn

The AI Engineering Immersive runs in three phases. You start with the fundamentals of software engineering, then move into artificial intelligence, and conclude with a capstone. In month 5, your apprenticeship begins and runs alongside your coursework for the remainder of the program.

Already a Software Engineer? Check out the Accelerated AI Engineering Immersive

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Program Outline

18 months

Project-based learning

Flexible, online format

Work-integrated design

Industry mentorship

Instruction from a practitioner

Apply Now

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Phase 1: Software Engineering

Software Engineering Fundamentals
Learn to build user interfaces and write clean, maintainable code using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You'll solve logic-driven programming problems, work with core data structures, and use essential developer tools, including GitHub, finishing with a project built around a real business problem. Catalog→
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JavaScript Fundamentals
Deepen your JavaScript skills with a focus on modern syntax, asynchronous programming, and testing. You'll build interactive, user-focused programs and finish with a command-line application that demonstrates clean logic and structured thinking. Catalog→
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JavaScript Interactions
Build interactive web pages by combining DOM manipulation, asynchronous programming, and client-server communication. You'll integrate functionality and visual design throughout, finishing with a project that brings interactivity and structure together into a cohesive user interface. Catalog→
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Front-End Development with React 1
Get introduced to React and the fundamentals of component-based architecture. You'll learn to work with props and state, translate visual designs into functional interfaces, and finish with a project that builds a set of React components from a provided mock-up. Catalog→
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Front-End Development with React 2
Assemble React components into fully interactive applications by managing shared state and coordinating user interactions across complex component trees. You'll refine your approach to application structure and maintainability, finishing with a complete production-style front end. Catalog→
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Introduction to Python
Learn the fundamentals of Python programming, including scripting, loops, functions, and core data structures. You'll work with libraries to manipulate and analyze data, finishing with a project that reinforces both problem-solving skills and real-world implementation. Catalog→
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Object-Oriented Programming
Apply object-oriented design principles to model real-world entities and relationships in Python. You'll build organized, maintainable backend code and finish with a command-line application that demonstrates clean architecture and database-ready design patterns. Catalog→
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API Development
Learn to build dynamic RESTful APIs using Python and a modern web framework. You'll cover request handling, data validation, serialization, and client-server communication, finishing with a REST API connected to a basic React client. Catalog→
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Relational Databases
Work with relational databases using SQL and Flask-SQLAlchemy to build database-backed APIs. You'll model complex data relationships, apply normalization and validation techniques, and finish with an API that integrates cleanly with a relational database. Catalog→
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Back-End Development
Build robust, secure backend systems using Python and Flask, with a focus on authentication and authorization using JWTs. You'll design APIs that support real users and protected resources, finishing with a production-style application integrated with a front-end client. Catalog→
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Software Engineering Project
Bring together everything from the program to design and build real-world full-stack software systems. You'll scope requirements, architect solutions using React, Flask, and a relational database, and deliver polished, portfolio-ready projects built around genuine business and user problems. Catalog→

Phase 2: Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to Data Science
Explore data analysis and visualization using Python, with a focus on statistical measures, the pandas library, and tools like Seaborn and Matplotlib. You'll work with qualitative, quantitative, and multivariate data, finishing with a full exploratory data analysis project. Catalog→
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Introduction to SQL
Build skills in SQL, data engineering, and database administration alongside core mathematics, probability, and statistics for data science. You'll write queries, explore table relations, and finish with a project applying SQL within a Python environment to solve a real data problem. Catalog→
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Cloud Computing, Generative AI, and Dashboards
Dive into distributed data processing using PySpark to bridge Python, SQL, and Spark at scale. You'll work with NumPy, Pandas, and visualization libraries to surface insights from large datasets, finishing with an AI-enhanced dashboard built around interactive data storytelling. Catalog→
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Inferential Statistics
Build the theory and practical skills to perform statistical inference using Python. You'll work with probability distributions, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing across diverse data types, finishing with a project that applies inferential methods to draw meaningful conclusions from real data. Catalog→
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Regression
Learn to build and evaluate regression models, from linear and multiple linear approaches to regularized techniques like Lasso and Ridge. You'll work through diagnostics, transformations, and the bias-variance tradeoff, finishing with a robust regression model built on a real-world dataset. Catalog→
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Introduction to Machine Learning
Learn the fundamentals of AI and machine learning through a hands-on, model-driven approach. You'll build and evaluate models including logistic regression, decision trees, and support vector machines, finishing with a project that takes a real-world task through the full data science pipeline. Catalog→
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Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn
Apply machine learning concepts in practice using Scikit-Learn, working with both supervised and unsupervised models. You'll explore k-Nearest Neighbors, recommender systems, k-means clustering, and PCA, finishing with a project that demonstrates classification and clustering on real data. Catalog→
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Natural Language Processing, Time Series, and Neural Networks
Build advanced models across three key domains: NLP, time series analysis, and neural networks. You'll apply text vectorization, temporal modeling, and Keras-based implementation, finishing with three distinct models covering language, time series, and foundational neural network tasks. Catalog→
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Neural Networks and Similar Models
Advance your deep learning skills by building CNNs, RNNs, and transformer architectures including BERT. You'll apply normalization, regularization, and statistical principles to optimize model performance, finishing with a hands-on project that integrates these techniques into an advanced neural network application. Catalog→
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Large Language Models
Learn to deploy, fine-tune, and maintain large language models in real-world environments using the open-source MLOps stack. You'll develop expertise in data-centric workflows, prompt engineering, and model iteration, preparing you to integrate and operate advanced AI systems in production settings. Catalog→

Phase 3: Capstone

AI Engineering Capstone
Bring together everything from the program to solve real-world problems using both supervised and unsupervised methods, including modern LLM workflows. You'll scope problems, select data, choose modeling approaches, and communicate results tied to stakeholder needs, finishing with a polished portfolio of end-to-end data science projects. Catalog→

The Economics

The Apprenticeship

When you enroll in an Immersive program, you're invited to apply to the Bletchley Fellowship, a nonprofit that works alongside Clarke and employers to enable our work-integrated education model. Fellows receive the Bletchley Scholarship, $10,400 applied directly to their tuition. The Fellowship also handles apprenticeship matching, connecting you with an employer before your program reaches month 5.

The apprenticeship pays approximately $19,500 over the remainder of the program. When you combine the scholarship and the apprenticeship earnings, the math works in your favor.

Learn More About the Bletchley Fellowship

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Costs

Tuition: $29,900
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Scholarship: $10,400
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Earnings: $19,500
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Effective Cost: $0

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Built for You

The Immersive program is built for people who are ready to commit fully to a career change or a serious technical upgrade. You don't need a computer science background to start. You need to be ready for a full-time commitment for 18 months.

This program is a strong fit if you:

●   Are making a career change from a non-technical field

●   Want to enter the job market with real experience, not just an academic credential

●   Are ready to work hard in exchange for a credential, a portfolio, and a financial outcome that works in your favor

Already have engineering experience? Check out the Accelerated AI Engineering Immersive→

"I came in with zero technical background. I left with a job offer."

The program was intense but the structure made it manageable. By the time I finished, I had 14 months of paid work experience and two certificates. Employers noticed.

Lilly Woods

San Francisco, CA

"The apprenticeship changed everything about how I learned."

Applying what I was studying to real work every week made the curriculum stick in a way that classroom learning never had. I wasn't just building projects for a grade, I was building things that actually mattered.

Young man with blond hair wearing a dark blue henley shirt sitting outdoors at a metal table with blurred green trees and buildings in the background.

Ethan Brooks

Greenville, SC

"I needed to make a career change without going broke doing it."

The scholarship and apprenticeship earnings covered my tuition and kept me afloat during the transition. I finished the program in a better financial position than when I started.

Young woman with blonde hair in a side braid wearing a white sweater, seated in front of a bookshelf.

Claire Whitman

Birmingham, AL

"18 months sounds like a long time. It goes fast when you're doing real work."

I was nervous about the time investment, but looking back, it was the best path I could have taken. I have the credentials, the portfolio, and the experience. I'm not starting from scratch, I'm starting ahead.

Young man with short hair wearing a green jacket outdoors with leafy background.

Mason Price

Augusta, GA

"I came in with zero technical background. I left with a job offer."

The program was intense but the structure made it manageable. By the time I finished, I had 14 months of paid work experience and two certificates. Employers noticed.

Lilly Woods

San Francisco, CA

"The apprenticeship changed everything about how I learned."

Ethan Brooks

Greenville, SC

"I needed to make a career change without going broke doing it."

The scholarship and apprenticeship earnings covered my tuition and kept me afloat during the transition. I finished the program in a better financial position than when I started.

Claire Whitman

Birmingham, AL

"18 months sounds like a long time. It goes fast when you're doing real work."

Mason Price

Augusta, GA

"I came in with zero technical background. I left with a job offer."

The program was intense but the structure made it manageable. By the time I finished, I had 14 months of paid work experience and two certificates. Employers noticed.

Lilly Woods

San Francisco, CA

"The apprenticeship changed everything about how I learned."

Ethan Brooks

Greenville, SC

"I needed to make a career change without going broke doing it."

The scholarship and apprenticeship earnings covered my tuition and kept me afloat during the transition. I finished the program in a better financial position than when I started.

Claire Whitman

Birmingham, AL

"18 months sounds like a long time. It goes fast when you're doing real work."

Mason Price

Augusta, GA

Questions?

We Have Answers

Do I need a computer science background to apply?

No. The AI Engineering Immersive is designed to take you from the fundamentals up. The first phase builds your software engineering foundation from scratch, so prior technical experience is not required.

How does the apprenticeship work?

Before month 5, the Bletchley Fellowship matches you with an employer. From month 5 onward you work approximately 20 hours per week in a real professional environment alongside your coursework. The apprenticeship is paid and the earnings are structured to fully offset your tuition.

What credentials do I earn?

You earn two professional certificates from Clarke College, one in Software Engineering and one in Artificial Intelligence. These credits can also articulate toward a Clarke Bachelor's or Master's degree if you decide to continue your education.

Is the program entirely online?

Yes. Clarke is fully online. You will have live weekly sessions, a dedicated mentor, and access to a cohort of peers, all through tools like Discord and GitHub.

What kind of jobs will I be prepared for?

Graduates pursue roles including AI Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, AI Application Developer, Data Scientist, and Software Engineer. Average salaries for these roles range from $100,000 to $135,000.

Is this program open to international students?

Clarke's academic programs are open to students regardless of citizenship or work authorization. However, the Bletchley Fellowship and apprenticeship component require that students be authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. If you are not currently authorized to work in the US, the AI and Data Science Certificate is available to you as an academic-only program without the apprenticeship requirement.

Can I do this program and keep my current job?

The first four months are full time at 40 hours per week, so this program is not designed to run alongside existing full-time employment. From month 5 onward the split between coursework and apprenticeship work totals approximately 40 hours per week. If you need a part-time option, the AI and Data Science Certificate may be a better fit.

Ready to Get Started?

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Cohorts start the first Monday of every month.

Apply Now

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