AI courses for engineers
AI coding assistants and AI system design are now part of the engineering job. 0 courses are written for engineers; the general AI courses further down fit any role.
Find your AI level
Four questions about what you already do. It takes under a minute and shows the courses that fit.
1. Do you use an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot) at least weekly for real work?
2. Do you write your own detailed prompts and rework them when the answer is off?
3. Have you built a repeatable AI workflow, such as a saved prompt library, an automation or an AI agent?
4. Have you set AI rules, evaluated AI output for a team, or led an AI project?
General AI courses that fit any role
Start here if no course above matches your level yet.
IBM
AI for Everyone: Master the Basics
BeginnerFreeAny roleA free-to-audit foundational course on AI concepts and terminology.
Anthropic
Claude 101
BeginnerFreeAny roleEveryday use of Claude as an AI assistant for writing, research and analysis, with the prompt writing habits that make it reliable.
GitHub
Getting Started with GitHub Copilot
BeginnerFreeAny roleGitHub’s free hands-on exercise in its own repository: use Copilot as an AI pair programmer to write, debug and ship code faster.
Google Cloud
Introduction to Generative AI
BeginnerFreeAny roleA free, short intro to what generative AI is and how it works.
Microsoft
Use Copilot in Power Automate
BeginnerFreeAny roleA short Microsoft Learn module on using Copilot in Power Automate to build and change workflows by describing what you want.
DeepLearning.AI
AI For Everyone
BeginnerCheck costAny roleA foundational, non-technical introduction to what AI can and can't do.
DeepLearning.AI
Generative AI for Everyone
BeginnerCheck costAny roleA plain-language overview of generative AI and how it applies across roles.
Google
Google AI Essentials
BeginnerCheck costAny roleA practical, beginner-friendly course on using AI tools day to day.
Google
Google Prompting Essentials
BeginnerCheck costAny roleA short, practical course on writing effective prompts for everyday tasks.
Runway
Runway Academy
BeginnerCheck costAny roleRunway’s own lessons, tutorials and hands-on training for AI video creation and generative AI creative tools.
Anthropic
AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations
IntermediateFreeAny roleA framework for working with AI assistants effectively, ethically and safely, built around responsible AI practice you can apply in any role.
NVIDIA
An Even Easier Introduction to CUDA
IntermediateFreeAny roleA free, step-by-step introduction to CUDA C++ for GPUs, built around one parallel programming example.
Microsoft
Automate Tasks and Workflows in Microsoft Copilot Studio
IntermediateFreeAny roleAutomate tasks across systems, websites and applications with agent flows and computer use in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
DeepLearning.AI
ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers
IntermediateFreeAny rolePrompt engineering patterns, then using LLM APIs to summarise, classify, transform and expand text inside your own applications.
Anthropic
Claude Code in Action
IntermediateFreeAny roleAnthropic’s free course on running longer Claude Code sessions you can trust: steer the assistant, configure it, automate repeat work and verify what it wrote.
DeepLearning.AI
How Diffusion Models Work
IntermediateFreeAny roleBuild a diffusion model from the ground up, the technique behind AI image generation, and learn how today’s versions speed up sampling.
NIST
NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF)
IntermediateFreeAny roleThe free, public framework most AI policies cite: Govern, Map, Measure, Manage. Read it to write or review an AI use policy or a use-case risk review.
Wharton
AI for Business Specialization
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA specialization on applying AI to real business decisions and strategy.
Duke
AI Product Management Specialization
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA specialization on building and managing AI-powered products.
AWS
Generative AI for Executives
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA course framing generative AI in terms of business impact and decision-making.
IBM
Generative AI for HR Professionals
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA course on applying generative AI to HR workflows.
IBM
Generative AI Fundamentals Professional Certificate
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA professional certificate covering practical generative AI fundamentals.
Vanderbilt
Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
IntermediateCheck costAny roleA practical course on getting better, more reliable results from AI chat tools.
DeepLearning.AI
AI Agents in LangGraph
AdvancedFreeAny roleDesign AI agents and agentic workflows in LangGraph: tool calling, persistence and human-in-the-loop control.
Harvard
CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
AdvancedFreeAny roleA free-to-audit course on AI concepts and implementation in Python.
DeepLearning.AI
Evaluating AI Agents
AdvancedFreeAny roleTest whether AI agents do the right thing: AI evaluation methods, spotting hallucinations and measuring output quality.
DeepLearning.AI
Fine-tuning & RL for LLMs: Intro to Post-training
AdvancedFreeAny roleApply fine-tuning and reinforcement learning to shape model behavior, improve reasoning, and make LLMs safer and more reliable.
DeepLearning.AI
Finetuning Large Language Models
AdvancedFreeAny roleWhen to finetune instead of prompt, how to choose an open-source model, prepare data, then train and evaluate for your domain.
DeepLearning.AI
LangChain for LLM Application Development
AdvancedFreeAny roleBuild LLM applications with LangChain: models, prompts, memory and chains, then AI agents that call tools, on top of an LLM API.
DeepLearning.AI
LLMOps
AdvancedFreeAny roleLLMOps best practices: design and automate the steps to fine-tune and deploy an LLM for a specific task.
DeepLearning.AI
MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps with Anthropic
AdvancedFreeAny roleBuild AI applications that reach tools and data through the Model Context Protocol, including MCP servers and AI agents that use them.
DeepLearning.AI
Multi AI Agent Systems with crewAI
AdvancedFreeAny roleBuild multi-agent systems with crewAI where AI agents divide a task, use tools and hand work to each other.
DeepLearning.AI
Red Teaming LLM Applications
AdvancedFreeAny roleRed team an LLM application to find safety and security failures, then use model evaluation to measure and fix them.
DeepLearning.AI
Vector Databases: from Embeddings to Applications
AdvancedFreeAny roleHow embeddings and vector databases power semantic search and retrieval-augmented applications, with hands-on builds.
DeepLearning.AI
Deep Learning Specialization
AdvancedCheck costAny roleA specialization on neural networks and deep learning.
IBM
IBM AI Engineering Professional Certificate
AdvancedCheck costAny roleA hands-on professional certificate covering ML and deep learning engineering.
DeepLearning.AI
Machine Learning in Production
AdvancedCheck costAny roleDesign a production machine learning system: scoping, data, modelling, deployment and monitoring. Offered by DeepLearning.AI on Coursera.
DeepLearning.AI & Stanford
Machine Learning Specialization
AdvancedCheck costAny roleA widely-used specialization on ML fundamentals.
MIT
Machine Learning with Python
AdvancedCheck costAny roleA course on implementing machine learning models in Python.
University of Michigan
Python for Everybody
AdvancedCheck costAny roleA beginner-friendly specialization for learning Python from scratch.
Levels and functions are NextChapter's guidance, read from each course's own description; the provider may label them differently or not at all. Cost, dates and content are set by the provider, so check its page before you enroll. Providers marked "Partner" have a relationship with NextChapter; the others are included because the course is good.
See open Engineering jobs and which skills they name
Questions people ask
- Which AI course should engineers take first?
- Start at your own level, then choose a course written for engineers if there is one at that level. This function has few courses written for it so far, so begin with the general AI courses below.
- Are these AI courses free?
- Many are free, and each course is marked free or "check cost". Prices and free trials are set by the provider and change, so confirm on the provider's page before you enroll.
- How do you decide a course's level and function?
- We read each course's own description and place it on our three-level ladder and in the functions it is written for. Providers often use their own labels or none, so treat ours as guidance. Beginner needs no earlier AI experience, intermediate assumes you already use an AI assistant at work, and advanced assumes you work with AI tools in depth.
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