Gauntlet AI is a ten-week, all-expenses-paid immersive program for the most talented engineers in the world. You do deep project work with a group of peers who are just as sharp as you, pushing the limits of what you can build with AI.
Gauntlet AI is built for existing engineers. We take people who already know how to build and ship software, and turn them into AI engineers. If that's you, here's exactly what happens when you apply.
Who Gauntlet AI Is Looking For
You need at least 3 years of production software development experience. This isn't an exhaustive list, just some examples:
Experience We're Looking For
- Full-stack development
- Frontend development
- Backend development
- Mobile development
- DevOps
- Data engineering
- Machine learning engineering
- Security engineering
- Software architecture
- Technical leadership like Staff/Principal Engineer, Engineering Manager, or similar
We're looking for engineers who have experience building and shipping production software.
Who Gauntlet AI Is Not Designed For
- Founders without a technical background
- People looking to move into AI from a non-technical role
- Non-technical product managers
- Data analysts without true Python expertise
- Recent CS college graduates
The Application, Step by Step
1. Fill Out the Form at apply.gauntletai.com
You'll be asked for:
- Name
- Phone number
- LinkedIn profile
2. We Check Your Technical Expertise
We check your technical expertise right away. We're looking for your employment experience across your internships, your existing employer, your previous employers, and what work you've done that actually involves production software engineering.
3. You'll Get a Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT) Link by Email
If you clear the technical bar, we'll email you a link to the CCAT: a 50-question, 15-minute cognitive aptitude test measuring:
- Critical thinking & logic
- Math & numerical patterns
- Verbal reasoning
- Abstract/spatial analysis
You need to score at least 40 out of 50 to be admitted.
How to prep: We recommend timed drills, AI-generated CCAT-style questions, and focused practice to build speed. We wrote a blog about CCAT preparation here.
4. A Human Reviews Your LinkedIn
Our admissions team is real people, not just an algorithm. Once you've taken the CCAT, someone on our team reviews your LinkedIn profile to confirm your production engineering experience.
5. You're In
Hit the 3-year experience bar + score 40 or higher on the CCAT, and you're in.
Timeline: What to Expect After Each Step
- Submit the form: Response on your technical check via email within the hour
- Clear the technical bar: CCAT link lands in your inbox shortly after
- Take the CCAT: LinkedIn review happens once your score is in
- Final decision: Notified within 3–5 days of completing the CCAT
FAQ
Can I apply more than once? You can only apply once per cohort. If you don't pass, you're welcome to apply again for the next cohort.
Is the CCAT proctored? Not at this stage. You'll take a proctored version later in the program, and we compare the two results to confirm consistency.
What if someone cheats on the CCAT? Cheating is flagged automatically, even though we don't announce how. It's not worth trying.
What Happens Once You're In
Gauntlet AI is a 10-week intensive program: 3 weeks remote, 7 weeks onsite in Austin, Texas.
We call everyone in the program a challenger. Every week, you have to complete a technical challenge to stay in the program. These challenges simulate the kind of work you'll be expected to do as an AI engineer. If you can't complete a challenge, you leave. Gauntlet is completely free, so your skin in the game is your seat. As long as you perform, you stay.
Weeks 1–3: Prove You Can Build
Remote and focused on vetting.
- Learn to build with coding agents and orchestrate teams of agents that build for you
- Work with RAG, graphs, agents, and evals
- Practice building a software factory: managing multiple AI agents working together to build software
- Complete a background check and a proctored CCAT, checks our hiring partners would normally run in their own first or second interview round
By the end of Week 3, you've proven you can build at the speed and level we expect, and we've confirmed your experience.
Weeks 4–6: Get Hired
Focused on placement.
- Take on projects from our hiring partners that simulate real work at their company
- Come onsite for Hiring Partner Days to present what you've built
- Interview with hiring partner teams. Challengers complete an average of 7.2 interviews during this stage
Weeks 7–10: Push the Frontier
Going deeper into how AI itself is built.
- Train a language model from scratch
- Work with small language models, PEFT, and LoRA
- Benchmark models and learn how to decide which model fits a given job
- Build marketing factories and eval pipelines
- Learn AI development processes like spec-driven development
- Finish with a capstone: a contribution to the open-source AI community, like a model, agent, pipeline, tool, or something we haven't seen before
By the end, you know how to build, evaluate, and ship AI systems that work in the real world.
Click here to apply to Gauntlet AI.