Datacean

Datacean Academy — learn to ship AI that generates value, not demos.

One academy, two paths: train the team you already have, or become the engineer companies embed to ship production AI.

I'm training my team.

Workshops, team sprints, and champions certification for technology teams — employer-funded, scoped in writing.

For companies

AI took the repetitive calls. Humans moved up the value chain.

IKEA automated 8,500 customer-service roles and reskilled those people as interior design advisors — around $1.4B in new revenue, with zero layoffs tied to the automation. That is the frame for the company track: it moves the team you already have up the value chain instead of replacing it.

  • WorkshopHalf or full day, hands-on on your own stack. Every material stays with the team.
  • Team SprintTwo to four weeks: the workshop, plus one real internal use case shipped by your own people.
  • Champions CertificationTwo to four weeks: your own certified internal trainers, so new staff never needs a vendor invoice.

Already delivered: a hands-on AI-assisted development workshop for the technology team of a bank — exercises, a synthetic dataset, ready-made skills and agents, and a facilitator script, all reusable.

Nothing is sold from that page. Every format is scoped in writing before it is booked.

For engineers

FDE listings are up 729%. Salaries hit $785k.

A Forward Deployed Engineer is a hybrid of software engineer, consultant and product manager, judged on shipped outcomes rather than credentials. That is why a deployed project beats another certificate.

Figures as cited in Miguel Fierro’s LinkedIn post on the FDE market.

Forward Deployed Engineer listings, indexed to a baseline of 100Two bars on one baseline. The baseline is index 100; Forward Deployed Engineer listings now stand at index 829, the reported increase of 729%. Top posted salaries are $785k.
Baselineindex 100
FDE listings, nowindex 829 · +729%
Top posted salaries$785k
Bars are the same figure indexed to a baseline of 100; +729% is the reported change.

The Bridge to AI Challenge is where that starts: build and deploy a portfolio-ready AI project in 30 days — something a recruiter can click, running on cloud infrastructure, with the production signals hiring managers actually check.

It scores where you are today and routes you into the free training, with your email already captured.

Who teaches it

Miguel Fierro

Miguel Fierro — ex-Microsoft Forward Deployed Engineering Manager (100+ projects, $500M+ of business impact); creator of Recommenders, the most popular open-source recommendation library on GitHub; PhD in Robotics.

He teaches both tracks and delivers Datacean’s Forward Deployed AI Engineering engagements for enterprises. Same person, same craft, both sides of the business.

Miguel Fierro on LinkedIn

What is proven today

Published research on why AI projects stall, and work already delivered. Nothing else is claimed here.

RAND · 2024A hundred squares, 80 of them filled: >80% of AI projects fail — twice the failure rate of non-AI IT projects.

>80%

of AI projects fail — twice the failure rate of non-AI IT projects.

RAND · 2024

Gartner · 2024A hundred squares, 30 of them filled: ~30% of GenAI projects were forecast to be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025.

~30%

of GenAI projects were forecast to be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025.

Gartner · 2024

MIT NANDA · 2025A hundred squares, 95 of them filled: 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots show no P&L impact, self-reported.

The five in a hundred that report P&L impact.

95%

of enterprise GenAI pilots show no P&L impact, self-reported.

MIT NANDA · 2025

The models got dramatically better over the same years, so what fails is not model quality. The gap is skills in context — which is the one thing both tracks teach.

Building AI for your company instead? Forward Deployed AI Engineering →