Employer Funding for CFDE Foundation
A letter you can adapt and send to your manager, and the two ways your employer can pay for your place on the Certified Forward Deployed Engineer (CFDE)™ Foundation programme.
Programme
CFDE Foundation (CFDE-F)
Duration
18 weeks
Format
Online, structured cohort
Employer payment
Reimbursement, or corporate card on the learner’s payment link
Paperwork
Sponsorship letter and pro-forma invoice on request
Contacts
admissions@aiu.ac
billing@aiu.ac
How employer funding works
Your employer can fund your place in either of two ways. You pay and your employer reimburses you, or your employer pays your secure payment link directly by corporate card. A pro-forma invoice addressed to your employer is available on request, and our admissions team can send your employer a sponsorship letter confirming your place, the programme, the dates and the fee.
If your employer is considering places for three or more people, they can contact partnerships@aiu.ac.
Dates for the next cohort, and the application itself, are on the Admissions page.
The letter
Copy the letter into an email, or download it as a Word document you can edit. Fill in the parts in square brackets and change anything you like; it reads best in your own words.
Subject: Request for funding: Certified Forward Deployed Engineer (CFDE)™ Foundation
[Date]
Dear [Manager’s name],
More of our AI work now depends on getting systems out of the demo stage and into everyday use with the people who rely on them. I would like to build that skill properly, and I am writing to ask whether the business would fund my place on a course designed for exactly that work.
The course is CFDE Foundation, run by Artificial Intelligence Uni Ltd. It is delivered online through the AIU learning platform in a structured cohort: recorded lectures and course materials, instructor-led discussion and feedback, and human-marked assignments and capstone.
Programme: CFDE Foundation
Provider: Artificial Intelligence Uni Ltd
Structure: 18 weeks: 15 weekly modules, then Capstone, weeks 16 to 18
Time: Suggested commitment of approximately 8 hours per week.
Starts: [Cohort start date]
Fee: £1,099
CFDE follows the work of deploying an AI system with a client through each stage of the engagement: post-sale handoff, discovery, scoping, build, deploy, iterate, hand-back. It ends with a three-week capstone in which each learner ships a working AI system against a realistic client brief in a simulated engagement, assessed by practitioner reviewers against the programme’s assessment criteria. By the end I will have produced the full set of work an engagement like that calls for: discovery notes, an architecture document, a working deployed prototype, client-facing documentation and a written record of the design decisions behind it.
Could the fee be met from our training and development budget? If that is not the right budget, I would be grateful to know which one could cover it. AIU can issue a sponsorship letter and a pro-forma invoice addressed to the business, and the fee can be paid in either of two ways: I pay and the business reimburses me, or the business pays my secure payment link directly by corporate card.
If you agree, I will bring what I learn back to the team as the course goes on, and share my capstone work once it has been assessed so that others can use it on our own projects.
I would be glad to talk this through whenever suits you. Thank you for considering it.
Kind regards,
[Your name]
[Your role]
Download the letter as a Word document →
After your manager agrees
Step 1
Apply
Complete the application at apply.aiu.ac. It takes about ten minutes and there is no application fee.
Step 2
Ask for the paperwork
When we confirm your fee and send your payment link, email admissions@aiu.ac with your application reference if your employer needs a sponsorship letter or a pro-forma invoice.
Step 3
Payment
Your employer pays your payment link by corporate card, or you pay and claim the fee back. Questions about invoices and receipts go to billing@aiu.ac.
Apply for CFDE Foundation
Applications take about ten minutes. There is no application fee.
Artificial Intelligence Uni · UKPRN 10095512 · Artificial Intelligence Uni Ltd · Company #14543918
