If you're shipping AI in a regulated industry, the security and privacy calls come with constraints most teams are still working out, usually with no one outside the team to compare notes with. In this cohort, senior engineers from different companies apply frameworks from QCon talks to the AI security and privacy decisions they're working on, and share what worked and what didn't, in confidence.
Leave with new approaches, or validation that the calls you're already making are the right ones.
Live online sessions. 4 hours a week, for 5 weeks.
Next cohort: October 14, 2026
Limited places per cohort. Mon & Wed, 03:00PM - 05:00PM CEST
USD1,470
per cohort
Most companies reimburse for professional development.
Download our
"Convince your manager"
template.
InfoQ Certified AI Security & Privacy Engineering Cohort facilitator
Facilitated by Katharine Jarmul
Confidential peer group
Apply frameworks from QCon speakers
Access 100+ QCon videos
Get published on InfoQ
Earn an InfoQ certification
(GMT+2 - Berlin time)
Dates: Oct 14, 19, 21, 26, 28, Nov 2, 4, 9, 11, 16
Time: Mon & Wed, 03:00PM - 05:00PM CEST
Location: Online (Zoom)
Most companies reimburse for professional development.
Download our "Convince Your Manager" template.
The single most valuable outcome has been improving how I write and think. I can now articulate trade-offs in a way that improves my proposals at work.
Chinmay Sawaji,
Senior Software Engineer @Klaviyo
This cohort gave me structured time each week to step back and think about what it really means to be an architect.
David Holliday,
Product manager / Product Owner @Munich Re
The Architecture Canvas was a game changer. We've made different decisions because of how we're structuring conversations. It wasn't just theory.
Ian Hockett,
Staff Software Engineer @Exact Sciences
Identify and protect the personal and confidential data moving through your AI workflows. Cover what counts as sensitive, where it leaks, and how to handle it before it reaches a model.
Think like an attacker. Prioritize the threats that matter and run hands-on red teaming against an LLM, drawing on methods like STRIDE, LINDDUN, and Plot4AI.
Put real controls in place: guardrails, data-flow sanitization, and sandboxes, including open-weight guardrail models. Decide which control belongs where.
Check that the controls actually work. Use observability tools like Arize Phoenix and build evaluation suites that catch failures before users do.
Decide who owns safety, privacy, and security, and build the governance and auditing to back it up. The session also covers the group capstone presentations; the best articles get published on InfoQ .
These online cohorts are for senior engineers and architects who want to make specific decisions better, publish on a platform senior technical people read, and build a peer group that outlasts the 5 weeks.
Designed for:
Each week, you apply a framework from a QCon talk to a security or privacy decision from
your own work, alongside senior engineers and architects from different companies.
Watch a QCon talk on your own time before the session.
Join a 4-hour live session with your facilitator and your cohort.
Apply the framework to a decision from your own work, sharing what worked and what didn't with the group.
Take away something you can use at work that week.
4 hours of live sessions per week, plus time-boxed homework (max 2 hours). Designed to fit around your work.
Throughout the cohort, your working group drafts a documented risk assessment and mitigation report for an AI product architecture. In week 5, you present it to the cohort. The best get published on InfoQ .
Apply frameworks from QCon talks to real security and privacy problems in group exercises. Sessions are 4 hours per week.
Work through threat models and controls with engineers from different companies, industries, and contexts.
Earn an InfoQ certification as proof of your work on AI security and privacy engineering.
Katharine Jarmul is a privacy and security expert in machine learning and AI systems. She is the author of Practical Data Privacy (O'Reilly), available in three languages, and has spent around a decade working in machine learning and AI, roughly eight of those years focused on privacy and security. She gave the opening keynote at InfoQ Dev Summit Munich 2025 and has spoken at QCon.
Author of Practical Data Privacy, privacy & security expert in ML and AI systems
No. Sessions are not recorded. This is a deliberate choice to keep all conversations private and confidential, so that participants feel safe sharing real challenges, ongoing decisions, and truthful perspectives from their organizations.
Participants are expected to attend at least 4 out of the 5 live sessions. Consistent attendance is one of the criteria for receiving your InfoQ certification.
If you do need to miss a session:
You can contact us for any payment questions at payments@qconferences.com .
We accept PayPal and major credit cards. A payment charged to your credit card or PayPal account is processed directly by us in the funds stated on the website.
The Terms of Participation can be found at https://certification.qconferences.com/terms-conditions .
Registration fees are not refundable.
Yes, we've developed a template you can use to explain to your manager how you can benefit from the cohort participation.
Yes, in-person cohorts are offered at select QCon conferences, such as QCon London and QCon San Francisco.
You can opt to pay by invoice during the registration process by selecting the "Do You Want to Pay Later by Invoice?" checkbox.
Your invoice reflects the ticket price in effect at the time your payment is due. Invoices are generally due 30 days from the date the order is submitted, or 7 days before the event start date—whichever comes first. To ensure all funds are cleared, the "Pay by Invoice" option will be disabled 14 days prior to each event (subject to change without notice). All invoices must be paid in full no later than 7 days before the event begins.
Please note that only participants who have paid in full will be admitted or receive access credentials. Credit card or PayPal payment is required if you are registering after the invoice deadline or prefer immediate confirmation. Once processed, a receipt marked "Paid" will be emailed to you for your records.
Our Privacy Policy details how we collect, use, and protect your data. You can find it at https://www.infoq.com/privacy-policy .
Yes. The program is open to freelancers and the self-employed. When registering, simply enter your trading name or "Independent" in the Company Details section.
The program is a collaborative initiative between InfoQ and QCon, both of which are practitioner-driven brands owned by C4Media Inc.
InfoQ is a practitioner-driven community news site focused on facilitating the spread of knowledge and innovation in professional software development.
We do not offer scholarships or complimentary seats for the InfoQ Certification at this time. Should this change for future cohorts, we will announce it via our official channels.
We are dedicated to providing a safe and inclusive experience for everyone. Our Code of Conduct can be found at https://certification.qconferences.com/code-conduct .
Participants who registered for the online cohorts will receive an email with detailed instructions on how to join the sessions during the week prior to the start of the cohort.
To ensure an optimal experience, you will need:
The program consists of five live sessions held over five weeks, each lasting four hours, plus weekly assignments and a group Capstone project.
Yes, alumni enrolling in a second Certification program receive a $147 discount. To claim your alumni code, please email certification@qconferences.com when ready to register for your second program.
Each weekly session is a 4-hour live workshop. This is a significant time investment because we are not just watching talks.
We are undertaking the challenging, practical work of applying these frameworks to real-world challenges alongside your senior peer group.
This program assumes you already have deep technical expertise. Each week is structured around a real decision you are working on, not a case study. The focus is the skills that senior engineers find hardest to get from inside their own organization: pressure-testing decisions with peers, articulating tradeoffs to stakeholders, and making the kind of decisions that are difficult to reverse.
Some of the most valuable learning happens in peer discussion. Hearing how others think through similar challenges can be just as useful as the session content itself.
Learning with a peer group gives you different perspectives, helps you build confidence, and makes it easier to apply what you learn in your own work. That's why this program is designed around a confidential peer group, live exercises, expert facilitation, and group-based project assignments, and not just self-paced study.
This cohort gives you the confidential peer group and an experienced facilitator to do that work, and you'll earn the InfoQ Certified AI Security & Privacy Engineering Program certification as a result.
The Capstone project is the final milestone where your working group co-authors a 2,000–3,000-word professional technical article — a documented risk assessment and mitigation report for an AI product architecture. Examples can be found on InfoQ.com .
Certification is awarded based on two factors: consistent attendance and active participation in the live sessions, and the successful completion of the group Capstone project.
This is for software engineers, AI/ML platform engineers, privacy and security engineers, software architects, and technical leaders with at least 5 years of experience who are working on AI security and privacy engineering in regulated industries.
Certification is awarded based on active participation in the cohort and completion of the capstone assessment in Week 5.
Securing and governing AI systems in production. Sensitive data handling, threat modeling and red teaming, controls and sandboxes, observability and evals, governance and auditing
Date: October 14, 2026
Time: Mon & Wed, 03:00PM - 05:00PM CEST
The sociotechnical side of architecture. Trade-offs and communication, decentralized decision-making, platform engineering, AI architecture decisions.
Move from writing code to setting technical direction. Four hours a week, across five weeks, with Michelle Brush. Test your decisions with senior peers.
Building production software with AI coding agents. Codebase comprehension, agent permissions and sandboxing, sensors and self-correction, independent review, CI for unattended agents.
Building AI systems that hold up in production. AI-native engineering, RAG and context pipelines, AI agents, platform and infrastructure, evals and reliability.
Date: Dates to be announced
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