Frequently asked questions

Honest answer: we don't know yet — and neither do you. Admission is by application because cohorts are capped at 30 per instructor. What we look for isn't a tech background (most of our graduates arrive without one); it's commitment and trainability. The 10-minute call exists to answer exactly this question, honestly, before any money changes hands.

No — it's our core business. The majority of our graduates came from retail, hospitality, admin, trades, care work and the military. The tracks assume nothing on day one; the year-long structure, weekly live classes and personal mentor exist precisely so that beginners finish job-ready. What matters is 10–15 hours a week of real effort, sustained.

Because employers don't hire watched videos. Free content teaches syntax; it doesn't give you weekly live classes, a mentor with 10+ years of experience reviewing your work weekly, adaptive software that fixes your weak points, certification prep, interview coaching — or introductions into the partner companies that actually hire. The completion rate for self-taught learners is notoriously low — independent research puts MOOC completion under 10% (Reich & Ruípérez-Valiente, Science, 2019); a structured year with people accountable to you is what you're buying.

Three ways. Length: weekly live classes across a longer programme, versus the typical 13–26 weeks — depth employers can feel in interviews. Faculty: every instructor has 10+ years at top companies and universities; many bootcamps use recent graduates. Placement: we maintain a developed hiring funnel of partner companies and support you until you sign. And despite all of that, our tuition is below the market average for far shorter programmes.

Everything. Weekly live classes, all materials and lab environments, the adaptive learning platform with spaced-repetition integration, weekly 30-minute 1:1 mentorship, certification preparation, interview preparation, introductions through our hiring funnel, and career support until you're hired. There are no upsells, no "premium tiers", no hidden extras.

Tuition is set at 5–10% of the average junior salary each track leads to — from $6,950 to $9,550. For context, well-known bootcamps charge $9,900–$17,980 (Course Report, 2024) for programmes a third the length, without a year of mentorship or a job guarantee. Pay upfront and you save 10%.

Three plans: (1) pay upfront with a 10% discount — the best value; (2) a 50% deposit to secure your place, then equal weekly payments until the balance is paid; (3) employer sponsorship — your employer pays in full upfront, and we supply the business case, invoicing and progress reports. Most self-funding students choose the deposit + weekly plan.

You have a 14-day money-back guarantee: attend the classes, meet your mentor, use the platform — and if it's not right, tell us within 14 days for a refund of everything except the non-refundable deposit. We can offer this because our admissions call filters out poor fits before they ever pay.

Then we haven't finished our job. If you don't land a role within 6 months of graduating, you choose either a six-month extension of career support or free admission to another career track — the entire year-long programme again, at no cost. One condition, and it is a fair one: the guarantee applies to graduates who have actually run the job search with us — a minimum of ten applications a week during the placement phase, attendance at your careers sessions, and attending the interviews we arrange. We can only place people who show up; the full terms are in your enrolment agreement.

By entry salary, AI & Machine Learning Engineer ($100k–$110k entry, $250k+ potential) leads, followed by Cloud Security Architect and DevOps/SRE. But the best-paying track is the one you'll finish. The admissions call exists to match your aptitudes to the right one — and our advisors will tell you if the answer is a cheaper track than the one you asked about.

At least one live class, one mentor session, and 8–12 hours of guided work — most students commit 10–15 hours weekly while working full-time. Classes are scheduled for working adults. The adaptive platform compresses study time by targeting what you personally haven't mastered.

Every track can be taken in a Women-Only cohort: the same curriculum, the same 20-year-veteran mentors, the same hiring funnel — in a cohort of exclusively female students. Many women tell us it's the difference between considering tech and actually entering it. Same price; select it at application.

Our Women-Only cohorts are optional and exist as a positive-action measure to encourage participation in technology, where applicants to programmes like ours are disproportionately male. They are not discriminatory: every track is equally open to applicants of any sex or gender, the curriculum, price, mentors and guarantees are identical, and no one is excluded from the standard cohorts. Choosing a Women-Only cohort is entirely optional.

Our cohorts regularly include career-changers in their 40s and 50s, and employers consistently rate them highly — reliability, communication and professional maturity are scarcer than technical skill. If your age genuinely made placement unlikely, we would tell you on the call and decline your application. That's the point of selective admission.

Employers don't hire certificates — they hire demonstrated capability. You graduate with a year of documented work, industry certifications, a portfolio, and interview training — then meet employers through a funnel of partner companies we've built relationships with over years. Demonstrated capability is the credential that matters — and employers increasingly hire on skills over degrees (Lightcast, The Emerging Degree Reset, 2022; LinkedIn skills-first hiring data).

Do the arithmetic with our numbers. Tuition runs $6,950–$9,550. Our graduates' entry salaries run $80,000–$110,000, and for the roles we train, the gap between a typical pre-tech salary and a first tech salary is commonly $2,000–$4,000 per month (an illustration, not a promise). At that rate, tuition is recovered within the first two to four months of employment — and the increase repeats every month for the rest of your career. Few investments you will ever make have that profile.

Because what failed you wasn't ability — it was structure. Self-study fails for predictable reasons: no schedule, no one noticing when you drift, no consequences for stopping, and content that doesn't adapt when you're stuck. A cohort with live weekly classes gives you the schedule. A personal mentor gives you the person who notices. And the adaptive platform detects exactly where you're struggling and reshapes the material around it. The people who quit self-study are frequently the same people who finish here — that's the population we were built for.

Concretely: in your final phase, our careers team profiles you — track, strengths, location, work authorisation — and matches you against the open needs of our hiring partners. Introductions are made by name to hiring managers who already trust our graduates, so your CV isn't in a pile; it arrives recommended. Between introductions, the team runs your mock interviews and negotiation prep, and stays with you until you sign. This is the part of the programme our graduates most often say they underestimated.

Two structural reasons. First, no venture capital: we have no investors requiring margin, so pricing covers quality delivery and reinvestment rather than returns. Second, our adaptive platform was built in-house and is already paid for — we're not licensing someone else's LMS and passing the cost to you. Well-known bootcamps charge $9,900–$17,980 (Course Report, 2024) for 13–26 week programmes; a full year here costs $6,950–$9,550. We'd rather you spend the difference on living costs while you study.

It's a bad time to enter tech unprepared — and arguably the best time in a decade to enter it properly. AI is automating shallow skills, which is exactly why employers now pay premiums for people who can secure AI systems, build data infrastructure, and run the platforms AI depends on. Note which tracks top our salary table: AI/ML engineering and AI security. The wave you're worried about is the wave we train you to ride.

Yes — and at 40% off. Graduates who want to specialise further (a cybersecurity engineer moving into AI security, a data engineer into data science) return on the alumni rate, keep their existing mentor relationship where possible, and skip the parts of the foundations phase they have already evidenced. Email admin@derrytraining.com with your graduation year.

Yes. Three or more seats bought together carry a 10% discount, invoiced once, with a single progress report covering the whole team and a named account contact. Larger or more specialised requirements are scoped as a bespoke programme — private cohort, your stack, your timetable — priced individually. Start at admin@derrytraining.com.

Currently two full-cohort intakes — October and April — with more being added as we grow. Every cohort is taught live, so your instructors teach your cohort rather than several at once. Prefer a different pace? There are also shorter Foundations Sprints and an All-Access monthly membership. Each track opens 30 places per instructor per intake, taken in application order.

Our adaptive platform is proprietary, custom-built — designed and engineered in-house for one job: getting career-changers hired. The platform adjusts each module to your individual pace and weak points, and integrated spaced-repetition scheduling resurfaces material exactly when you'd otherwise forget it. Generic learning platforms license content; ours was built around how our students actually learn.

Our students do — we have taken no venture capital, ever. That matters more than it sounds: investor-funded schools answer to growth targets, and quality is usually the trade. Because we answer only to students, profits are reinvested into the platform, the mentor bench and the hiring funnel, and cohort caps hold at 30 even when demand would let us triple them.

Yes — applicants are accepted from anywhere in the world. One practical requirement: all live classes and mentor sessions run on Central Standard Time (CST, UTC−6), so check the overlap with your local time zone before applying. All payments are taken in US Dollars (USD) regardless of where you live.

The minimum age is 16. We regularly admit ambitious 16- and 17-year-olds who want a six-figure career instead of student debt, alongside career-changers in their 30s, 40s and 50s. There is no upper age limit. Under-18s: we recommend involving a parent or guardian on the admissions call, and parental consent is required at enrolment.

All prices are in US Dollars and all payments — deposits, weekly payments and upfront tuition alike — are taken in USD. Your bank or card provider handles any conversion from your local currency at their standard rate.

The next cohort begins in October 2026. Every cohort before it sold out, and places are capped at 30 per instructor. If you're reading this before the deadline, the honest advice is: book the call now — the call costs nothing and holds no obligation, but places don't wait.

An admissions advisor asks about your background, goals and constraints, answers your questions, and gives you a straight assessment: which track fits, whether the timing is right, and whether we'd admit you. No scripts, no pressure — a genuine mutual assessment. Book it, and you'll know in 10 minutes what weeks of research won't tell you.

Yes — and more employers agree than people expect. Choose the sponsorship option and we provide a ready-made business case, invoice your employer directly for the full amount, and send your manager progress reports. Ask on your call and we'll walk you through it.

Yes — bespoke programmes for organisations (security upskilling, cloud capability, AI readiness), scoped and priced individually. Contact admin@derrytraining.com and we'll design around your team.

No degree and no tech background required. The real bar is simple: be 16 or older, comfortable using a computer for everyday tasks, able to follow classes in English, and able to give it about 10–15 hours a week. You bring a computer and internet; we provide all the software, labs and licences — and teach the coding from scratch. Each track page lists an optional "head start", but none of it is required to be accepted. Don't tick every box? Apply anyway — we assess potential, not credentials.

It's our three-step system, and it's what makes the year work. Absorption gets knowledge in (live teaching, materials, 1:1s); Retention makes it stick (spaced repetition, interleaving, game mechanics); Demonstration proves it under pressure (quizzes, labs, mock interviews, a capstone). Every class, review and assessment is tagged A, R or D, so every hour you spend is visibly moving you toward hired. Most courses can't tell you what a given lesson is for. We can — every time. See the method.

Live classes are scheduled mostly in the afternoon and evening (Central Standard Time (CST, UTC−6)), so you can attend around work or school. Each track runs at least one live class a week, plus your weekly 1:1. You can see the current timetable on any track page; because applicants join from around the world, check the overlap with your local time before applying.

Yes. Every student has a Portfolio that fills itself in as you go — your weekly-quiz scores, skills demonstrated and capstone all flow into it automatically — and you can add your own projects, repos, writing and certificates. It's tagged to you, exports to GitHub in one step, downloads as a file, and you can share a public link on LinkedIn or X. It's the evidence hiring managers actually want: a year of documented, real work.

Our proprietary, custom-built platform adapts each module to how you individually learn and uses spaced-repetition scheduling — it resurfaces each concept just before you'd forget it, so week-3 fundamentals are still sharp in your final-phase interviews. It also tracks the specific skills employers list in job ads and shows you exactly where you're strong and where to focus. It was built in-house for this one job; a generic course platform can't do this.