4,046 Students Build Real-World AI Skills Through Outamation and Extern

As employers look for AI-ready talent, two hands-on externships give the next generation experience applying AI to real business problems before they enter the workforce.

DALLAS, Oct. 13, 2026 – More than 4,000 students have gained hands-on experience building artificial intelligence tools through two externship programs created by Outamation, a mortgage operations technology company, in partnership with Extern, a platform that connects students with real-world work experience.

The programs set out to close the gap between learning about AI and actually using it on the job. Instead of studying AI in theory, students applied it to sample mortgage documents created for training, built working tools and delivered their findings directly to Outamation, the same way a professional technology team does.

Outamation and Extern built the programs together. Students worked on curriculum created by Outamation’s mortgage domain experts and AI engineers. Nirmal Patel, Outamation’s Chief AI Officer, led program design for Outamation, with leadership and support from Devang Kamdar, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Mike Eng, Head of Partnerships, led the effort for Extern. 

Program highlights include:

• Two levels of learning: a seven-week Foundational externship introducing AI, natural language processing and computer vision, and a five-week Advanced program where students fine-tuned their own AI models and built multi-step AI agents to automate document workflows.
• Real business problems: using sample files, students trained AI to recognize common mortgage document types and wrote Python code to pull out key information automatically.
• In-demand AI tools: externs built AI systems that answer questions about documents and tested open-source AI models, skills that apply across finance, real estate and other industries.
• Work that counts: students compared AI models on accuracy, cost and ease of use, and Advanced participants presented their recommendations to Outamation stakeholders.
• Open access at scale: students from 934 schools and 59 countries took part, regardless of location or background.

“Every student today will build a career alongside AI. The question is whether they learn it by doing real work or by watching from the sidelines,” said Lisa Guadagno, Chief People Officer of Outamation. “More than 4,000 students chose to do the work. Our job as employers is to give the next generation the tools and the opportunity to succeed.”

“AI skills on their own are not enough. Students learn the most when they solve real business problems with people who know the industry and people who know the technology,” said Sapan Bafna, Founder & CEO of Outamation. “Our mortgage experts and AI engineers designed this curriculum together. Students learned to use AI the way it is used on the job.”

“Most companies stay out of this because they picture a program they would have to build and staff. Taking that burden on is what Extern is for. Outamation handed students a real problem and got independent evaluations of the open-source AI models their own team is weighing in return. Having to make a recommendation and defend it to the people who will act on it is the part no course can simulate,” said Matt Wilkerson, CEO at Extern.

Building on these results, Outamation and Extern will work together on a new program built to evolve alongside advances in AI, so students continue learning the skills employers will need next. Students interested in future programs can learn more at www.extern.com.

About Outamation

Outamation is a mortgage operations technology company that uses AI across its automation toolkit. Its Outamate product suite automates document generation, client communications, loss mitigation, lien release, quality control and document AI for lenders and servicers. Outamation was the first U.S. mortgage technology company to achieve ISO/IEC 42001 certification and also holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. The company debuted on the Inc. 5000 at No. 133. Outamation has more than 250 team members across Dallas, Miami and India. Learn more at outamation.com.

About Extern

Backed by Y Combinator, Foundation Capital and Eric Ries, Extern hosts remote, part-time projects so students can build experience and get dedicated mentorship for entry-level roles. 90,000 students from more than 150 countries have participated in externships with companies like TikTok, Amazon and Pfizer. 74% of externs have landed a job or internship within 12 months of completing their project. Learn more at extern.com.

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