More than 4,000 students have completed hands-on artificial intelligence training 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, announced on October 13, 2026, are designed to bridge the gap between learning about AI and applying it in a business setting, a distinction that matters as employers across finance, real estate and other industries compete for AI-ready talent.
Rather than studying AI in theory, students worked with sample mortgage documents to build working tools and delivered their findings directly to Outamation, mirroring how a professional technology team operates. The curriculum was developed jointly by Outamation’s mortgage domain experts and AI engineers. Nirmal Patel, Outamation’s Chief AI Officer, led program design, with support from Devang Kamdar, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Mike Eng, Head of Partnerships, led the effort for Extern.
The initiative offered 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. Participants trained AI to recognize common mortgage document types and wrote Python code to extract key information automatically. They also built systems that answer questions about documents and tested open-source AI models, comparing them on accuracy, cost and ease of use. Advanced participants presented their recommendations to Outamation stakeholders, an experience that mirrors real-world technology decision-making.
The scale of participation underscores the program’s reach: students from 934 schools and 59 countries took part, regardless of location or background. For employers, the implication is significant. Companies often hesitate to launch such programs because they anticipate heavy staffing and design burdens. Extern absorbed that burden, allowing Outamation to provide a real problem and receive independent evaluations of open-source AI models its own team is weighing. As Matt Wilkerson, CEO at Extern, noted, having to make a recommendation and defend it to the people who will act on it is an experience no traditional course can simulate.
“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.” Sapan Bafna, Founder & CEO of Outamation, added that AI skills alone are not enough and that students learn most when they solve real business problems with people who know both the industry and the technology.
The partnership also yields direct benefits for Outamation, which 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. The company was the first U.S. mortgage technology company to achieve ISO/IEC 42001 certification and also holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. It debuted on the Inc. 5000 at No. 133 and has more than 250 team members across Dallas, Miami and India.
Building on these results, Outamation and Extern will work together on a new program designed 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.
