IIT Kharagpur Brings AI Product Management Online with New Executive Certificate Program
IIT Kharagpur launched an online Executive Post Graduate Certificate in Building AI Products, Systems & Services, aimed at helping working professionals develop the skills to design, build, and lead AI-native products.
The program is the latest addition to the institute's growing portfolio of online executive education offerings, and reflects a broader push to make IIT Kharagpur's academic depth accessible to the professional workforce without requiring a career break.
Running over six months entirely through live online sessions on weekends, the program covers the full lifecycle of AI product development from identifying viable AI opportunities and designing user-facing systems, to working with large language models, RAG architectures, agentic frameworks, evaluation and red teaming, regulatory compliance, and go-to-market strategy. The curriculum is structured around nine modules, each producing a tangible deliverable, and culminates in a capstone project defended before a panel of IIT Kharagpur faculty.
The program draws on the institute's established research standing in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with faculty actively publishing in leading global venues including ICML, NeurIPS, ACL, ICCV, and IEEE journals. Instruction is delivered jointly by IIT Kharagpur faculty and industry AI practitioners, with the intent of combining academic rigor with the practical realities of building AI products in production environments.
"Product management is being fundamentally redefined by AI. This program is built for professionals who want to stay ahead of that shift, not by learning about AI in theory but by building with it, evaluating it and taking it all the way to deployment." - Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Program Director, IIT Kharagpur Online.
The program is designed for current Product Managers looking to move into AI-native roles, professionals from analytics, consulting, or engineering backgrounds seeking to transition into product leadership, and founders or builders working on AI-driven products. Business and strategy professionals looking to strengthen their product thinking for AI-led decision-making are also eligible to apply. The minimum eligibility requirement is a graduation degree with at least 50% marks.
Participants who complete the program receive IIT Kharagpur Executive Education alumni status and are invited to an on-campus graduation ceremony at the institute. The top ten percent of each cohort receive a Certificate with Distinction, recognized on the credential itself. The first batch is scheduled to begin on 30 September 2026.