Real skills
Scoping ambiguous problems, splitting work across a team that is asleep half the day, using AI to move faster without shipping nonsense, and getting to a demo that runs.
SkillUp · Distributed team project
Nobody hires a certificate. They hire evidence.
Three months, one distributed team, one MVP built with AI-assisted workflows. You come out with practical skills, reviewed work and a line on your CV that describes something you actually shipped.
Recordings stay free. SkillUp is live participation and needs a Programme Pass.
Programme participation
What the three months look like
- Calibration Where you are now, which track fits, what you will own.
- Team formation Tech, Manager and Intern participants in one distributed team.
- Build the MVP Understand, define, build, test, iterate, ship.
- Reviews Mentors look at your work, not your CV, and say what is weak.
- Evidence pack What you built, what you decided, what the reviews said.
The core of it
Take part in a distributed team building a typical MVP
You work with people you have never met, in time zones that do not line up, on a product nobody has specified for you yet. That is the actual job. Doing it once, with mentors watching, is worth more than another tutorial.
Confirmed proof
A record of what you contributed, reviewed by a practitioner with startup experience. Not a score out of ten — a description of the work and how you handled it.
A CV line that survives questions
"Built and shipped an MVP in a distributed team using AI-assisted workflows" holds up in an interview, because you can talk about every decision behind it.
Evidence
Why AI-assisted delivery experience is the thing being asked for
Startups on public job boards state it directly: small teams, remote, expected to ship. These are openings read on Wellfound on 2026-08-15.
Openings at companies with 1-10 and 11-50 employees appear alongside roles at companies with 1000+, on the same remote listings page. Small teams compete for the same people.
Company sizes as published on wellfound.com, read 2026-08-15
Early-stage listings pair modest cash with equity, for example $50k – $80k with 1.0% – 5.0%. Companies at that stage buy contribution, and they need to see it before they commit.
Paddox Technologies, Growth Marketer, as published on wellfound.com, read 2026-08-15
Remote listings name India and APAC explicitly, for example a Site Reliability Engineer for India and South Africa. Location is not the barrier it used to be. Evidence is.
Flanksource, as published on wellfound.com, read 2026-08-15
Do I need to be able to code?
Not for the Manager track. A distributed team building an MVP needs product decisions, user research, operations and go-to-market work as much as it needs code. The Intern track assumes no prior startup exposure at all.
What does "AI-assisted" actually mean here?
You use current AI tooling as part of normal delivery: drafting, reviewing, generating and checking work. Mentors push on where it helped and where it quietly produced something wrong. Knowing the difference is the skill.
Is a job promised at the end?
No. RDAI is not an employment agency and does not place candidates. What the programme produces is skills, reviewed work and visibility to mentors who hire in their own companies. Any relationship that follows is between you and them, separately from RDAI.
How much time does it take?
Plan for the live sessions plus team work in between, across three months. The calibration form below is where we tell you honestly whether your available hours fit the track you picked.
Next step
Calibrate right now
Tell us where you are and what you want to be able to do. We reply with the track that fits, the next intake date and what the first two weeks would ask of you.
- Confirmation email first — nothing else until you open it
- Your notes are read by a person, not scored by a form
- One-click unsubscribe in every email we ever send