WatSPEED – Department of the University of Waterloo
WatSPEED provides professional education and co-designed corporate training tailored to corporate
client needs. The program will help experienced technology leaders and architects
understand modern AI systems and assess their implications for enterprise architecture,
governance and investment decisions.
Overview:
WatSPEED invites faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, instructors, and PhD students to express interest in delivering a two-day professional development program for a corporate client. The program will develop experienced technology leaders and architects understanding of modern AI systems and assess their implications for enterprise architecture, governance and investment decisions.
The course will be delivered live on site in North York, with travel expenses covered by WatSPEED. The expected delivery date is November 3-4, 2026. Support from the WatSPEED Production team will be available to support development of the materials, including instructional and visual design.
Participants include enterprise, cloud, solution and UX architects alongside directors and senior management. They are experienced in cloud and retail systems and familiar with AI at a general level.
The two-day format calls for broad conceptual coverage, with the greatest applied depth in enterprise and agentic architecture. Activities should strengthen architectural judgment and the ability to lead AI-related decisions.
timeline:
- The SME will meet with the client to understand needs and audience as soon as availability allows
- The expected delivery date is November 3-4, 2026, 8AM to 5PM
- Expected involvement in the course includes authorship duties in advance of the course, as well as post-offer review.
Details:
Course materials will be developed prior to the course start, with support from the WatSPEED production team. Course content will enable achievement of the Learning Outcomes. Materials should include live presentation slides, video content that provides knowledge on the course topics, which may be a combination of course author created content and content from other sources (books, articles, YouTube etc.), and interactivity during the session.
Course Learning outcomes:
- Explain how modern AI systems evolved and why those changes are important to modern organizational capabilities.
- Describe the capabilities, limitations, and business implications of LLMs, Generative AI, and agentic systems.
- Compare common agentic architecture patterns and assess when each is appropriate based on business context, requirements, and risk profile.
- Identify common risks in AI systems and evaluate appropriate governance, monitoring, and control strategies.
- Discuss the business and economic implications of key AI architecture and investment decisions.
COURSE TOPICS:
- Traditional machine learning: regression, classification, supervised and unsupervised learning, recommender systems and reinforcement learning.
- Neural networks and deep learning: core concepts, training versus inference, generalization, overfitting and retail applications.
- Transformers and attention: sequence modelling, attention mechanisms, transformer architecture and parallelization.
- Large language models: capabilities, limitations, hallucinations, uncertainty and architectural implications.
- Prompt engineering and fine-tuning: instructions, context, examples, few-shot prompting, system prompts, and trade-offs involving cost, control and specialization.
- Generative AI systems: multimodal capabilities, copilots, autonomous systems and enterprise implications.
- Agentic and multi-agent systems: agents, orchestration, coordination, scaling and retail applications.
- Enterprise and agentic architecture patterns: retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), planner-executor agents, tool-calling architectures and event-driven agent loops.
- Failure modes and observability: drift, prompt decay, silent degradation, decision traces, confidence thresholds and outcome evaluation.
Requirements:
- Ability to work within the project timeline outlined above, especially on the stated delivery dates.
- Demonstrated experience/expertise in the subject and content outlined. Both academic qualifications and industry experience demonstrating deep knowledge of AI are applicable
- Ability to contextualize AI within broader business strategy, innovation, digital transformation, and emerging technology ecosystems, with a focus on retail
- Experience designing and delivering courses that bridge technical concepts with strategic business applications, and professional or corporate education experience an asset
Selections will be made on appropriate fit, knowledge/experience, and availability.
Service and Remuneration:
- Will be based on the scope of engagement, in alignment with WatSPEED’s standard payment structures
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS AND PROCESS
Applicants are invited to make an expression of interest by responding to this REOI and following the outlined steps:
- Provide an expression of interest by email to Jasmin Lazarus, Corporate Development Analyst (ajlazaru@uwaterloo.ca) by no later than October 30th, 2026.
EVALUATION OF SUBMISSIONS
- Submissions will be considered as they are received.
- Stakeholders will convene to make selections.
- Selected parties will be contacted for further information and possible engagement.
- All Parties expressing interest will be contacted with information on the results of the REOI and any immediate or future involvement with WatSPEED.
Confidentiality
Subject to the following, the expressions of interest received in response to this REOI are solely for use by the members involved in the selection. Information provided will be retained by the deciding panel and will not be distributed outside their purview.
Legal/limitations
This REOI does not constitute a solicitation. This request is merely seeking an expression of interest in participating in the tender.
Response to this Request for Expression of Interest does not automatically ensure that submitting parties will be selected to participate in the subsequent phase of the project.
WatSPEED reserves the right to change or cancel the requirement at any time during the REOI and/or communication process.