Build the skills AI consulting demands
Hypergen's ambition is to become Australia's leading AI consulting firm, and part of that is helping people build the skills to work with AI, whether they are early in their career or changing direction mid-career. We spend every day working out which AI skills our customers need and developing them in our own team, so we are well placed to set out what that capability looks like.
Worried AI will take jobs away?
We do not see AI removing jobs. Some roles will change more than others, and software development is one of them.
Across our customers, AI is lifting both productivity and the quality of the work organisations produce. The cost of doing almost everything is falling, and that opens up demand that was too expensive to meet before, which means more opportunity for people who can work with AI.
This page is a snapshot of how we develop our own people. Most of what works for our team translates to the broader industry, so we publish it for anyone building their AI skills. Our aim is to help Australia develop the right skills for AI, starting with the people at Hypergen.
As AI writes more of the code, the value in consulting has moved to the business side. The trend we see is a much greater focus on needs discovery: sitting with a customer, understanding how their work runs today, and proposing an AI-enabled solution that meets the requirement. Sometimes that means speeding up an existing process. Often it means redesigning the process altogether.
Our main focus in hiring is business-oriented people who can talk directly to customers and analyse what they find. Technical depth helps, and it comes second.
Two career paths into AI consulting
Most people join us through one of two paths. Both lead to the same certifications, listed further down this page, and in both the thing that sets an application apart is a portfolio: work you can show us and talk through.
Business Analyst
For people who enjoy sitting with a customer to understand a problem and design the answer. Your portfolio should show:
- Skills and agents you have built that you can demonstrate live
- The business scenario behind each one, either a fictional scenario or work you are doing today
- How you discovered the need, what you proposed, and what it changed for the people doing the work
Software Developer
Hypergen runs a strict no-hands-on-keyboard policy when writing software. We open VS Code to review documentation, and we avoid reading code unless we have to. Our developers are skilled at writing code, and we help them build on what they already know to become effective AI engineers and architects. We look for people who are well versed in directing AI agents to do the work.
- A portfolio application built from scratch by directing AI agents from your own specifications, without app builders such as Replit or Lovable
- A clear account of your spec-driven development process, and your approach to making sure the agents run with guardrails and stay aligned to the tech stack and security approach you want
- The business need the application meets, and how you worked out what it was
In both paths, we want to hear how you understood the problem before we hear which tools you used.
Substance comes first
Customers act on our advice, so they have to be able to trust it. That trust comes from substance: consultants who know the technology in depth and can explain the trade-offs behind a recommendation. Our people take control of their own skilling and build capability well beyond what their day-to-day work requires, so the advice a customer receives reflects current practice.
We hold every consultant to that standard, and it is how we aim to show what an excellent AI consultancy looks like. The pathway on this page supports people who take ownership of their learning: a set sequence of certifications to start, a specialisation you choose, and a portfolio of work you built on your own initiative.
Microsoft awards its Solutions Partner designations on two kinds of evidence: certifications held by a partner's people, and customer work that meets Microsoft's standards. Hypergen is a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work. For customers, the designation is independent confirmation of our capability. For our consultants, it is assurance that they work for a legitimate Microsoft partner. Every certification you earn on the pathway below contributes to it.
The certifications we look for
Our customers expect qualified people working in their environment, and our goal is business-grade AI on Microsoft, so we treat certification as a requirement at Hypergen. Every consultant completes the first three below, in this order, and the fourth follows the direction you take.
Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals
Supporting, securing and protecting an AI-enabled Microsoft 365 environment across Entra and Purview.
Power Platform Fundamentals
Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse and Copilot Studio, and how they connect a business process to AI.
Microsoft AI Agent Builder Associate
Designing and building AI agents on Microsoft, and delivering agent solutions in a customer environment.
Specialist certifications, based on where you are heading
AI engineering, data engineering, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks and similar. These usually come once time in the work shows you what you enjoy most.
We do not expect you to hold the first three before you interview. Achieving them is a requirement of your probation period, and the further along this path you are when you apply, the further ahead of other applicants it puts you.
Business-grade AI on Microsoft
Microsoft Copilot sits inside the environment where an organisation's data and identity already live, so most of the organisations we work with are standardising on it. We look for a clear appreciation of why information segregation is critical, and the judgement to know when a tenant-grounded tool is the right fit for an organisation's data and when something else fits better. Our Microsoft 365 Copilot training and corporate Copilot workshops show how we deliver this to teams.
Power Platform and Copilot Studio
AI and automation go together, and most of our customer work improves how a workflow runs. We look for people who have built something real in Copilot Studio and understand how a solution moves from development to test to production. Working demos in other tools such as n8n count too. Our AI Quickstarts show the kind of scoped builds this unlocks.
Claude
Claude is one of our most-used tools and it powers the no-hands-on-keyboard approach our developers follow. It is also a capable platform for work well beyond software, such as generating a polished document or building agent skills for a business process. Our Copilot Cowork training shows how the same agentic approach runs inside Microsoft 365.
A note on sovereign AI
We prioritise work on Microsoft, and we are keeping an open mind about how we can help organisations move into sovereign AI.
The skills on this page are foundational, so they carry across platforms and help every customer. As the technology, the availability of models and the software dependencies mature, we expect to help more organisations make sovereign AI a workable option.
If you are not fully aligned to Microsoft, this path still builds your skills and shows you can deliver business-grade AI while the technology keeps evolving.
Resources we recommend to skill up
These are the resources we point people to first. Work through the ones that match your path, and build something with each one that you can show us.
Copilot Studio
- Create and Publish Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio - Microsoft's learning path covering agent creation, topics, entities, variables and good practice.
- Connect to Dataverse Knowledge in Copilot Studio - Connecting Copilot Studio agents to Dataverse as a knowledge source.
- How to Use Multi-Agent Orchestration in Copilot Studio - Coordinating multiple agents within Copilot Studio.
- Create an MCP Server and Deploy to Copilot Studio - Video walkthrough of building an MCP server and deploying it into Copilot Studio.
Claude and agentic AI
- Introduction to Agent Skills - How to build and configure skills for Claude-powered agents.
- Introduction to Subagents - Using subagents to break complex tasks into coordinated, specialised steps.
- Introduction to Model Context Protocol - The fundamentals of MCP, the open standard for connecting AI to tools and data.
- Introduction to Claude Cowork - Anthropic's official course on the Cowork desktop automation tool.
- Hypergen's deep dive on Copilot Cowork - How the same Cowork technology runs inside Microsoft 365, grounded in Work IQ and the enterprise security controls organisations already rely on.
Have a resource you think belongs here? Send it through via our Contact Us form.
Frequently asked questions
How do I become an AI consultant in Australia?
Start with the business side: the ability to talk to a customer, discover what they need, and propose an AI-enabled solution. Then work through the three certifications Hypergen requires, in order: AB-900, PL-900 and the Microsoft AI Agent Builder Associate. Alongside them, build a portfolio you can talk through, either as a business analyst or as a software developer who builds with AI agents.
What certifications does Hypergen look for?
Every consultant completes Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals (AB-900), then Power Platform Fundamentals (PL-900), then the Microsoft AI Agent Builder Associate. You can interview before holding all three, and achieving them is a requirement of your probation period. Specialist certifications such as AI engineering, data engineering, Microsoft Fabric or Databricks follow later, once you have found the area you enjoy most.
Do I need to know how to code to work in AI consulting?
No. Our main focus is business-oriented people who can work directly with customers. Our software developers follow a no-hands-on-keyboard policy, building applications with AI agents and a spec-driven development methodology without writing the code themselves.
Is AI reducing the number of jobs in consulting?
We are seeing the opposite. The cost of delivering most work is falling, and that opens up demand that was too expensive to meet before. Meeting it takes people who can bridge the business and technology sides, which is why we are hiring.
Ready to apply?
See the roles we have open, and bring your portfolio to the conversation. Our projects give a sense of the work our consultants take on.