Dev Opportunity Radar #2: A Fully-Funded Residency in Finland, AI Research Program, and a $60K Hackathon

> **TL;DR** > > Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar. > > This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss. > > The response to the first edition was far more encouraging than I expected. Thank you to everyone who read, commented, shared feedback, and followed along. > > This week's edition includes a fully-funded builder residency in Finland, an open science research program, a $60,000 hackathon, a bonus learning event, and a hands-on course for building production-ready LLM applications. > > If you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, or event that deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments. > > If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you. > > Hopefully this becomes less of *my* radar and more of *our* radar over time. --- ## Table of Contents * [⚡ Quick Scan](#quick-scan) * [🔄 Still Open From Last Week](#still-open-from-last-week) * [📍 This Week's Opportunities](#this-weeks-opportunities) * [📌 FR8](#fr8) * [📌 Summer of Open AI Research (SOAR)](#summer-of-open-ai-research-soar) * [📌 Google Cloud Rapid Agent Hackathon](#google-cloud-rapid-agent-hackathon) * [⚡ Quick Update](#quick-update) * [AAIF Ambassador Program](#aaif-ambassador-program) * [🎁 Bonus Opportunity](#bonus-opportunity) * [Microsoft AI Skills Fest](#microsoft-ai-skills-fest) * [📚 Resources Worth Checking Out](#resources-worth-checking-out) * [LLM Zoomcamp](#llm-zoomcamp) * [🌟 Community Finds](#community-finds) * [👋 Until Next Friday](#until-next-friday) * [Dev Opportunity Radar Archive](#dev-opportunity-radar-archive) --- ## ⚡ Quick Scan | Opportunity | Organization | Type | Deadline | | ---------------------------------- | ------------ | ----------------------------- | --------- | | FR8 | FR8 | Builder Residency | Rolling | | Summer of Open AI Research (SOAR) | EleutherAI | Research Program | June 8 | | Google Cloud Rapid Agent Hackathon | Google Cloud | Hackathon ($60K Prize Pool) | June 12 | | Microsoft AI Skills Fest | Microsoft | AI Learning Event | June 8-12 | | AAIF Ambassador Program | AAIF | Ambassador Program | June 12 | **Resource Highlight:** LLM Zoomcamp - a free, hands-on course covering RAG, vector search, and AI agents, with a live cohort starting June 8, graded assignments, a capstone project, and a certificate for eligible participants. --- ## 🔄 Still Open From Last Week One opportunity from last week's radar is still accepting applications. **Interactivity Research Grants by Thinking Machines** remain open until **June 19, 2026**. I'm mentioning it because some people may be discovering this series for the first time through this edition, and I'd rather point you to a still-open opportunity than assume you've already seen it. I also don't want a good opportunity to disappear from the radar just because a new edition came out. The program offers up to **$100,000 in funding** plus **$25,000 in Tinker credits** for research focused on human-AI interaction and collaboration. 🔗 [Learn More](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/interactivity-research-grants/) | [How to Apply](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/interactivity-research-grants/apply/) --- ## 📍 This Week's Opportunities Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing. ### 📌 FR8 **Who it's for:** Builders, researchers, founders, and technically curious people who want to spend a few months working intensely on ambitious ideas. **What stands out:** Accommodation, food, flights, tools, and community are fully covered. Participants spend three months immersed in a highly focused environment alongside other builders from around the world. **Format:** In-person residency program in Helsinki, Finland. **Funding:** Participation is free. FR8 also offers optional funding of $100,000 on an uncapped SAFE plus 2% equity. I thought this one was particularly interesting because it feels less like a traditional accelerator and more like an environment designed for people who want to go all-in on an idea. You don't need a startup or even a fully formed idea to apply. **Location:** Helsinki, Finland **Next Cohort:** August 24 - November 21, 2026 **Applications:** Rolling admissions 🔗 [Learn More](https://fr8manifes.to/) | [Apply](https://forms.fillout.com/t/aPhTgg4eDvus) --- ### 📌 Summer of Open AI Research (SOAR) **Who it's for:** Developers, students, and aspiring researchers interested in AI research, including people with little or no previous research experience. **What stands out:** Participants work on real research projects under the mentorship of experienced researchers and receive credit for their contributions, which may result in publication. **Format:** Five-week fully remote research mentorship program organized by EleutherAI. **Research areas:** Interpretability, AI safety, reasoning, representation learning, alignment, AI for science, information retrieval, computer vision, and generative modeling. I liked this one because many research opportunities expect applicants to already have research experience. SOAR explicitly encourages applications from self-taught researchers and people looking to gain their first research experience. **Location:** Online **Deadline:** June 8, 2026 🔗 [Learn More](https://www.eleuther.ai/soar) | [Apply](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduoCePmA3HVtM7OV9Jmz1lobR2bN6x50429mSlsaEB5GNs8w/viewform) --- ### 📌 Google Cloud Rapid Agent Hackathon **Who it's for:** Developers, builders, students, and AI enthusiasts interested in building real-world AI agents. **What stands out:** Participants build task-oriented agents powered by Gemini and Google Cloud Agent Builder while competing for a share of $60,000 in prizes. **Focus:** Building agents that can reason, plan, and take actions rather than simply answer questions. **Partner Tracks:** Arize, Elastic, Fivetran, GitLab, MongoDB, and Dynatrace. I thought this one was worth sharing because it focuses on agentic systems rather than traditional chatbot projects. If you've been looking for an excuse to experiment with MCP, agent workflows, or Gemini-powered applications, this could be a good opportunity to build something interesting. **Location:** Online **Deadline:** June 12, 2026 **Prize Pool:** $60,000 🔗 [Learn More & Register](https://rapid-agent.devpost.com/) --- ## ⚡ Quick Update I came across this after publishing the original version of this edition, but applications are still open, so I thought it was worth adding here. ### AAIF Ambassador Program **Who it's for:** Developers, content creators, educators, community builders, and practitioners interested in agentic AI. **What stands out:** Ambassadors help create tutorials, talks, videos, workshops, blog posts, and other educational content around projects supported by the Agentic AI Infrastructure Foundation (AAIF), including MCP, Goose, and AGENTS.md. The commitment is one public contribution each month that helps more developers understand, use, or contribute to an AAIF project. In return, ambassadors receive community recognition, access to project maintainers, private community channels, event perks, and opportunities to help grow awareness around emerging agentic AI projects. I thought this was worth sharing because many programs focus on building products, while this one is also looking for people who enjoy teaching, explaining, documenting, and helping communities learn. **Applications for the initial cohort:** Open through June 12, 2026. 🔗 [Learn More & Apply](https://aaif.io/ambassadors/) --- ## 🎁 Bonus Opportunity ### Microsoft AI Skills Fest **Who it's for:** Developers, students, business professionals, technical teams, and anyone looking to build practical AI skills. **What stands out:** Complete learning paths, attend live sessions, participate in the Agents League Hackathon, earn badges, and potentially qualify for a free Microsoft Certification exam voucher. **Format:** Free week-long virtual event featuring role-based learning tracks, expert-led sessions, and hands-on AI activities. I thought this was worth mentioning because it combines learning, certification preparation, and hands-on building in a single event. Whether you're interested in AI-assisted coding, building agents, using AI at work, or preparing for a certification exam, there's a dedicated path for different experience levels. **Dates:** June 8-12, 2026 **Bonus perks:** Credly badges, certification exam vouchers (for eligible participants), hackathon participation, and prize opportunities. 🔗 [Learn More & Register](https://aiskillsnavigator.microsoft.com/events/AISF2026) --- ## 📚 Resources Worth Checking Out Not every useful find comes with an application deadline. Here's one resource worth checking out this week. ### LLM Zoomcamp **Who it's for:** Developers, data engineers, ML practitioners, and anyone interested in building practical LLM applications. **What stands out:** The course focuses on building real applications rather than just learning concepts. Participants work through topics like RAG, vector search, AI agents, evaluation, monitoring, and orchestration, then build a capstone project of their own. **Topics covered:** Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, vector search, AI agents, function calling, hybrid search, reranking, evaluation, monitoring, and end-to-end LLM application development. I wanted to include this because a lot of AI learning resources stop at prompting. This one focuses on building complete systems and gives you the chance to apply everything through a final project. If you join the live cohort, you'll also get graded homework, a leaderboard, peer reviews, and the opportunity to earn a certificate by completing the project and review requirements. If you don't want the deadlines, all of the material is available in a self-paced format as well. **Format:** Free, open-source course with both live cohort and self-paced options. **Live Cohort:** Starts June 8, 2026 (graded assignments, leaderboard, peer reviews, and certificate eligibility) **Cost:** Free (aside from small API usage costs if you run the examples yourself) 🔗 [Course Repository](https://github.com/DataTalksClub/llm-zoomcamp/) | [Register](https://airtable.com/appPPxkgYLH06Mvbw/shr7WtxHEPXxaui0Q) --- ## 🌟 Community Finds No community finds this week. The first edition was only published recently, so that's completely understandable. That said, if you shared something and I didn't hear back from you, there's a chance I never saw it. From what I've learned, DEV sometimes filters comments that contain raw URLs before I get a chance to view them. If that's what happened, I'm sorry. I'd still love for this section to become a regular part of the series. If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, or resource that more developers should know about, feel free to share it in the comments. If I feature it in a future edition, I'll make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you. **Small note:** If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them. Instead, use the opportunity name as the link and add a short description of what it is and who it's for. For example: `[Opportunity Name](https://example.com)` Short description of what it is and who it's for. This helps make sure I actually see your suggestion. --- ## 👋 Until Next Friday Thank you again to everyone who read, commented, shared feedback, and followed along after the first edition. It genuinely means a lot. The goal of this series hasn't changed: Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed. I'll keep doing my best to make these weekly editions useful and worth reading. If you end up applying to any of the opportunities featured here, I'd love to hear about it. And if there's a particular opportunity or resource that stood out to you, let me know. It helps me understand what kinds of things are most useful to include in future editions. I'd also love feedback on the format as the series grows. What's working? What isn't? What would make future editions more useful? Got an opportunity, grant, fellowship, hackathon, conference, resource, or community worth sharing? Drop it in the comments. **If you'd like to catch future editions, consider following me on DEV and bookmarking the series.** I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and community finds. See you next Friday 👋 --- ## 🗂️ Dev Opportunity Radar Archive If this is your first time discovering the series, you can browse previous editions and Community Finds here: 👉 [Dev Opportunity Radar Archive](https://github.com/hemapriya-kanagala/dev-opportunity-radar) Every edition is collected in one place so it's easier to explore past opportunities, resources, and community recommendations.