If you missed our recent Virtual Open Event (December 2025), we are delighted to share the full recording! This webinar provided deep insights into the MSc in Software Solutions Architecture and the MSc in DevOps, both Level 9, part-time taught Masters delivered by TU Dublin, and featured essential commentary on the industry’s direction from an expert at AWS.
Key Insights from the Event
The session featured Cormac, Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS), who shared his 20+ years of experience in building and architecting systems. He also had the privilege of being involved in setting up the MSc in Software Solutions Architecture at TU Dublin.
Cormac explained that historically, achieving quality attributes (non-functional requirements) like security, reliability, scalability, and observability for production systems required enormous expertise, cost, and effort. The cloud revolution fundamentally changed this by making infrastructure programmable, scalable, and pay-as-you-go. Crucially, cloud has made achieving these quality attributes dramatically easier by removing the “undifferentiated heavy lifting” from the application architect and embedding that capability within the platform itself. This allows developers to focus on business logic.
Cormac identified the shift to Agentic AI as the next major abstraction layer, which is happening much faster than previous shifts.
- The Challenge: Just as infrastructure was hard before the cloud, building production-ready Agentic AI systems is difficult. Teams often spend 80% of their time building the necessary infrastructure to address unique behavioral quality attributes (such as governance, security, and observability for agent decisions) rather than the agent logic itself.
- The Solution (Agent Core): AWS’s Agent Core platform is designed to abstract away this heavy lifting. The key insight is that Agent Core is doing for Agentic AI what cloud did for infrastructure: making the hard stuff easy so teams can focus on business logic. Components of Agent Core, such as the runtime environment (handling scaling and session isolation), the gateway (providing a unified interface for APIs), and memory (providing persistent context), address these behavioral quality attributes.
Programme Details and Applications
Mary Hendrick (Programme Coordinator for TU Dublin) and Gary Clynch (Senior Lecturer for TU Dublin) ran through the specifics of both Masters programs. Both are part-time, delivered over two years in a blended mode (predominantly online), and include an on-campus induction that takes place in January.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the programs, applicants generally require:
- An undergraduate degree (Level 8) in a computing or IT-related discipline.
- A minimum of two years of experience in a technology-related role.
TU Dublin uses an RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) process to assess applicants who do not perfectly meet these criteria, considering academic and work experience on an individual basis.
The Capstone Project
Both Master’s programmes culminate in a 30-credit capstone project. This project allows students to investigate a topic of personal or organisational interest, which might include areas such as FinOps, sustainability, Agentic AI solutions, blockchain, or serverless technologies. Students present their work as a thesis and a poster, with a poster exhibition event held for graduating students.
Application and Fees
Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet provides highly subsidised training for these cutting-edge programmes.
To access the subsidised fee, applicants must reside in the Republic of Ireland and be employed in a private company (including sole traders) or an Irish commercial semi-state organisation.
To learn more and apply, visit the programme page for the MSc in DevOps or the programme page for the MSc in Sustainable Software Architecture.