Hire AI engineers
Engineers who build and evaluate LLM features in production — retrieval, agents, guardrails and cost control.
- Indicative rate
- $38–52/hour
- Shortlist
- 3 CVs in 48 hours
- Overlap
- 4–8 hours daily, contracted
- We accept
- 1 engineer in 12
What this engineer does
The gap in this market is not model knowledge, it is engineering discipline: an evaluation set before a prompt change, a cost ceiling per request, a fallback when the provider degrades, and a retrieval layer that is measured rather than assumed. We screen on exactly those.
Be wary of anyone who presents prompt writing as the skill. The work is retrieval quality, evaluation, latency and spend, and most of it is ordinary backend engineering around a probabilistic dependency.
Briefs we see most often
- An LLM feature that demos well and fails on real inputs
- Retrieval over your own documents, with quality that can be measured
- Inference spend that has grown faster than usage
- Evaluation and regression testing for prompts and models
Rates across markets
What this costs, wherever you are buying from
| Experience | United States | United Kingdom | Australia | United Arab Emirates | Canada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| build2–4 years | $20–28/hour$3,200–4,480/month | £150–210/day£3,000–4,200/month | A$28–38/hourA$4,480–6,080/month | AED 95–135/hourAED 15,200–21,600/month | C$30–40/hourC$4,800–6,400/month |
| senior5–8 years | $28–38/hour$4,480–6,080/month | £210–300/day£4,200–6,000/month | A$38–52/hourA$6,080–8,320/month | AED 135–185/hourAED 21,600–29,600/month | C$40–54/hourC$6,400–8,640/month |
| lead9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour$6,080–8,320/month | £300–450/day£6,000–9,000/month | A$52–70/hourA$8,320–11,200/month | AED 185–250/hourAED 29,600–40,000/month | C$54–72/hourC$8,640–11,520/month |
All-inclusive and indicative, shown so you can compare us against a local hire. Monthly figures assume 160 hours a month and the same for the day-rate markets, so the two always reconcile. Engagements are contracted as a monthly capacity fee or a fixed-scope deliverable, with our own delivery lead accountable for the outcome — see engagement models. There is no setup fee, no recruitment fee and no management surcharge.
Questions
Hiring AI engineers
- How much does it cost to hire AI engineers in India?
- $38–52/hour all-inclusive through Skydream Digital, which is $6,080–8,320/month for a full-time engineer at 160 hours a month. That covers salary, employer costs, equipment, security tooling and management — there is no setup fee, recruitment fee or management surcharge on top. UK buyers pay £300–450/day, Australian buyers A$52–70/hour and UAE buyers AED 185–250/hour.
- Do your AI engineers train models?
- Mostly no, and for most briefs that is correct. Fine-tuning and training are a separate skill — ask for a machine learning engineer if that is genuinely the work.
- How do you handle our data?
- Under the DPA and transfer terms on the security page: least-privilege access, no production data on developer machines, no client data in third-party models without your written instruction, and named sub-processors.
Brief us on your AI engineer role
One page is enough: the stack, the seniority, the first month of work and the hours you need covered. Three shortlisted CVs come back within 48 hours, with the rate band and notice period attached.