Hire AI and ML engineers · Dedicated, monthly
Hire AI and ML engineers who start in 5 to 10 days.
Engineers who take AI features from demo to production: retrieval, evaluation, guardrails, cost control and monitoring. Vetted in five steps, working in your tools and time zone, with a two-week replacement guarantee.
Monthly rates
| Level | Experience | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-level | 3 to 5 years | $3,600 to $4,800 |
| Senior | 5 to 8 years | $4,800 to $6,600 |
| Lead | 8+ years | $6,600 to $7,800 |
Full-time, 160 hours a month, equipment and HR included. Hourly equivalents $23 to $49. No recruitment fee.
What our AI and ML engineers bring.
- LLM integration (OpenAI, Anthropic, open models)
- RAG and vector search
- AI agents and tool use
- Evaluation and guardrails
- Python, LangChain, FastAPI
- Classical ML, scikit-learn
- MLOps, monitoring
- Data pipelines
When teams hire this role from us.
- Add an assistant over your documentation and data
- Automate a support or back-office workflow with agents
- Move a notebook model into a monitored production service
From brief to first commit.
- 01
Brief
Tell us the stack, seniority and start date. 15 minutes on a call or a short form.
- 02
Shortlist in 48 hours
Two or three profiles with CVs, code samples and interview notes.
- 03
Interview
You interview them your way. Technical test optional; we already ran ours.
- 04
Start in 5 to 10 days
Access, onboarding and first stand-up in your hours. Two-week replacement guarantee.
Five steps before you see a profile.
Two-week free replacement if an engineer is not the right fit, and a 30-day notice to scale down.
- 01CV and portfolio screen against the role brief
- 02Technical interview with a senior engineer in the same stack
- 03Live coding or take-home exercise reviewed for quality, not speed
- 04English communication and async-writing check
- 05Reference check and background verification before onboarding
What an AI/ML engineer does on our teams
An AI/ML engineer takes a feature from a promising demo to a production service that is measured, safe and affordable. On client teams they build retrieval over company data, design agent workflows with tool use, write the evaluation set that every prompt change is tested against, and put guardrails, caching and per-request cost limits in place. They also handle the classical side: training and deploying scikit-learn or PyTorch models with drift monitoring.
How we assess AI/ML engineers
- Retrieval design: chunking, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking and how to evaluate retrieval quality
- Evaluation and safety: building an eval set, measuring regressions, prompt injection and output guardrails
- Cost and latency: model selection, caching, streaming, token budgets and fallbacks
- Sample task: build a RAG service over a supplied document set with an eval harness and a cost report, in four hours
| Comparison | Innovation Insight | Toptal-style marketplace | Local hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (senior) | $4,800 to $6,600, all-inclusive | $9,000 to $16,000 plus fees | $15,000 to $25,000 plus benefits and overhead |
| Time to start | 5 to 10 business days | 1 to 3 weeks | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Replacement | Free within two weeks, 30-day notice after | Trial period, then re-match | Notice period and a new recruitment cycle |
| Who manages | You, with our delivery lead on call | You | You |
What it's like to work with us.
Unedited, from founders and product leads who trusted us with their roadmap.
Innovation Insight has been a game-changer for our platform. Their expertise in UX/UI design and seamless technical integration helped us enhance user engagement, and their attention to detail ensured a flawless experience. We're beyond satisfied with the outcome and their commitment to our vision.
VonzaSaaS · Creator economyWorking with Innovation Insight felt like a true collaboration. Their team was responsive, creative, and focused on delivering results that matched our brand identity. Thanks to them, we now have a solution that not only meets our needs but exceeds expectations. Highly recommended!
MatterbooksPublishing · MediaInnovation Insight provided us with an innovative and scalable solution that transformed the way we manage our operations. Their approach to problem-solving, combined with their deep understanding of technology, made them an invaluable partner. The results speak for themselves.
SolasEnterprise · OperationsHiring AI and ML engineers, answered.
Which models do you work with?
OpenAI, Anthropic and Google APIs, plus open models such as Llama and Mistral when data residency or cost demands it.
How do you keep our data private?
Models can run in your cloud account or VPC, prompts are logged under your control, and we sign a DPA and NDA before access.
Do you build evaluation into the work?
Yes. Every LLM feature ships with an evaluation set and a dashboard so regressions are caught before users see them.
Other roles
Prefer a managed project? See our ai and data solutions service.