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Hire a fractional AI engineer who ships to production

Fractional AI engineer

A fractional AI engineer is a senior engineer who works for you part of the week and gets one AI feature or workflow live in your product. Tell us what you need. We send you a shortlist of people who fit, and you choose. One agreement and one invoice.

Send your requirement
  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice

The role

What a fractional AI engineer builds

A fractional AI engineer is a hands-on builder. They take a feature that depends on a large language model and get it working properly in your product. That covers the prompts and model calls, retrieval over your own data, the agent or workflow logic, the evals that show whether it is any good, and monitoring once it is live.

It suits a team that knows what it wants to build but does not yet have the AI experience in-house. You get senior AI engineering for a defined piece of work instead of a full-time hire.

Tell us the role and the hours. We send you a shortlist of people who fit.

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice
Send your requirement

How the work usually runs

The shape varies with the system, but most AI work moves through the same stages.

  1. 01

    Agree the one feature

    Agree what the AI feature must do, what good output looks like, which data and systems it can touch, and who on your side signs off "live".

  2. 02

    Prototype on real data

    Build a working version against your own data early, so you see the real quality in your product rather than in a polished demo.

  3. 03

    Evaluate

    Set up a test set from real examples and grade the output automatically where possible, so a prompt or model change gets checked instead of guessed.

  4. 04

    Ship and hand over

    Put it into production with tracing, monitoring and cost limits. Document it so your developers can run and change it after the work ends.

Fractional AI engineer or another role

A fractional AI engineer fits when

  • You have a defined AI feature or workflow to build
  • Your developers can run the rest of the product
  • You want the work live soon, not after a long hiring search
  • You want your team to own it afterwards and need someone to set the pattern

Consider a different role when

  • You still need to decide whether and where to use AI at all, which suits a chief AI officer
  • The work is training your own models from scratch, which suits a machine learning engineer
  • You need someone to lead all of technology, which suits a CTO
  • AI is becoming a core product line for the long term, which suits a permanent AI engineering hire

What to look for

Ask to see something they shipped that real users rely on, and ask how they knew it was working. Engineers who have only built demos tend to skip evaluation, and evaluation is where most AI features succeed or fail.

Check they are comfortable in your stack, not only with model APIs. Most of the work in an AI feature is ordinary software engineering around the model: data access, permissions, error handling, cost control and testing.

Listen for how they talk about the people who will use the feature. A good AI engineer spends real time finding out what users need, and pushes back when the brief is wrong.

Tell us the role and the hours. We send you a shortlist of people who fit.

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice
Send your requirement

How hiring a fractional AI engineer works with us

  1. 01

    Send your requirement

    Tell us the AI feature or workflow, your stack and how much of the week you expect it to take. It is free, and there is no deposit.

  2. 02

    We read it ourselves

    We read every requirement ourselves and ask if something is unclear. We look through the senior people who have applied to us, and our own contacts, for people who fit.

  3. 03

    Get a shortlist

    We send a shortlist: each person's CV and a short note on why they fit.

  4. 04

    Choose, and pay only when someone starts

    You talk to whoever you like and choose. You do not have to hire anyone. You pay only when someone starts, with one agreement and one invoice on terms agreed in writing first. Talent never pays.

Send your fractional AI engineer requirement

Describe the AI feature, your stack and where it needs to run. We reply by email.

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice

Hiring and related pages

FAQ

Fractional AI engineer questions

What is a fractional AI engineer?

A senior engineer who builds and ships AI features, such as LLM features, agents and retrieval, for a company part of the week instead of full time.

How is this different from a forward deployed engineer?

The roles overlap. A forward deployed engineer works inside your team and owns one system until it is live. When that system is an AI feature, many companies call the same role a fractional AI engineer.

How much does a fractional AI engineer cost?

It depends on seniority, stack and how much of the week you need. You pay only when someone starts. The hiring company pays our fee, and talent never pays.

How long does the work last?

As long as the work needs. A focused feature takes less time than an ongoing role building AI across the product. You agree the length with the person you choose before anything starts.

Who owns the code and the prompts?

You should, and it should be in writing before anything starts. Ask the engineer to work in your own repositories and accounts from the first day, so the code, prompts, eval sets and docs stay with you.

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