Hire an AI engineer or use an AI consultancy?

The true cost of a senior AI hire

The salary is only part of it. In the UAE, also budget for recruiter fees: typically 15 to 25 percent of first-year salary. Include visa, medical insurance, equipment and software. Add the months the role sits empty while you interview.

Then there is ramp-up. A new engineer needs time to learn your business, systems and data before they ship anything meaningful.

The single-engineer problem

A typical AI engineer advert asks for an architect, AI specialist, front-end developer, back-end developer and DevOps engineer combined. Even when you find one, nobody reviews their work, and the knowledge leaves when they do.

When an external AI team makes sense

An external team is usually the better choice when:

• You need something built in the next quarter, not after a hiring process.
• You are not yet sure what the product should be, so you cannot write a good job description.
• The work needs several skills at once: AI, full-stack, integrations and infrastructure.
• You want a fixed price and a defined outcome rather than an open-ended salary.

When hiring makes sense

Hire when AI is core to your product for years to come. Hire when you need someone embedded full time in your team. Hire when you have enough work to keep a senior engineer busy and challenged.

The best of both: build now, hand over later

Many of our clients do both. We build the first version to a fixed scope while they recruit. We write the job specification with them, help interview candidates, and onboard the new hire onto a codebase with tests and documentation. Some keep us on for support and peak capacity afterwards.