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    Managed Offshore Specialist · From $3/hr · 14-Day Hire

    Hire a Remote AI Engineer for Your Team

    We're bullish on AI - and we believe humans are still essential. Hire an AI Engineer who ships real LLM apps, RAG pipelines, and agents, with evals and human-in-the-loop where it matters.

    4.9· 40+ US companies
    14-day delivery30-day free replacement
    Book a Free Discovery CallView Pricing
    Up to 84% less than a US hire. No contracts. No upfront fee.

    AI Engineer Pricing & Packages

    Pick your experience level. Pick your hours. We handle everything else.

    Intern / Trainee

    Fresh graduate

    From $3/hr

    Learning under supervision. Good for support tasks within technical workflows.

    Select Tier

    Beginner

    1–2 years

    From $6/hr

    Some campaign or platform experience. Ready for managed account work.

    Select Tier
    Best Value

    Expert

    3–5 years

    From $11/hr

    Proven revenue-driving experience. Manages accounts independently.

    Get Started

    Pro

    5+ years

    From $18/hr

    High-value strategic operator. Drives ROAS, revenue, and complex builds.

    Select Tier

    All tiers include: NDA signed before day one · Company-managed device · Screen monitoring during work hours · BSE performance reviews

    Starter

    ~10 hrs/week

    40 hrs/month

    Test the model with overflow work, specific deliverables, or a defined project scope.

    • Tracked hours, no guessing
    • Cancel anytime
    • BSE assigned from day one
    Start with 40 hrs

    Part-Time

    ~20 hrs/week

    80 hrs/month

    Ongoing dedicated support. Your hours are reserved and exclusive. Nothing shared.

    • Exclusive reserved hours
    • Weekly output reporting
    • Free 30-day replacement
    Start with 80 hrs
    Most Popular

    Full-Time

    Full 40 hrs/week

    160 hrs/month

    Your specialist works only for you. Same accountability as in-house. A fraction of the cost.

    • 100% dedicated, exclusive
    • Daily task reports
    • Monthly BSE performance review
    Start Full-Time
    Book a Free Discovery CallCalculate My Monthly Cost

    No commitment required. 3 vetted candidates delivered in 14 days.

    What Does a AI Engineer Do?

    Hire a dedicated AI Engineer who ships real LLM-powered products: chat apps, RAG systems, internal copilots, and agentic workflows. Office-based, version-controlled, and managed end-to-end. We're bullish on AI - and we believe humans are still essential to design, evaluate, and govern what AI ships.

    The problem: Every founder is hiring 'AI engineers' from Twitter threads, only to end up with a brittle prompt wrapper that hallucinates in production. You need someone who actually ships: RAG that retrieves the right docs, agents that don't loop forever, evals that catch regressions, and guardrails that protect your brand. Not a vibes-based pure-AI demo.

    Core Responsibilities

    LLM application architecture and implementation
    RAG pipelines: chunking, embeddings, vector DB integration
    Prompt engineering, prompt chaining, and tool-use
    Agent design with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or LangGraph
    Integration with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and open models
    Vector store setup (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Qdrant)
    Eval harness and regression testing for prompts and chains
    Guardrails, content filtering, and PII handling
    Cost tracking and token budget optimization
    Latency tuning, streaming responses, and caching
    Production deployment on AWS, GCP, or Azure
    Human-in-the-loop review queues and escalation flows

    Tools & Platform Expertise

    Python
    TypeScript
    OpenAI API
    Anthropic Claude
    LangChain
    LlamaIndex
    Pinecone
    pgvector
    FastAPI
    Next.js

    KPIs & Deliverables

    1
    Eval pass rate on golden test sets
    2
    Median and P95 response latency
    3
    Cost per query (tokens + infra)
    4
    Hallucination / escalation rate
    5
    Production uptime

    Why Talent Surge?

    • Office-based, not bedroom freelancers
    • CISM-certified, NDA-signed from day one
    • Dedicated BSE tracks KPIs monthly
    • 3 vetted candidates in 14 days
    • Free replacement if they underperform
    Book a Discovery Call

    How We Manage Your AI Engineer

    Your AI Engineer is onboarded with your data sources, model accounts (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), and your eval criteria in week one. Your Business Success Executive tracks weekly: eval pass rate, latency, cost per query, and incidents. We deploy with feature flags and human review gates on anything customer-facing. You get monthly model performance and cost reports.

    Learn about management

    AI Engineer: Freelancer vs Talent Surge

    The difference isn't just price it's accountability, security, and who manages the relationship.

    FactorFreelancerTalent Surge
    Production disciplineShips demos, breaks in production, no evalsEval harness + guardrails before launch. Regression tests on every prompt change.
    Cost governanceBurns OpenAI budget with no trackingPer-query cost tracking. Cache + cheaper models routed where quality allows.
    Human-in-the-loopPure-AI demo. Hallucinates on edge cases.Review queues and escalation built in where stakes are high.
    SecurityAPI keys in plain text, personal device, no NDASecret manager, monitored device, NDA, CISM environment.
    ReplacementProject dies if they ghostFree replacement in 30 days. Code, prompts, and evals stay in your repo.
    Get the Managed Option

    AI Engineer FAQ

    Common questions from US businesses hiring a remote AI Engineer.

    We're bullish on AI but skeptical of pure-AI replacement pitches. Most production systems we ship blend AI for scale with humans for judgment, edge cases, and quality control. We build the eval loop and the escalation path into every project.

    OpenAI (GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o-series), Anthropic Claude (Sonnet, Opus, Haiku), Google Gemini, Mistral, and open models on AWS Bedrock or self-hosted (Llama, Qwen). We pick per task based on cost, latency, and capability.

    Yes. We handle ingestion, chunking, embedding, vector store setup (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Qdrant), retrieval tuning, and grounded answer generation with citations. We also build the eval set so you can prove retrieval quality.

    We build agents using LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, or custom orchestrators. Tool calling, structured outputs, plan-then-execute patterns, and review loops. We're realistic: agents work for narrow workflows, not 'replace your whole team.'

    Every production system ships with an eval harness (golden sets, automated checks), guardrails (refusal handling, PII filtering), and where stakes are high, a human review queue. We measure hallucination rate and treat it like a bug, not a feature.

    Yes. Deployment on AWS, GCP, Azure, Vercel, or Replit. Streaming responses, caching, observability (Helicone, Langfuse, LangSmith), and cost monitoring. Pair with a TPM or AI Workflow Specialist for larger rollouts.

    For production LLM apps, Expert (3-5 years) is the minimum. For experimentation and prototypes, Beginner works with oversight. Pro tier is for complex agentic systems, multi-tenant infra, and high-volume production workloads.

    No, and we won't pretend otherwise. Your AI Engineer is a force multiplier: they ship LLM features fast, but you still need product, design, and core engineering judgment. We build with you, not around you.

    Still have questions? Browse all FAQs →

    Book a Free 15-Min Call No Pitch, Just Answers

    Build Your Full Offshore Team

    Roles that pair well with a AI Engineer to maximize output.

    AI Automation Expert

    Build LLM-powered automations in n8n, Make, and Zapier - with human checkpoints where it matters.

    View role

    AI Prompt Engineer

    Design, test, and version prompts that ship reliable outputs at scale - with evals to prove it.

    View role

    AI Workflow Specialist

    Map your team's workflows and ship AI-powered systems that compound output without losing oversight.

    View role
    3 candidates delivered in 14 days or it's free

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