How to Hire AI Developers in 2024
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is genuinely omnipresent in today’s business environment. It’s remarkable how rapidly it integrated into many fields and industries, from transportation to healthcare or marketing, with an (almost) immediate and positive impact towards efficiency, accuracy, and the sheer quantity of data it can process.
All this sounds impressive, but it also created a huge demand that can’t be satisfied through recruitment due to the lack of experts in AI and ML (Machine Learning), especially in some local markets, leaving outsourcing AI development potentially the only valid option for businesses.
In this article, we will help you with critical information on how to hire AI developers, the most important aspects to consider, and how to make the right decision for your project.
Why hire AI developers and AI engineers?
There are obvious reasons you would like to invest in an AI Software Development project for your business - better data management, faster and assisted decision-making, increased efficiency, and more. The first big question is whether you would create an in-house team or outsource the AI Development process. Here’s why we believe the second option could make much more sense for your business:
1. Optimal costs
Hiring an in-house AI developer will cost a small fortune if your company is based in Western Europe or the US. For example, according to Indeed, the average salary for an ML (Machine Learning) engineer is $160,485 and can get up to $246,302. In perspective, we’re talking about an hourly fee between $57 and $107, making AI Software Development Projects costly. Hiring artificial intelligence engineers and developers from an outsourcing company from Eastern Europe, for example, will provide considerable savings while keeping the quality high.
2. Shorter AI Software Development time
This will come as no surprise for any business manager or owner, but recruiting is highly costly in both money and time. When hiring AI programmers, things can become even more difficult due to the lack of talent, which is estimated to continue in the medium term. Rather than wasting months searching, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding your new team, you can work with an Artificial Intelligence outsourcing company with experienced talent at their disposal. Truth be told, finding the right partner for your needs might take some time, but from our experience, it’s never even near compared to recruitment.
3. Better resource management
This third point is linked to the first one but from a different perspective. When we first talked about costs, we only referred to fees and salaries, but it’s a much bigger picture than that. In-house AI software development is more than just having your own AI developers and ML developers - it’s also about the necessary hardware, software licenses, benefits, and much more. As you can imagine, if you add up every other direct and indirect cost, outsourcing is just more cost-efficient.
4. Potential better results
In many of our past blog articles, we made different analogies between a business and a sports team because there are many similarities in terms of team chemistry, performance management, and more. To continue with the same idea, when hiring an external AI development team, you can enjoy the benefit of having a team with good chemistry and prior working experience on thought projects. If you go with the “hard way” or create an internal team, it will take time to match the same consistency.
5. Lesser Risks
AI Software Development is a relatively new field and can pose serious organizational risks if tackled with not enough resources and specific expertise. Businesses can expose themselves to severe project blocks during the roadmap stage. Hiring experienced AI developers and engineers from an outsourcing partner can provide stability and ensure smooth planning and implementation due to their experience and proven background.
How to hire AI Developers?
Finding and choosing the right AI outsourcing partner differs from other types of projects because of the technical differences that AI and ML impose. Based on our experience, find below some of the most important criteria you should consider.
1. Ask for Prior AI & ML project experience
When searching for your next AI outsourcing partner, you need to assess their experience in this field. Do your research, and at the interviews phase, ask them to provide prior project experience and potential testimonials. Not every software development company can tackle an AI software development project. Hence, the first place you should start your research is their website. Look to see if they included this in the solutions/competencies they provide.
2. Check for the right technical specializations
Compared to other software development projects, the team composition is different as it has to contain AI developers and engineers, ML developers, Data scientists and engineers, Deep Learning Engineers, and much more. Furthermore, they should be able to provide testing and post-launch services such as support and maintenance. When interviewing your potential next AI software outsourcing company, ask about their team structure for this type of project and try to meet some of the people from the team beforehand.
3. Check if they have dedicated people for AI/ML technologies
You might discover companies and teams that provide this type of service, but realistically, it’s only their second language, as their developers work on many other solutions. In many cases, that’s not a negative aspect, but when it comes to AI and ML, as they are highly specialized fields that require a very particular skill set and know-how, you should find a team that features in-house AI developers that are all-in into this field.
4. Make sure you find a one-stop-shop for your AI software needs
Many projects don’t require only brilliant Artificial Intelligence developers but also great project managers; people focused on the strategic part, UI/UX designers, and much more. From our experience, due to the discovery and strategy stages, we tend to discover many more opportunities but also challenges that the project might face; that’s why it’s critical to have people who shine at analyzing the business needs, infrastructure, and context. Furthermore, it’s needless to say that no matter how good the software is, it’s irrelevant if no one is willing to use it due to the lack of a user-friendly and modern interface. Ensure your new outsourcing partner can provide quality additional services for your project.
In conclusion, how do you hire the perfect AI developers for your project?
Firstly, assess if you’re better off creating your own internal team or outsourcing the project. In most scenarios, outsourcing your AI software development makes more sense in terms of cost efficiency and speed of delivery. Still, certain situations might make more sense for your business to start and grow your own team if finances and time are not a real issue.
Try to objectively analyze both sides of the glass and make the best decision for you and your business. Secondly, when it comes to outsourcing your AI software development projects, try to assess their prior field expertise to see if they have people dedicated to those positions, such as AI Developers and Engineers, ML Developers, Data Scientists, and more.
Finally, try to look at the big picture and assess what other technical needs you will require for your project besides the AI & ML fields - UI/UX designers, Support and Maintenance, Testers, and more.
Looking for your next AI software development partner?
With hundreds of software projects under our belt, we have extensive expertise in multiple industries and fields, including AI and ML Software Development. Our dedicated AI team developed a custom NLP API designed to dive into every detail of your business data to extract and manipulate it with unmatched precision and rapidity. Curious to find out more about this service? Check our dedicated page AI Software Development Services, or contact us to schedule a call.
Article written by Andreea Florescu, Recruitment Specialist
Andreea is an experienced recruitment specialist located in New York (US) who help organizations find the right person for a particular role. For the past years she was part of scaling teams for top companies in the tech world.