A senior AI/ML engineer from our network. Vetted, embedded in your team, shipping the first week. 20 hours a week. Month-to-month.
By Near. Trusted by 577+ US companies.
// the math
Skip the 6-month hunt. Skip the $300K total comp. Pay for the hours you use.
Time to first day
Senior engineer cost / hour
Commitment
Minimum hours / week
Agentic workflows
Multi-step agents that handle a real workflow end-to-end. Lead enrichment, ticket triage, document processing, whatever lives across your tools.
RAG over your knowledge
An assistant that answers questions about your docs, your CRM, your email threads. Vector DB, embeddings, retrieval pipeline, wired into your stack.
LLM integrations into your existing tools
Salesforce, HubSpot, ERPs, custom apps. They embed AI features inside the systems your team already lives in.
Model fine-tuning for your domain
When off-the-shelf doesn't fit. Fine-tune Claude or GPT for your specific vertical, your data, your edge cases.
Evals and monitoring
Set up evals, track drift, catch regressions. Production AI without flying blind.
Internal tools and dashboards
Custom tooling for your team. Document review, content generation, decision support. Built fast, owned by you.
| Full-time US hire | Offshore agency / freelancer | Our fractional AI engineer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first day | 3-6 months recruiting plus a 30-60 day notice. | 1-2 weeks, but you source and vet them. | 1-3 days. We've already vetted them. |
| Cost | $200K-$350K base. Plus equity, benefits, retention. Total comp north of $300K. | Hourly rates wide. $80-$150/hr from quality offshore agencies. | Starts at $60/hr. ~$60K/year for half-time. |
| Commitment | At-will, but hiring and firing is a quarter-long process. | Per project or per hour. | Month-to-month. Scale up, scale down, swap engineers. |
| Retention risk | High. Senior AI talent gets poached every 12-18 months. | They're not yours. They move on whenever. | Backed by Near. If yours leaves, we replace in days. |
| Vetting | You screen 100+ resumes, run 5+ interviews per role. | Their bench, their standards. Variable. | Top 1% of our 45,000+ applicant network. We do the screening. |
| Embedded in your team | Yes, after they start. | No. They build, deliver, leave. | Yes. They sit in your standups. |
| Stack flexibility | Whatever you hired for. Hard to swap if you pivot. | Whatever they pitched. | Pick from our bench. Senior engineers across LLM, RAG, fine-tuning, agentic, evals. |
We've placed thousands of LatAm professionals into US teams over the last 5 years.
We started building an AI engineer bench when we put senior engineers inside our own ops. They learned how to ship agentic workflows, RAG systems, and LLM integrations in production. Now we're putting that bench on your team.
Tell us about the role and the problem you're trying to solve. The engineer who'd work with you joins the call.
1-3 days from signed to in your standup. They embed in your team. Tangible output from the first week.
Month-to-month. Add hours, swap engineers, or pause. No lock-in.
They sell you a body. We embed a senior AI engineer in your team, accountable to you, not to an account manager.
They're employed by Near through Deel. We handle payroll, taxes, compliance, equipment. They report into you.
Standard NDA and IP assignment in our contract. We've worked with Fortune 500 and healthcare clients on data-sensitive engagements.
Yes. Many clients hire the engineer onto their payroll after 90 days if they want full-time. Conversion is clean.
Latin America. Most work US Eastern or Central time. Full overlap with US business hours.
Python, TypeScript, OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector DBs (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector), MLOps (MLflow, W&B), cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure). If you have it, they've worked in it.
Bring the role you're trying to fill. We'll show you who we have ready and what they can ship in week one.
Book a 30-Minute Call