What's the difference between an AI developer and an ML engineer? +
AI developers build with LLMs, multi-modal models, and agent frameworks — they're application engineers who ship Claude / GPT / Gemini features into products. ML engineers train and deploy models, run distributed training, and own MLOps infrastructure. We staff AI developers. If you need an ML engineer to fine-tune a foundation model or run a training cluster, we'll tell you on the discovery call and refer you to a sibling network.
Which AI models and stacks do your developers ship with? +
Anthropic Claude (Sonnet, Haiku, Opus), OpenAI (GPT-4 family, Realtime API, Assistants), Google Gemini Pro, open-source Llama and Mistral via Bedrock / Vertex / Together. Frameworks: LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex, custom orchestration. Vector DBs: pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma. Eval: Ragas, LangSmith, Langfuse, Braintrust, Inspect AI.
Can you build AI mobile apps, or only backend? +
Both. AI mobile app development is one of our core lanes — we ship Flutter and React Native apps with embedded LLM features, on-device ML (Core ML, TensorFlow Lite, MLC), or cloud-routed inference via Claude / OpenAI / Gemini APIs. The mobile side overlaps with our Flutter team; the AI developer leads the model and eval architecture while the Flutter developers own the app layer.
Do you do compliance work (HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2)? +
Yes. HIPAA-eligible deployments via Anthropic with signed BAA, Azure OpenAI with BAA, or self-hosted Llama on AWS Bedrock. GDPR consent + data-residency patterns by default. SOC 2 we ship to but don't certify — we help your security team prep evidence for the auditor. PCI-DSS scope-reduction patterns via tokenization on the app layer.
What does the AI developer hourly rate cover? +
Junior $22, Mid $36, Senior $58, Lead $78 per hour. Rate includes the developer, AI workflow tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, our prompt library), code-review pass, and access to our internal eval harness. Inference cost (Claude / OpenAI / Gemini API spend) is billed pass-through with no markup. Vector DB hosting (Pinecone, Weaviate) similarly pass-through.
Can we start with one developer and scale up? +
Yes. The standard shape is: start solo for the first feature (typically a 4-6 week pilot), then add a second developer once the eval harness is stable, then a Lead at the third. Most engagements stabilise at 2-3 developers + a fractional Lead. 30-day cancellation on rolling terms after the first 30 days.
Do you fine-tune models or stick to base models? +
We default to prompt engineering + RAG over fine-tuning because the iteration loop is 100× faster. Fine-tuning enters scope when prompt + RAG hits a wall: domain-specific tone, very long context, structured output that base models can't hold. We fine-tune on Bedrock, Together, or via OpenAI's API. We don't run our own GPU cluster — that's an ML engineering problem, not an AI developer problem.