Smerdoff
Smerdoff / Hire / AI Developers

Hire Machine Learning Engineers for Custom ML Solutions

Not every problem is an LLM problem. Forecasting, classification, recommendation, and anomaly detection often call for a purpose-built model instead of a prompt. We staff ML engineers who can take a use case from data exploration through training to a deployed, monitored model.

Model TrainingDeploymentMLOpsFixed Scope
$287,500
true first-year cost of a $150k in-house developer once fees, ramp-up and lost productivity are counted
Full Scale
30–50%
lower cost of a dedicated senior team vs an equivalent in-house US hire — with faster ramp-up
Full Scale

What sets our ML engineers apart

Right model for the problem

We evaluate whether the task actually needs a custom-trained model or whether an existing LLM or simpler heuristic solves it faster and cheaper.

Production deployment, not just notebooks

Models are packaged, versioned, and served behind an API — not left as a one-off Jupyter notebook.

Monitoring for drift

We track model performance after launch so degrading accuracy gets caught before it affects your users.

Data pipeline discipline

Training data is cleaned, versioned, and reproducible, so results can be trusted and retrained reliably.

What an ML engineering engagement covers

Model design and training

Selecting an architecture and training pipeline suited to your data and task.

Feature engineering

Turning raw data into inputs that actually improve model performance.

Deployment and serving

Packaging the model behind a reliable, scalable inference API.

Monitoring and retraining

Tracking accuracy and drift in production, with a plan to retrain when it degrades.

FAQ

An ML engineer designs and trains models from your data — for tasks like forecasting or classification. An LLM engineer works with existing foundation models through retrieval, prompting, and fine-tuning. Many products need both, and we'll tell you which one your use case actually calls for.

It depends on the scope — a classification model is a different job than a full recommendation system. We scope a fixed deliverable with a fixed estimate rather than quoting an open-ended hourly rate.

Data assessment, feature engineering, model training and evaluation, deployment behind an API, and monitoring so you know if performance drifts after launch.

Related

Free AI consultation (30 min)

Tell us what you're trying to predict, classify, or automate — we'll scope the model work and a fixed estimate.