For agents that stop before they go somewhere they shouldn't
Hire AI Agent Developers
An agent that works cleanly in a demo can still loop indefinitely, call the wrong tool, or take an action nobody would have approved. These engineers are tested on catching that exact risk. They are then placed to build agents that automate real work without losing human control over what those agents can do.
- Profiles typically within two business days
- Replacement Assurance: If an engineer is not the right fit, a replacement from our own team starts within ten business days of your request, at no extra cost
- You interview before placement if you want to
- At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast
- 14-Day Risk-Free Trial: For your first engineer on a time-and-materials engagement. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop
How we evaluate an AI agent developer
The tasks, the signals and the onboarding, walked through by the people who run them.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Published, not promised
The assessment behind every engineer we send.
The AI agent bar is published, not assumed: five competencies, the exact task behind each, and the shortcut that ends a candidacy. Most interviews ask which framework someone prefers. This one asks whether the agent can be trusted with real actions.
What we listen forWhether they design against loops deliberately, not patch them after the fact.
An agent completes simple tasks fine but gets stuck in loops on multi-step tasks. Diagnose and propose a fix.
- What strong sounds like
- Identifies the specific looping condition in the agent's planning logic and proposes a bounded retry or step-limit design.
- What gives us pause
- Adds a maximum iteration count without diagnosing why the agent was looping in the first place.
Python · LangGraph · AutoGen
Tool Calling · Function Calling · State Machines
Guardrails · Human-in-the-loop · Rate Limiting
LangSmith · Vector Databases · Observability
02Who you actually meet
The bench, priced by seniority.
Three seniority tiers, priced honestly, and the engineers who fill each one today. Real names and photos take their place as soon as we can share them, and the standard stays exactly the same.
Engineer
Features scoped tightly enough to ship inside your review bar, every time.
The right first hire when your seniors already set the standard.
$3,000–3,800per month
Senior
The hard module nobody else wants to own, taken end to end.
Ownership of a surface, without adding a manager to your headcount.
$4,100–5,200per month
Lead
The workstream's decisions, made daily, so nothing waits on a meeting.
One accountable voice for a pod or initiative that can't afford to drift.
$5,500–6,900per month
AI agent developer
3 yrs · US East overlap
Traced a support-triage agent's looping bug to a planning-state error and fixed it
- Python
- LangGraph
- Tool Calling
Senior AI agent developer
7 yrs · UK + EU hours
Designed the confirmation step that stopped an email agent from acting on an ambiguous request
- AutoGen
- Guardrails
- State Machines
Lead AI agent developer
9 yrs · EU + US split
Owns the escalation design letting agents handle routine cases safely across a support desk
- Architecture
- Human-in-the-loop
- LangSmith
- Rate Limiting
Indicative ranges, representative profiles. Exact figures and named engineers arrive with your shortlist.
Weighing this against a freelancer, a direct hire or a marketplace? See the honest comparison
03From stated problem to first change
Four steps, each closing on evidence.
This process is built around agent safety, not a framework preference contest. Every step produces evidence, and exiting early costs you nothing.
Define the automation problem
We map what the agent needs to do and, just as importantly, what it must never do unsupervised. The brief names that boundary, not a framework wishlist.
A brief your leads signMatch against your workflow
Candidates are screened against your actual tools, your risk tolerance and your review culture. Three engineers who understand your workflow beat thirty who list agent frameworks.
Three fits, not thirty CVsAssess on the real tasks
Your team can watch the orchestration and guardrail-design exercises directly. What shows up is judgement about autonomy, not enthusiasm for a specific library.
Evaluation you can watchOnboard inside your process
Access, standards and a first bounded agent capability shipped for real. Continuity cover keeps a departure from becoming a gap in what your agents can safely do.
A merged change in week one
04Evidence and proof
Engineers who kept the agent's autonomy honest.
Agent proof is a workflow that stayed within its boundary, not a demo that impressed once. Every record here waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studies
An agent that stopped looping and started finishing the task.
Tern's support-triage agent occasionally got stuck reprocessing the same ticket in a loop instead of resolving it. An embedded AI agent developer traced the loop to a planning-state bug and fixed it before the next release.
- Looping incidents
- Eliminated
- Time to root cause
- Under one week
He designed the confirmation step that stopped an agent from sending an email it shouldn't have.
Sample · pending client approval
The escalation rules she built finally let the agent handle routine cases without us worrying about the unusual ones.
Sample · pending client approval
05Three shapes, one standard
Add an engineer, an automation pod, or a practice.
Most teams start with one engineer building a first supervised agent workflow. Some need a pod that owns agent safety across the roadmap. Where automating a whole workflow matters more than staffing a role, we point you to the practice instead.
- Team extension
One named engineer
A single AI agent specialist inside your direction and your reviews. The smallest commitment, and typically the first step.
- Delivery pods
An automation pod
A pod with its own lead that owns agent orchestration and safety across your workflows. You set priorities while the pod carries delivery.
- AI & Automation
The practice, not the person
Where automating a whole workflow matters more than staffing a role, AI & Automation takes on that delivery instead.
06Straight answers
Asked before an AI agent hire is signed.
01What does an AI agent developer actually do day to day?
Designs multi-step orchestration logic, writes tool descriptions precise enough to be called correctly, and builds the guardrails that stop an agent before an irreversible action goes wrong. The unglamorous majority of the work is the boundary, not the automation itself.
02Is this different from hiring a general AI developer?
Yes. General AI development covers shipping AI features broadly. This role is specifically about autonomous, multi-step decision-making and the safety design that has to come with it.
03Can we run our own interviews as well?
Yes, the published tasks are built to be reused directly. Several clients now run the tool-use exercise themselves in later hiring rounds.
04How fast can an AI agent developer start?
A shortlist arrives within days from a bench evaluated continuously. Real start speed after that tracks how quickly your side can grant tool and system access.
05Who manages the engineer day to day?
Your leads set the roadmap and hold the safety standards. What we carry is the layer behind the engineer: continuity, payroll, replacement risk and the handoff if plans shift.
06What if the engineer is not the right fit?
Tell us the moment you notice and the replacement costs you nothing. The next engineer is walked through the precise gap, which keeps repeat mismatches rare.
07Do your AI agent developers use AI coding tools themselves?
Yes, to scaffold orchestration code and test harnesses. The agents they build for you remain governed separately, by the guardrails and escalation design described above.
08How does pricing work for a hired AI agent developer?
Expect the range shown in the bands above; the shortlist fixes the specific number once scope is agreed. Monthly billing, no fee before an interview, notice period at exit.