--- title: "Hire a fractional AI engineer" description: "Hire a fractional applied AI engineer. One senior engineer joins your team for a few months and ships AI agents and LLM features into your product." canonical_url: "https://fractionalappliedai.com/" meta: "og:description": "Hire a fractional applied AI engineer. One senior engineer joins your team for a few months and ships AI agents and LLM features into your product." "og:image": "https://fractionalappliedai.com/_og/s/o_ac369088ca13aa8a.png" "og:image:alt": "Hire a fractional AI engineer | Fractional Applied AI" "og:image:height": "630" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "Hire a fractional AI engineer | Fractional Applied AI" "twitter:image": "https://fractionalappliedai.com/_og/s/o_ac369088ca13aa8a.png" "twitter:image:alt": "Hire a fractional AI engineer | Fractional Applied AI" --- > Index of every page on this site: [llms.txt](https://fractionalappliedai.com/llms.txt) **Fractional**Applied AI software engineer # Hire a fractional AI engineer who ships to production, not another demo. One senior engineer joins your team for a few months and ships AI agents and LLM features into the product and workflows you already run. No full-time search, no agency handoff. [Request an intro call](https://fractionalappliedai.com/contact) [Email](mailto:hello@fractionalappliedai.com) The embedded model is explained in [what a forward deployed engineer is](https://fractionalappliedai.com/forward-deployed-engineer). The work itself is on the [services](https://fractionalappliedai.com/services) page.
Engagement
A few months or a fixed sprint
Where it runs
Your repository and your accounts
Who does the work
One senior engineer, no agency layer
1. 01 ### The pilot worked in a demo and never shipped Someone built a promising prototype. It still is not in the product, because the last 20% (auth, your data, failure cases) needs an engineer who has shipped this before. 2. 02 ### You need a senior AI engineer, not a full-time search A permanent hire can take months to find, and the workload may not justify a seat yet. You need the work done by someone who is already good at it. 3. 03 ### The agency left and nobody can maintain it Work delivered from the outside tends to arrive as a black box. You want code in your repository that your own team can read, change, and own. 4. 04 ### Your engineers are busy with the roadmap The team that knows your product has no spare quarter to learn agents, evals, and model behavior. A fractional engineer takes that stream so the roadmap keeps moving. 5. 05 ### You are not sure the AI will behave on live data The risk is an agent that takes a wrong action on a real record. Every build here has permissions, an audit trail, and a human check where a mistake costs money or trust. 02 / The process ## How an engagement works Scope, embed, hand over. The same three steps, in that order, on every engagement. 1. Step 1 ### Scope the workflow A 30-minute call, then a short written scope: the job, the systems it touches, and what done looks like. 2. Step 2 ### Embed and ship I join your tools and your cadence and build the agent, the integration, or the automation in the product you already have. 3. Step 3 ### Hand it over Someone on your team can run it, change it, and explain it. The code stays in your accounts. [

AI agent builds

An agent that can read your records, take a bounded action, and leave a trail a person can audit.Read more about AI agent builds →](https://fractionalappliedai.com/services#agents) [

LLM integration

A language model inside the product your customers and staff already open, wired to your data and your permissions.Read more about LLM integration →](https://fractionalappliedai.com/services#llm) [

AI workflow automation

A manual loop turned into a path, with a human check where the decision still belongs to a person.Read more about AI workflow automation →](https://fractionalappliedai.com/services#workflows) [

Technical AI strategy

A written call on what to build, what to buy, and what to leave alone, before anyone spends a quarter on the wrong system.Read more about Technical AI strategy →](https://fractionalappliedai.com/services#strategy) ### WellsManager Built the product Operations software for oil and gas teams. It covers field maintenance, well costs, lease operating statements, and investor payments, and it connects an AI assistant to those live records. [Visit WellsManager](https://wellsmanager.com)
### What is a fractional applied AI engineer? \+ A senior software engineer you hire part-time, for a few months or a fixed sprint, to ship AI agents and LLM features in your existing product. It is the forward deployed engineer model: embedded in your repository, responsible for shipping, then handing over.
### When should I hire a fractional AI engineer instead of a full-time one? \+ When you can name the AI work but not yet a permanent seat for it, or when a full-time search would take longer than the opportunity lasts. A fractional engineer starts on a real workflow now, and the handover tells you what a later full-time hire needs to be.
### How is this different from an agency or a freelance marketplace? \+ An agency brings a team and usually delivers from the outside. A marketplace gives you a list of profiles to vet yourself. I am one senior engineer in your repository, your issue tracker, and your release process. The code stays in your accounts.
### Why do AI pilots stall before production? \+ Usually the model is fine and the surrounding work is missing: permissions, your real data, an audit trail, failure behavior, and a handover. Closing that gap is the job.
### How long does an engagement last? \+ A fixed sprint is often a few weeks. A retainer is a month at a time and usually runs for a few months. The length is part of the written scope, agreed before the work starts.
### Do you work alongside an existing engineering team? \+ Yes. If you have engineers, I work in their repository and I want their review. If you do not, I still ship in a codebase a future engineer can read.
### What happens on the intro call? \+ Thirty minutes. You describe one workflow and the system it lives in. I tell you whether I am the right person, and which engagement type fits. The call is a conversation, not a pitch deck.
## Request an intro call Bring one workflow and the system it lives in. I will tell you whether I am the right person, and what the first stretch of work would cover. [Request an intro call](https://fractionalappliedai.com/contact) [Email](mailto:hello@fractionalappliedai.com) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://fractionalappliedai.com/#website","@type":"WebSite","description":"Forward deployed engineering for companies that need AI agents and LLM features shipped into the workflows they already run.","name":"Fractional Applied AI","url":"https://fractionalappliedai.com/","publisher":{"@id":"https://fractionalappliedai.com/#identity"}},{"@id":"https://fractionalappliedai.com/#webpage","description":"Hire a fractional applied AI engineer. 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