Maya K.
Senior Full-Stack Developer
$120/hr
★★★★★4.9
React
Node.js
Hire AI Developers From the Top 1%, Matched in 48 Hours
Hire AI developers here with one brief: we hand-match vetted top-1% LLM engineers, machine-learning developers and MLOps specialists to your stack and use case within 48 hours, and escrow releases payment only for milestones you approve.
$90 to 180/hr senior band
48h to shortlist
Find your freelancer
Preview
Role
Budget
Start
Your top matches
2 of 3 can start this week All 3 available this month Flexible start dates
Andrei P.
Senior Backend Engineer
$135/hr
★★★★★5.0
Python
AWS
Jonas W.
Mobile Developer
$110/hr
★★★★★4.9
Flutter
iOS
Sofia R.
Product Designer
$95/hr
★★★★★4.9
Figma
Design systems
Nina H.
UX Designer
$105/hr
★★★★★5.0
Research
Prototyping
Tomás L.
Brand Designer
$85/hr
★★★★★4.8
Identity
Packaging
Daniel O.
Conversion Copywriter
$110/hr
★★★★★4.9
Landing pages
Email
Claire B.
Technical Writer
$90/hr
★★★★★4.9
SaaS docs
API guides
Priya S.
Content Strategist
$75/hr
★★★★★4.8
B2B blogs
SEO briefs
Lucas M.
Growth Marketer
$115/hr
★★★★★4.9
Paid social
CRO
Emma T.
SEO Specialist
$95/hr
★★★★★4.9
Technical SEO
Content
Rafael D.
Performance Marketer
$125/hr
★★★★★5.0
Google Ads
Analytics
Hana Y.
Video Editor
$85/hr
★★★★★4.9
Short-form
Motion graphics
Marco V.
Post-Production Editor
$95/hr
★★★★★4.8
Color grade
Sound design
Alice G.
YouTube Editor
$70/hr
★★★★★4.9
Retention edits
Thumbnails
Rachel N.
Small-Business Bookkeeper
$55/hr
★★★★★4.9
QuickBooks Online
Monthly close
Derek C.
Senior Bookkeeper
$75/hr
★★★★★5.0
Reconciliations
AR and AP
Monica F.
Freelance Accountant (CPA)
$105/hr
★★★★★4.9
Xero
1099 filing
Grace A.
Executive Virtual Assistant
$45/hr
★★★★★4.9
Inbox and calendar
Travel
Bianca T.
Operations Assistant
$38/hr
★★★★★4.9
CRM hygiene
Data entry
Jordan R.
Social Media Assistant
$42/hr
★★★★★4.8
Scheduling
Community
Elena M.
Technical SEO Consultant
$120/hr
★★★★★5.0
Audits
Core Web Vitals
Chris P.
SEO Content Strategist
$95/hr
★★★★★4.9
Topic clusters
On-page
Nadia V.
Link and Digital PR Lead
$105/hr
★★★★★4.8
Outreach
Authority
Dana R.
Google Ads Consultant
$130/hr
★★★★★5.0
Search and lead gen
Conversion tracking
Tomas O.
Paid Search Manager
$110/hr
★★★★★4.9
Shopping and PMax
Feed strategy
Sasha W.
PPC Specialist
$85/hr
★★★★★4.9
Account audits
Budget pacing
Ravi K.
Senior Data Scientist
$140/hr
★★★★★5.0
Python
Forecasting
Laura O.
ML Engineer
$150/hr
★★★★★4.9
scikit-learn
MLOps
Sam B.
Analytics Data Scientist
$115/hr
★★★★★4.9
SQL
Dashboards
Tobias A.
Senior DevOps Engineer
$135/hr
★★★★★5.0
AWS
Terraform
Priya N.
Platform / SRE Engineer
$145/hr
★★★★★4.9
Kubernetes
CI/CD
Marcus C.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
$125/hr
★★★★★4.9
Azure
GitHub Actions
Ava L.
Social Media Manager
$65/hr
★★★★★4.9
Instagram
TikTok
Diego M.
Content and Community Manager
$55/hr
★★★★★4.9
Content calendar
Community
Kayla R.
Paid Social Strategist
$85/hr
★★★★★4.8
Meta Ads
Reporting
Julian C.
Management Consultant
$165/hr
★★★★★5.0
Strategy
GTM
Rebecca A.
Operations Consultant
$130/hr
★★★★★4.9
Process design
SOPs
Victor P.
Financial / FP&A Consultant
$150/hr
★★★★★4.9
Modeling
Fundraising
Grace H.
Freelance CPA
$120/hr
★★★★★5.0
Tax prep
Advisory
Nathan D.
Tax Accountant
$110/hr
★★★★★4.9
S-corp
1040 and 1120
Lena P.
Fractional Controller
$135/hr
★★★★★4.9
GAAP close
Financial reports
Dana R.
Direct-Response Copywriter
$115/hr
★★★★★5.0
Sales pages
Email sequences
Marcus B.
Conversion Copywriter
$100/hr
★★★★★4.9
Landing pages
A/B testing
Sara K.
Ad and Brand Copywriter
$90/hr
★★★★★4.9
Paid social
Taglines
Ivan V.
Senior QA Automation Engineer
$105/hr
★★★★★5.0
Playwright
CI pipelines
Priya M.
SDET / Test Engineer
$95/hr
★★★★★4.9
Cypress
API testing
Dana K.
Manual and Exploratory QA Lead
$75/hr
★★★★★4.9
Test plans
Regression
Ravi T.
Certified Salesforce Developer
$125/hr
★★★★★5.0
Apex
LWC
Megan B.
Salesforce Technical Architect
$160/hr
★★★★★4.9
Integrations
Sales Cloud
Carlos O.
Salesforce Admin and Consultant
$95/hr
★★★★★4.9
Flows
Service Cloud
Lena C.
Senior UX Designer
$115/hr
★★★★★5.0
User research
Figma
Devon M.
UI and Interaction Designer
$100/hr
★★★★★4.9
Design systems
Prototyping
Amara K.
UX Researcher
$90/hr
★★★★★4.9
Usability testing
Journey maps
Elena B.
Senior Webflow Developer
$105/hr
★★★★★5.0
Webflow CMS
Interactions
Jordan R.
Webflow Designer and Builder
$90/hr
★★★★★4.9
Figma to Webflow
SEO setup
Tarek S.
Webflow Migration Specialist
$120/hr
★★★★★4.9
WordPress migration
Core Web Vitals
Sofia M.
Certified Legal Translator
$75/hr
★★★★★5.0
ATA certified
Spanish/English
Yuki T.
Localization Specialist
$68/hr
★★★★★4.9
App localization
Japanese/English
Rami A.
Medical and Technical Translator
$82/hr
★★★★★4.9
Life sciences
Arabic/English
Nadia P.
Senior Commercial Illustrator
$105/hr
★★★★★5.0
Brand illustration
Vector
Cole J.
Editorial and Spot Illustrator
$85/hr
★★★★★4.9
Editorial
Procreate
Hana L.
Children's Book Illustrator
$90/hr
★★★★★4.9
Character design
Book covers
Example profiles for preview. Your real shortlist is hand-picked for your brief once your early-access spot opens.
Fund milestone 1 · $1,800 in escrow · $4,800 in escrow · $12,500 in escrow · released on your approval
What they build
What a freelance AI developer actually builds
Most teams hiring an AI developer in 2026 want one of a few things: a chatbot or support agent trained on their own content, a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline over internal documents, a fine-tuned or prompt-engineered model for a specific task, or a machine-learning feature such as scoring, forecasting or recommendations. A senior AI developer scopes the data, picks the right model, builds the pipeline, evaluates accuracy and ships it behind an API your product can call.
LLM apps and agents
Chatbots, copilots and autonomous agents built on OpenAI, Anthropic or open models, with tool use, guardrails and evaluation.
RAG and search
Retrieval pipelines over your docs: chunking, embeddings, a vector database and reranking that returns grounded, cited answers.
Fine-tuning and training
Fine-tuning open models, training classifiers or building custom models in PyTorch or TensorFlow when off-the-shelf is not enough.
ML features
Scoring, churn and demand forecasting, recommendations and anomaly detection wired into your product with real evaluation.
Data and MLOps
Pipelines, feature stores, model deployment, monitoring and cost control so a prototype survives production traffic.
Computer vision and NLP
Document extraction, image classification, OCR and text analysis tuned to your accuracy and latency targets.
Rates
Freelance AI developer rates: what to budget in 2026
Why senior AI talent costs this much
AI moves fast, and a developer who has shipped production LLM systems saves you months of dead ends. Engineers on SuperGig keep 100% of their rate, quote it up front, and work in milestones you fund through escrow for freelancers, so an untested model never becomes a paid deliverable.
- Fixed-price milestones available for scoped builds like a RAG chatbot.
- Platform fee is 10% per project, nothing monthly.
- Wrong fit? Free rematch, new shortlist within 48 hours.
| Specialty | Hourly rate | Typical work |
|---|---|---|
| LLM app engineer | $90 to 140/hr | Chatbots, agents, RAG pipelines, prompt and eval work |
| Machine-learning engineer | $110 to 170/hr | Training, fine-tuning, scoring and forecasting models |
| MLOps and data engineer | $100 to 160/hr | Pipelines, deployment, monitoring, cost and latency tuning |
| Computer vision or NLP specialist | $100 to 180/hr | Extraction, OCR, classification, custom vision or text models |
Bands reflect US-based senior freelancers in 2026. For a full breakdown across engineering roles, see our freelance developer rates guide.
Vetting
How AI developers earn a place on the roster
- 01 Portfolio review. Shipped AI systems checked for real production use, not demos: what they built, the accuracy they hit and the trade-offs they made.
- 02 Technical assessment. A timed problem covering model choice, RAG design, evaluation and cost, defended live so you know the reasoning is theirs.
- 03 Live project simulation. A paid task on a real brief, judged on how they scope data, pick a model and prove it works.
- 04 Reference check. Past clients and teams confirm delivery, communication and whether the system still runs after handover.
The screen is built to pass fewer than 1 in 20 applicants.
Hire the whole build, not just the model
An AI feature rarely ships alone. Many teams pair an AI developer with a freelance Python developer to build the inference API and data pipeline, a freelance web developer to wire the model into the product, and a freelance designer to make the interface people actually trust.
- One accountable engineer, not a rotating agency bench.
- Escrow milestones tied to working, evaluated output.
- Clear handover so the system survives after launch.
Briefing guide
How to brief a freelance AI developer
Describe the outcome, not the model
Say what success looks like: "answer support questions from our docs with a citation, under two seconds". The developer picks the model. If you lead with a model name, you often buy the wrong tool.
Bring a sample of your data
A dozen real documents, tickets or records tells a strong engineer more than a page of requirements. It also lets them size the data cleaning work honestly before you commit.
Set an accuracy and cost target
Name the quality bar you need and the per-query budget you can live with. Both drive the design, and both are cheaper to agree before the first milestone than after.
Scope the first milestone small
A working prototype on one use case first. You confirm the approach cheaply, escrow releases on your approval, and the free 48-hour rematch is there if the fit is wrong.
New to hiring on a marketplace? The full process, brief to shortlist to release, is in how to hire a freelancer, and how to hire an AI developer walks through vetting an AI hire step by step.
FAQ
Hiring an AI developer: common questions
How much does it cost to hire an AI developer?
US freelance AI developers typically charge $90 to $180 per hour, with senior LLM and machine-learning engineers at the top of that band. Rate depends on the work: RAG and prompt engineering sit lower, while custom model training, fine-tuning and MLOps command more. Most projects here run as fixed milestones you fund in escrow, so you budget by deliverable rather than by open-ended hours.
What skills should an AI developer have?
A strong AI developer knows Python, at least one large-language-model API, retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases and prompt design. For deeper work they add PyTorch or TensorFlow, fine-tuning, evaluation and MLOps for deployment. Judge candidates on systems they have actually shipped and can explain, not on certifications or course lists.
How fast can I hire an AI developer on SuperGig?
You get a hand-picked shortlist of vetted AI developers within 48 hours of submitting your brief. You interview the ones you like, fund a first milestone in escrow, and work starts. If the fit is wrong, a free rematch brings a new shortlist inside 48 hours, so a slow start never costs you.
Should I hire a freelance AI developer or an agency?
For a focused build such as a chatbot, RAG pipeline or ML feature, a vetted freelance AI developer is faster and cheaper than an agency, and you work directly with the person writing the code. Agencies fit large multi-role programs that need several disciplines at once. SuperGig matches you to a single accountable senior engineer.
Hire an AI Developer This Week
Brief your use case today, review a vetted top-1% shortlist within 48 hours, and pay only for milestones you approve.