Agents that complete real work
Prioritize tool use, orchestration, failure recovery and task-level evaluations. Go beyond a demo to a workflow your team can operate.
EUROPEAN AI TALENT. FOR AMERICAN TEAMS.
Build your AI team.
Make your budget
go further.
Hire Europe-based engineers for agents, LLM products and production AI. A specialist search around your roadmap, your technical bar and your US working hours.
Agentic AI first · 10 focused specialties · Pay-on-hire permanent placements
↓ See the economics behind the searchEUROPE → YOUR US TEAM01 / AI TALENT
Expertise across borders.Your team.
Your next chapter.
Your next chapter.
10AI engineering specialties
15%Introductory placement fee
$0Upfront recruiting fee
Pay on hire. Terms agreed first. ↗PRODUCTION AI.
SPECIFIC EXPERTISE.
YOUR NEXT HIRE SHOULD MOVE THE ROADMAP
From AI ambition
to engineering ownership.
Tell us what needs to work in production. We shape the search around the people and evidence needed to get there.
AI features your users can trust
Look for applied LLM and product engineers who connect model quality, user experience and a measurable release outcome.
Production systems you can run
Bring infrastructure, security and evaluation into the hiring brief early, with ownership of reliability and operating cost.
THE BUSINESS CASE
Great AI talent.
A different cost base.
Explore the economics for your specialty. Compare first-year employee costs, including recruiting, employer-cost allowances and an EOR service.
02 / POTENTIAL FIRST-YEAR SAVING
$93,62143.6% lower modeled EU cost in year one
Includes the 15% placement fee and EOR allowance at the default settings. Your actual costs may differ.
| Included cost | US | Europe |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | $165,000 | $80,342 |
| Taxes + benefits allowance | $49,500 | $20,086 |
| EOR service / year | $0 | $8,400 |
| One-time recruitment | $0 | $12,051 |
| Other annual costs | $0 | $0 |
Following-year modeled difference: $105,673. Same salaries and recurring costs; no repeat placement fee.
Discuss this hiring budgetFind your starting point.
Default first-year scenarios for one employee. Select a specialty to see and adjust its calculation above. These reference budgets do not change when you edit the calculator.
Salary references, currency conversion & calculation method
One reference market, not a European average. The model uses US salaries and Poland as the European reference market. Pearson Carter’s 2026 guide provides medium-market base-pay figures, excluding bonuses and incentives. They do not establish matched candidate quality or a seniority-specific quote. Salary guide ↗
| Reference family | US annual base | Reference gross / month |
|---|---|---|
| AI Engineer | $165,000 | PLN 26,000 |
| MLOps Engineer | $171,000 | PLN 25,000 |
| Data Engineer | $167,000 | PLN 26,000 |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $174,000 | PLN 25,000 |
Specialty mapping. Agentic AI, Applied AI / LLM, Forward Deployed AI, AI Product, AI Security and AI Automation use the AI Engineer reference. Infrastructure uses MLOps; Data / RAG uses Data Engineer; Evaluation and GPU Inference use Machine Learning Engineer. These are planning proxies for specialist roles, not ten separately measured market medians.
Currency conversion. ECB reference rates dated October 16, 2026: €1 = $1.1253 and PLN 4.3700. Annual European salary = monthly PLN × 12 × 0.25750572, rounded to the nearest dollar. This is a fixed snapshot, not a live FX feed. ECB reference rates ↗
The full formula. First-year cost = annual base salary + employer-cost allowance + annual EOR fee (if applicable) + one-time recruitment fee + other annual costs. Multiply each side by the number of identical hires. Saving = US cost − European cost; percentage = saving ÷ US cost. A negative result means the European scenario costs more.
Employer costs and EOR. The editable 30% / 25% allowances cover employer taxes and benefits for planning. They are not a country-specific payroll calculation. The $700 EOR allowance rounds Remote’s $699 standard monthly service fee; salary, benefits and other charges are separate. This does not imply a partnership. EOR pricing reference ↗
Checked October 19, 2026. CrewContract’s introductory permanent placement fee is 15% of first-year gross base salary, subject to written engagement terms. Confirm country, compensation, current exchange rate, employment route and all fees before making a hiring decision. Contractor invoices need a separate model.
TEN DISCIPLINES. ONE FOCUSED SEARCH.
Hire for the work.
Start with the right specialty.
Agentic AI is our lead focus. Choose the discipline closest to your delivery bottleneck; we can refine the brief together.
01020304050607080910
AI Agent / Agentic AI Engineers
Build agents that use tools, complete multi-step tasks and stay observable in production.
Applied AI / LLM Engineers
Turn language models into reliable product features, grounded answers and measurable user value.
Forward Deployed AI Engineers
Put an engineer close to your customers to turn messy requirements into deployed AI solutions.
AI Full-Stack / Product Engineers
Own the complete AI feature, from interface and backend to release, feedback and iteration.
AI Infrastructure / MLOps Engineers
Give AI systems a repeatable path to production, with dependable deployment and clear operating costs.
AI Security Engineers
Protect model-powered products, their data and the tools agents can access.
Data / RAG Engineers
Make your knowledge usable by AI with reliable pipelines, strong retrieval and permission-aware access.
AI Evaluation Engineers
Turn AI quality into a repeatable release decision, with datasets, scorecards and regression checks.
Inference / GPU Optimization Engineers
Improve model serving economics through measured gains in latency, throughput and GPU utilization.
AI Automation Engineers
Connect AI to business systems and reduce manual work with reliable, auditable workflows.
DISTANCE SHOULD BE PLANNED FOR
Part of your team.
Clear across borders.
Define the working relationship as carefully as the technical requirements.
Discuss the role & working hoursUS overlap, agreed early.
Set your time zone and must-have meeting hours in the brief. More Eastern Time overlap is possible with a later European schedule; Pacific Time coverage needs an explicit agreement.
Your roadmap. Clear ownership.
Assess English communication, documentation and work in distributed teams. Define who owns code reviews, releases and the first 90-day outcome.
Choose the right hiring route.
Plan direct employment through your entity or a separately contracted EOR. Confirm IP terms, confidentiality, data access and local employment requirements with the responsible providers before onboarding.
MAKE THE HIRING BAR VISIBLE
Evidence before
an introduction.
A useful candidate conversation starts with what they built, what they owned and how they knew it worked.
Explore our assessment approach01
Production ownership
A relevant system and the candidate’s own contribution.
02
Technical judgment
Architecture choices, failure cases and cost trade-offs.
03
Quality & reliability
Evaluations, monitoring and evidence from real use.
04
Team fit
English collaboration, documentation and agreed overlap.
Your team owns the final technical and hiring decision.
FROM BRIEF TO OFFER
A focused search.
A clear hiring decision.
Start with one role and the first result that hire needs to own.
Share the business problem
Tell us the role, 90-day outcome, compensation budget and required US overlap.
Agree the search
Confirm target markets, assessment criteria, placement fee and the employment route before sourcing.
Interview against evidence
Discuss shipped work, architecture decisions and collaboration using one shared scorecard.
Hire with a clear plan
Agree the offer, employment arrangement and onboarding ownership. The written terms set the fee milestone.
THE DETAILS
Your questions,
answered.
Why hire an AI engineer in the EU?
Selected EU markets can offer a lower total hiring cost than a comparable US search. The useful comparison includes salary, employer costs, any EOR service and the placement fee. Your actual result depends on country, seniority and candidate expectations. Use the editable model above as a starting point.
Which AI roles do you focus on?
Agentic AI and Applied AI / LLM engineering lead our focus, followed by forward deployed AI, product engineering, infrastructure / MLOps and security. We also cover data / RAG, evaluation, inference / GPU optimization and AI automation.
How do you assess whether someone can do the work?
Agree the evidence before sourcing: relevant shipped systems, individual ownership, evaluation results, technical trade-offs and English collaboration. Use a role-specific scorecard and your technical interview to make the final decision.
Can a Europe-based engineer work US hours?
Set your required overlap before introductions. A 9–5 workday in Central Europe usually overlaps 9–5 Eastern Time by two hours and does not overlap Pacific Time. More overlap requires an agreed later local schedule. Daylight-saving transitions can shift the difference.
Do we need a European entity?
An employer of record may be an option where you do not have a local entity. Choose and contract with a provider for the specific country, with its fees, employment costs and responsibilities confirmed separately. CrewContract handles recruiting; EOR services are not included in the placement fee.
What are your fees and replacement terms?
Permanent placements use a success-based fee, with the amount, payment milestone and any replacement terms agreed in writing before the search starts. Our introductory permanent placement fee is 15% of the first-year gross base salary, with no upfront recruiting fee. The calculator includes this fee; the payment milestone and any replacement terms are confirmed in the agreement. Contract searches are scoped separately.
How do we start?
Tell us the role, your first 90-day outcome, salary budget and required US working hours. The request form opens a prepared email to ymsingasong@gmail.com. Review and send it to start the conversation.
YOUR NEXT HIRE STARTS HERE
Your next AI hire.
Let’s scope it together.
Bring the role, your budget and the outcome you need. Start a focused search for Europe-based AI talent.
Recruit AI talent in Europe?
Bring your specialist network to relevant client searches.