Hire AI engineers for your UK team
Named AI and LLM engineers who work your mornings, from £288 a day, invoiced in pounds. Webify.AI is an AI and software company headquartered in Ahmedabad, India, where our engineers are based.
Your mornings covered
09:00 to 13:00 UK time, every working day, at no extra cost.
Day rates in GBP
From £160 a day for a mid-level developer to £384 for a senior AI engineer.
A low-risk start
A two-week trial. No charge if you stop within the first five working days.
Which companies provide senior AI engineers for hire in the UK?
Three kinds of provider supply senior AI engineers to UK companies. UK AI consultancies deliver projects onshore. Contractor agencies and marketplaces place individual contractors on day rates. Offshore providers, such as Webify.AI, supply named engineers who work remotely on hourly or monthly terms. Each suits a different budget, level of risk and degree of control.
We don't rank providers here, and we aren't neutral: we are one of the options. The table sets out how the models differ, so you can judge which fits your project.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Option | How it works | Who directs the work | Price basis | Points to check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK AI consultancy | A firm scopes and delivers an AI project with its own team. | The consultancy | Fixed price, milestones or day rates | Who actually does the work, and at what seniority |
| Contractor agency or marketplace | You engage an individual AI contractor, often through their limited company. | You | Day rate; UK contract software developers median £525 a day | IR35 status, notice terms and cover if they leave |
| Nearshore team in Central or Eastern Europe | An agency in a nearby time zone supplies developers. | Usually you | Senior developers $64 to $76 an hour (in US dollars) | Contract terms and total monthly cost |
| Offshore provider, such as Webify.AI | A company outside the UK supplies named engineers who join your team remotely. | You | Hourly or monthly | Time-zone overlap, data-protection terms and IP assignment |
| In-house hire | You recruit an AI engineer as an employee. | You | Salary, benefits and recruiting costs | Time to hire, and whether there is enough AI work for a full-time role |
Market figures are published ranges from IT Jobs Watch (October 2026) and Accelerance (2026), not quotes.
Sources: IT Jobs Watch, UK contract software developer rates and Accelerance, 2026 outsourcing rates.
A consultancy suits a fixed-scope project you would rather not manage. A contractor suits a short, specialist need where you want someone on UK hours all day. An offshore provider suits ongoing AI work inside your own team, at a lower hourly cost, with part of the day overlapping.
If you are considering any offshore provider, the sections below cover the questions UK buyers raise most: IR35, UK GDPR and working hours. The answers apply to offshore providers generally, not only to us.
What do UK teams hire our machine learning and AI engineers to build?
UK teams hire our engineers for four kinds of work. They build AI agents, retrieval over your own documents (RAG), LLM features in existing products and machine learning pipelines. As an IBM Partner, we also deploy on IBM watsonx and open-weight models. That includes offline and on-premise set-ups for data that must stay inside your network.
AI agents
Agents for customer support, sales and operations that read from and act in the systems you already use.
→ Read more
RAG over your documents
Question answering over policies, contracts, manuals and knowledge bases, with answers that cite their source.
→ Read more
LLM features in your product
Summarisation, classification, search and drafting features added to a product you already run.
→ Read more
Machine learning pipelines
Data preparation, classification models and the evaluation that shows whether they work.
→ Read more
Private and on-premise LLMs
Open-weight models running on your own hardware, for data that cannot go to a third-party AI service.
→ Read more
Typical UK buyers are SaaS companies adding AI features to an existing product, and fintech firms with document-heavy processes. If you work in a regulated sector, involve your compliance team early. They will want to see the contract, the data-protection terms and the access you plan to give.
For the skills to look for and the roles involved, see our main guide to hiring AI engineers.
Our rates
Published prices in pounds sterling, invoiced in GBP. A day is eight hours.
Mid-level developer
3 to 5 years
£20 / hour
£160 a day
Senior developer
6 or more years
£28 / hour
£224 a day
AI / LLM engineer
Agents, RAG, IBM watsonx
£36 / hour
£288 a day
Senior AI engineer
Leads AI architecture and delivery
£48 / hour
£384 a day
Two-week trial with the developer you choose. No charge if you stop within the first five working days. UK clients get 09:00 to 13:00 UK time every working day, inside a normal Indian working day, at no extra cost. Full pricing and comparisons.
What is the day rate for an AI contractor in the UK?
Our UK day rates run from £160 for a mid-level developer to £384 for a senior AI engineer, based on an eight-hour day. An AI / LLM engineer costs £288 a day. For comparison, IT Jobs Watch puts the median UK contract software developer rate at £525 a day in October 2026.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Role | Experience | Hourly | Day (8 hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-level developer | 3 to 5 years | £20 | £160 |
| Senior developer | 6 or more years | £28 | £224 |
| AI / LLM engineer | Agents, RAG, IBM watsonx | £36 | £288 |
| Senior AI engineer | Leads AI architecture and delivery | £48 | £384 |
| UK contract software developer, market median | Not stated | — | £525 (IT Jobs Watch, October 2026) |
Webify.AI rows are our published prices. The market row is a median across UK contract software developer roles, not a quote.
The £525 figure comes from IT Jobs Watch and covers UK contract software developers in general. We have not found a reliable published median for AI contractors specifically, so we don't quote one. Treat £525 as a general benchmark, not an AI rate.
The comparison is not like for like. A UK contractor can work your whole day and come into the office. Our engineers overlap four hours a day and work remotely from India. In return you get a lower day rate, a two-week trial and a free replacement if the engineer leaves.
Monthly plans, USD prices and what each rate includes are on the pricing page.
Are offshore AI contractors IR35 compliant?
For engineers who live and work outside the UK, the off-payroll working rules (IR35) normally don't apply. HMRC's guidance says the rules only apply where a UK tax or National Insurance liability arises. Our engineers live in India and do the work from our Ahmedabad delivery centre. This is general information, not tax advice.
HMRC's Employment Status Manual sets this out at ESM10020. It says: "The off-payroll working rules can only apply where a UK liability to tax and/or NICs arises in the same manner as it applies to regular employees."
It then says: "A client does not need to consider whether Chapter 10 / Part 2 rules apply where there is no liability to tax and NICs in the UK." The factors it lists include the worker living outside the UK and the services being performed outside the UK.
- The engineer lives in India and does the work in India.
- Webify.AI pays the engineer and replaces them if needed; you never pay them directly.
- You contract with Webify.AI, an Indian company, and pay our invoice in GBP.
Some things could change the answer, such as an engineer travelling to work in the UK or moving here. If either is likely, raise it with us and with your adviser before it happens.
In plain English: we are not tax advisers, and this is general information, not tax advice. Your own facts decide the position. Ask your accountant or tax adviser to confirm it for your business, and note that HMRC's guidance can change.
Can an offshore AI team work in UK hours?
Yes, for part of the day. Our engineers work 09:00 to 13:00 UK time every working day, at no extra cost, inside a normal Indian working day. India doesn't change its clocks, so the window stays 09:00 to 13:00 UK time all year, through the British clock change.
| UK clocks | UK time | India time (IST) |
|---|---|---|
| Winter, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) | 09:00 to 13:00 | 14:30 to 18:30 |
| Summer, British Summer Time (BST) | 09:00 to 13:00 | 13:30 to 17:30 |
India Standard Time is five and a half hours ahead of GMT all year. Only the India-side times move.
Use the four hours for work that needs people together: stand-ups, pairing, code review and design discussions. Questions that come up in your afternoon wait until the next morning, so write them in the ticket.
- 1
Stand-up at the start of the window
Hold the daily stand-up at 09:00 or 09:30 UK time, so the morning has a plan.
- 2
Review before lunch
Review pull requests inside the window, so fixes can land before 13:00.
- 3
Write afternoon questions down
Leave them in the ticket or chat. The engineer picks them up before your next morning starts.
- 4
Close each window with a note
Ask for a short written update on what changed, what is blocked and what needs a decision.
Is outsourced AI development GDPR compliant?
It can be, if the transfer is set up properly. India has no UK adequacy decision. So under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, sending personal data there needs an appropriate safeguard. Examples are the International Data Transfer Agreement and the UK Addendum. We agree data-protection terms before a developer touches personal data.
UK GDPR treats a transfer of personal data outside the UK as a restricted transfer. Remote access from India to a database of UK customers is likely to count too. Your data protection lead can confirm how it applies to your set-up.
- A transfer safeguard: the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA), or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
- Written data-protection terms between you and Webify.AI, agreed before any developer touches personal data.
- Only the data the work needs. Where you can, build and test with anonymised or synthetic data instead.
- A check by your data protection lead on whether a transfer risk assessment is needed.
If your company has its own AI policy, our engineers follow it instead of ours. Regulated firms, such as those in financial services, should involve their compliance team before the engineer starts.
We don't hold ISO 27001 or Cyber Essentials certification. Our security page sets out what we do instead, and the questions to ask any provider.
AI consultancy or AI development company: how do we work with UK teams?
Mostly as an extension of your team rather than a consultancy. A UK AI consultancy usually scopes and delivers a project for you. We add named AI engineers to your team, and you direct their work. If you want a defined AI project delivered end to end, we can scope that as a project instead.
- Staff augmentation: named engineers in your stand-ups, tickets and repositories, billed hourly or monthly.
- Project delivery: a fixed-scope AI project we deliver for you, for teams that would rather not manage developers.
- White-label for consultancies and agencies: engineers who work under your brand, for your clients.
Read more on AI staff augmentation and offshore AI development. UK consultancies that need extra capacity can use our engineers for their own clients.
How do you hire an AI engineer from Webify.AI?
Send a short brief. We sign your NDA before the first call and send two named profiles within 48 hours. You interview them, choose one and start with a two-week trial. If you stop within the first five working days, there is no charge. After the trial, carry on hourly or move to monthly.
- 1
Tell us what you need
The AI work, your stack, the seniority and your start date. Use the form on this page.
- 2
NDA before the first call
We sign your NDA before we discuss the project in detail.
- 3
Two profiles within 48 hours
Two named engineers whose experience matches your brief, each with their availability.
- 4
Interview and choose
You interview them yourself. Nobody is assigned to you from a pool.
- 5
Two-week trial
Two-week trial with the developer you choose. No charge if you stop within the first five working days.
- 6
Carry on or switch
Continue hourly from 80 hours a month, move to a monthly plan, or ask for a different engineer.
What do the contract and invoices look like for a UK company?
You're invoiced in pounds sterling. Hourly plans start at 80 hours a month and are billed every two weeks against timesheets. Monthly plans of 160 hours are billed in advance. The contract names your engineer, assigns all IP to you and rules out subcontracting without your consent.
- We sign your NDA before the first call.
- You own all the code: IP is assigned to you.
- Developers are named in the contract and never swapped without your agreement.
- No subcontracting without your consent.
- A person reviews all AI-assisted code, and your code never goes into public AI tools.
Free replacement within five working days, with a handover overlap, for as long as the contract runs. The same terms apply to a small team that mixes tiers. For example, a senior AI engineer at £384 a day could work with a senior developer at £224.
Frequently asked questions
Are your AI engineers based in the UK?
No. They are based in India, where Webify.AI is headquartered, and work with your team remotely. They overlap with UK office hours from 09:00 to 13:00 every working day.
Can we pay in pounds?
Yes. UK clients are invoiced and pay in GBP, on both hourly and monthly plans.
What is the smallest engagement?
An hourly plan starts at 80 hours a month, which is about half of a full-time month. It suits a single AI feature or a proof of concept.
What if the engineer isn't right for us?
Tell us. In the first five working days you can stop at no charge. After that, we replace the engineer within five working days, with a handover overlap, at no extra cost.
Do your engineers use our tools and repositories?
Yes. They join your stand-ups, work in your tickets and chat, and commit to your repositories. You decide what access to give.
Do you sign our NDA?
Yes. We sign your NDA before the first call, so you can describe the project freely.
Who owns the code and the AI work?
You do. You own all the code, and the IP is assigned to your company in the contract.
Do you hold Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001 or SOC 2?
No, we don't currently hold any of them. We rely on contract terms and working rules instead, which our security page lists in full.
Can a UK consultancy or agency hire white-label AI engineers?
Yes. Our engineers can work under your brand, in your repositories, for your clients, and never contact those clients directly.
Do your engineers use AI coding tools on our code?
Where it speeds up the work, yes, for boilerplate, tests and refactoring. A person reviews every AI-assisted change, your code never goes into public AI tools, and your own AI policy takes precedence.
Get two named AI engineer profiles within 48 hours
Tell us the role and when you need someone. We'll email two named engineers with their experience and availability within 48 hours, and you choose who to interview.
- No cost to receive profiles
- Two-week trial with the developer you choose. No charge if you stop within the first five working days.
- Invoiced in GBP; contracts in plain English with IP assigned to you.