Product features, not demos
A prompt that lives behind your API, with timeouts, logging, and a fallback when the model is wrong or slow.
Hire AI engineers
Hire senior AI engineers from the Philippines
Arca places senior AI engineers from the Philippines and Asia with US companies for $35/hr, all-in, with no recruiting fee. You will meet a shortlist within 7 working days. Your engineer works your full US business day on a month-to-month engagement, with unlimited replacements.
The role
What a senior AI engineer owns on your team
A senior AI engineer puts a model inside the product you already have. The work is the feature, the data it may see, and the way you know it is still behaving.
Retrieval
Search over your own content, with a way to tell whether the answer came from the documents or from the model guessing.
Evaluation
A set of examples you can rerun when the prompt, the model, or the index changes, so quality is not a vibe.
Tool use
Agents or workflows that call your systems, with limits on what they are allowed to change.
Cost and latency
They can say what a request costs and how long it takes, and they will cut a step that does not earn its place.
Working with the product team
They ship beside the engineers who own the rest of the product, during your US business day.
Is it the right hire?
When an AI engineer is the right hire
- You have a product feature that needs a model, and a notebook demo is not the feature.
- Answers have to come from your data, and someone has to own that retrieval path.
- An assistant or agent will take actions in your product, and those actions need limits.
- The team uses AI coding tools, but nobody owns the AI behavior customers see.
The surrounding product still needs engineers. software engineers or backend developers.
Stacks
Skills we match on
Tell us your stack and we will screen for engineers who have shipped production code in it.
- Python
- PyTorch
- LangChain
- OpenAI API
- RAG
- Vector databases
- TypeScript
- AWS
How we match
Matched to the feature you want in production
We start with the hiring manager and the feature, not a list of model names. For an AI hire, that often means:
- A model-backed feature they shipped to users, including what they turned off.
- An evaluation method: the examples, the failure they caught, and how they noticed a regression.
- Clear boundaries on data: what the model is allowed to see and what it must not.
- A cost or latency limit they designed for, not discovered after the bill.
- The judgment to say a model is the wrong tool for a step.
Our team are technologists. We screen a large number of candidates and introduce only the best. You interview them and decide.
Cost
What this hire costs
| Hiring route | Per hour |
|---|---|
| ArcaSenior, all-in | $35/hr |
| Latin American staffing firms, senior | ~$45–$72/hr |
| US in-house hire, fully loaded | ~$94–$119/hr |
US figure: median to 75th-percentile hourly wage for software developers (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025: $65.38–$82.68), divided by 0.692, the wage share of total compensation for private-industry professional workers (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026). Latin American figure: published senior staffing-firm rates, converted at 160 hours a month. BLS wage table for software developers · BLS employer cost release. Market pay in the Philippines: software engineer salaries in the Philippines.
Included in the $35/hr rate
- Your engineer's compensation and contract
- Dedicated account manager
- HR, onboarding, and performance reviews
- Training and mentoring
- Month-to-month, no recruiting fee
- Unlimited replacements
How hiring works
Three steps to an AI engineer
Discovery call
The feature, the data it can touch, and what "good" has to mean before you launch.
Day 0Interview your shortlist
AI candidates screened against that feature. You interview and choose.
Within 7 working daysStart
They join your repo and your US hours. We handle contracts and HR.
When you chooseInterviewing
Questions to ask a senior AI candidate
Use these alongside your own technical interview. You make the hiring decision.
How did you decide a prompt change was actually better?
Look for a fixed set of examples, a before and after, and a failure the metric missed.
Tell me about a wrong answer that reached a user.
You want the detection, the guard they added, and whether they told the user the system was unsure.
What will you not let a model do in this product?
Senior engineers name an action, a data class, or a decision that stays with a person.
What does one request cost, and which step would you delete first?
Listen for retrieval, context size, and a number, not a claim that the model is cheap now.
Teams also hire
Roles that pair with this one
Backend developers
APIs, data models, integrations, and the performance work behind them.
Hire backend developersSoftware engineers
Senior generalists who take a feature from ticket to production and own it after release.
Hire software engineersFull-stack developers
One engineer across UI, API, and database, for teams that need features shipped end to end.
Hire full-stack developersAI engineers: FAQ
How much does a senior AI engineer from the Philippines cost?
Through Arca, from $35/hr, all-in. That includes compensation, contracts, HR, account management, and training, with no recruiting fee. Model usage is your infrastructure, not part of the hourly rate.
How quickly can I hire an AI engineer?
Arca sends a shortlist in 7 working days from your discovery call. You interview the candidates and choose.
Do you place researchers, or people who ship product features?
We match the brief. Most US teams hiring through Arca want an engineer who puts a model in a product and can evaluate it. Say so if you need research depth instead.
Will they work US hours with the rest of the team?
Yes. Arca engineers work your full US business day, whatever your time zone.
Where are they based?
In the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia. They work your US business day either way.
Can you match retrieval, agents, or a Python stack?
Yes. Tell us the feature and the stack. We screen for production work in that shape, not for a keyword.
What if they are not a fit?
We replace them. Replacements are unlimited for as long as you're a client, and the engagement is month-to-month.
Hire an AI engineer who works your hours.
Tell us the role. We will introduce your shortlist.