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AI is here to stay, and tech businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition understand that they need to embrace it. Leaders looking to cut costs, streamline operations, manage risks, accelerate growth, and fuel innovation are weaving AI and ML tools into their business processes, which explains why investing in AI software will hit $125B by 2025. Also, the demand for AI software engineers and other AI-related tech roles has more than doubled since 2020 and is expected to keep rising at a similar pace.
As AI continues to evolve and expand- with a projected addition of $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030- more and more businesses are looking for people with the skills and know-how to create and implement AI solutions. So how does your business hire AI developers in a market where the demand is rapidly outstripping supply? And more importantly, how do you hire the right AI software developer to ensure your AI development project succeeds? Read our guide on how to hire the best AI developers for your business in the current competitive market.
What's inside:
Your Guide to Hiring the Right AI Software Developer
Your business needs to hire skilled and experienced AI developers to help you build AI, allowing you to become more agile, better handle an ever-growing demand and stay competitive. Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to hire the best AI developer:
Determine Your AI Development Needs
Before you start looking for the best fit, you first need to define exactly what you’re looking for. What are your business’s AI development needs? Are you looking to add AI capabilities to already existing products and services? Or have you already adopted AI and need to keep your apps or systems updated? An example of an AI development need would be a startup looking into chatbox development with AI-powered applications to deliver human-like replies to customer queries.
- Identify the Specific Skills and Qualifications Needed for the Job
The next step is to determine the skill set that best fits your AI project, which prevents you from recruiting the wrong type of developer. Also, crafting your candidate’s persona helps you understand what you’re looking for, their motivations, and how to create a job description that encourages potential candidates to join your organization.
For example, from the example mentioned above, here’s what you’d look for in a chatbox developer:
- Experience in chatbot frameworks- The AI developer needs to be proficient in frameworks like APi.ai, IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure Bot Service, etc.
- An expert in programming languages like Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, and more.
- Deep knowledge of emerging technologies such as natural language processing (NLP).
- Ability to integrate chatbots on different platforms
- Soft skills that demonstrate the candidate's creativity, good communication skills, collaboration and more.
- Consider the Resources Available to Support the New Hire
Your new hire will need access to frameworks, tools, libraries and software to achieve your AI development needs. Do you have all the necessary resources? If not, your new hire may suggest requirements, such as advanced tools for this specific project, which you should provide. Also, how can your in-house team support your new hire(s)?
Develop An Effective Job Description
Compelling job descriptions are vital to attracting top artificial intelligence engineers. Job seekers typically see many job postings simultaneously, so your description must stand out, especially now that there’s an AI developer shortage.
Keep the AI developer’s job description brief but detailed enough to paint a full picture of the position and work environment. You should include your company’s vision, core values and culture, describe the AI skills and experience you’re looking for, accurately reflect the responsibilities and requirements of the position and the impact the developer will have on company success, and the perks and benefits.
Other tips to help attract top AI developers and engineers interested in working for your company include communicating the job expectations and qualifications in clear and concise language, writing in a conversational tone, and using bullet points.
Here’s more on what to highlight:
AI Developer’s Job Checklist
Here’s our checklist of what you shouldn’t miss when creating a job description:
- Company description
- The developer’s job description
- The developer’s roles and responsibilities
- Required skills and qualifications
- Preferred skills and qualifications
- Benefits and perks
Sample AI Developer Job Description
(Tech business Y) is committed to digital reinvention, helping our clients re-envision how they operate and serve their customers. We are looking for an experienced AI engineer to join our team and be part of the revolution, using NLP, deep learning, robotics, and computer vision to help us enhance business outcomes and fuel innovation. The developer will join our diverse team of data scientists, machine learning experts, and software engineers to help shape our AI strategy and demonstrate AI’s potential through developing new models and algorithms. This is an excellent chance to exploit emerging technologies and trends to solve real-world problems while changing the future.
The Objectives
- Manage and direct research and development (R&D) and processes to meet our AI strategy’s needs.
- Guide cross-functional teams in recognizing and prioritizing areas of a partner’s company where AI solutions can drive significant business transformation.
- Understanding business and clients' challenges and how weaving AI capabilities into our systems can generate solutions.
- Examine and explain AI and ML solutions while establishing and maintaining high ethical standards.
The Responsibilities
- Advise business leaders and C-suite executives on a broad range of AI-related strategy, tech and policy issues.
- Collaborate with our leader, CTO and advanced engineering team to prototype, test, train, and define support procedures and handle functional and process design.
- Manage a team in assessing AI, the automation market, and the competitor landscape.
- Liaise between stakeholders and teams, sharing feedback and allowing team members to make the required presentation or product performance changes.
- Train team members on implementing AI systems.
- Stay updated on the latest AI models and technologies.
Required Skills and Qualifications
Here are some skills and areas of expertise to look for as you hire AI developer:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software development, or data science.
- Three or more years of experience in AI application to comprehensive and practical cutting-edge tech solutions.
- Solid understanding of programming AI languages like C++, Java, Python, etc.
- Experience with deep learning and machine learning models and using popular AI/ML frameworks.
- Knowledge of popular AI models like GPT-3, GPT-4, Google’s Bard and more.
- A clear understanding of algorithmic and statistical models and fundamental math concepts like probability and linear algebra.
- Advanced knowledge of functional design and project-oriented principles, for example, REST API development, RDBMS and NoSQL database design and optimizations.
- Soft skills such as communication, empathy, patience, and time management.
Preferred Skills and Qualifications
- Master's degree in computer science or related fields.
- Experience working in cloud environments
Expand Your Hiring Pool
Now that your job description is ready, here’s how you can source and hire ai engineers:
Conduct Thorough Interviews
Once you’ve combed through the list of candidates for the opening, you can now conduct interviews to choose your top picks. You'll need to hire someone with the ideal skill set, the necessary soft skills, and who is a cultural fit for effective AI development. Here are the questions to ask yourself:
- Does the candidate have the required hard and soft skills?
- Do we share the same values on what constitutes a great AI service or product?
- Will the candidate thrive in my team? Can they collaborate with existing team members to develop something great?
- Are they open-minded and willing to learn from the team members?
- Can they take constructive criticism positively?
- Are they a good cultural fit for my in-house team and service/product?
- Are they motivated to succeed no matter the obstacles?
- Are they passionate about AI development and innovation, as demonstrated by their former projects and experiences?
Here are things you can make the interviewees do:
- During the interview, you can ask the candidate coding questions to see if they can write code in at least one language like Java, Python and R.
- Have them build something into a company’s service or product-This basic programming service will help examine their abilities to understand the problems and solutions. It also gives the candidate better insight into who you are and what you do.
- Have the candidates do a team interview to assess their communication in speed and writing and their interaction with others. The interviewer and two other team members, including someone from the technical side, can ask questions to see how well the developer fits into your company and how fast they can learn. Here are sample questions you can ask the candidates to determine if they’re a great fit for the AI development team:
- What AI projects are you most proud of? Describe how you approached the project from ideation to implementation and the project results.
- What methodologies can be used to improve an ML model’s performance?
- What are the different AI types?
- What's the difference between AI, ML, and DL?
- How are you currently growing and improving your AI skills and knowledge?
- What AI-based product impressed you the most?
- How would you go about creating a product recommendation system?
- What are the technical challenges of AI in 2023?
- How do you tell whether a problem is ML solvable?
- What challenges have you faced while implementing automation-based technologies, and how did you overcome them?
- Instances when you would you use strong or weak AI
Once you’re done with the interviews, you should touch base with the rest of your team members before you make an offer. Covering all these steps gives you confidence that your next hire will best fit your team and company.
Offer a Competitive Compensation Package
The next step is to offer your new hire a competitive compensation package. To do so:
- Research market trends to determine a competitive salary range- As of May 1st, 2023, the average salary for a U.S.-based AI developer ranges from $93,137 to $111,187, depending on education, certifications, additional skills, experience, and more. You can expect to spend roughly $130,000 annually to recruit and hire top AI talent, but this amount is expected to increase with the high demand for AI talent. LatAm-based has equally talented developers who make anywhere between 50 to 80% of that. You can review our LatAm compensation report for more.
- Your business can offer employees benefits such as:
- Flexible scheduling
- Professional development opportunities
- Performance-based bonuses (annual/referral/retention/spot ones)
- Health insurance (dental, vision, and more)
- Life insurance
- Tuition reimbursement
- Gym membership and wellness packages
- Paid sick leave and vacation
- Consider offering equity or profit-sharing options to attract top talent.
Implement Retention Strategies
Once you’ve built a strong team of AI experts, you must determine how to retain the attracted talent. Here’s how you can do it:
- Provide ongoing support and training- Ensure the new hire is integrated into the team and receives proper training.
- Provide professional development and growth by encouraging continuous learning and attending professional meetings and conferences.
- Ensure that your team receives support from top management- Encourage open communication, feedback and a mutual comprehension of expectations to foster a positive work environment.
- Support a creative culture where people can share ideas and hold intellectual discussions. AI requires people to be open-minded to novel approaches and solutions, which is critical for success.
- Your team needs the appropriate hardware to solve the business problems they’re working on.
- Consider flexible working options.
Partner With TECLA to Hire the Best AI Software Developers
Contact TECLA today if you’re looking for a nearshoring partner to help you attract and vet the best AI LatAm talent for your team. We have over a decade of experience working with 300+ top U.S. companies and a vetted network of 50,000+ professionals who cost half as less as U.S. talent. Our developers are committed to building world-class scalable, business-oriented AI models, including computer vision, chatbots, IoT, neural networks, etc., empowering your business in the competitive marketplace. Here are other reasons why you should work with us:
- A 90-day risk-free trial period and guarantee
- Industry-best 7-day average time-to-hire
- Transparent rates and processes
- 96% candidate success rate
- Scale up or down as required
FAQs on How to Hire Top AI Talent
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