Senior AI & data engineers · Eastern Europe · T&M

Build your AI team in 2 weeks. No long-term commitment.

Talk to the engineer, not a salesperson. A senior AI engineer helps you scope what to build, then you rent the team to build it — senior, EU-based, on time & material. We are the employer of record. You direct the work.

Engineer start time
14 days
Below US senior rates
50–70%
Minimum experience
7+ years
GDPR & IP protection
EU law

Daily rate benchmark · Updated 2026-08

What you pay per day for a senior engineer

Indicative daily rates per engineer across markets. Eastern Europe runs 40–60% below US rates for the same seniority.

Role USA UK Romania
Data Engineer

€803

€522

€419

ML Engineer

€1,054

€768

€594

AI Engineer

€1,209

€728

€409

Full daily-rate benchmark — 10 roles across 6 markets →

Three disciplines

One model, any AI stack

AI engineers

LLMs, RAG & AI agents

Senior engineers with production AI in their recent history. LLM integrations, RAG pipelines, AI agents, and ML model deployment — not demo builds.

AI development services →

Data engineers

Pipelines, warehouses & feature stores

Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Spark. The engineers who build the data infrastructure that makes AI reliable in production.

Data engineering services →

Python developers

Backend & AI orchestration

Python as the spine of AI and data work. FastAPI, LangChain, async pipelines, and backend systems. The most-rented discipline.

Hire Python developers →

Why Eastern Europe

EU legal, CET timezone, senior cohort

50–70% below US senior rates. Inside the EU legal and data perimeter. CET/EET timezone — full working-day overlap with Western Europe, 2–3 hours with US East Coast.

Not a junior outsourcing market. The senior cohort here has 10–15 years of commercial experience. GDPR-native, enforceable IP assignment, codified labour law.

Read the full breakdown →

GDPR-native

EU-to-EU data flows need no transfer mechanism.

CET/EET timezone

4–6 hrs overlap with UK/DE. 2–3 hrs with US East.

Codified labour law

Predictable, not precedent-based. IP is enforceable.

Senior-only network

7+ years minimum. No juniors, no middlemen.

How it works

From brief to engineer in four steps

01

Brief us

Tell us what you're building and the disciplines you need on a free scoping call.

02

Profile match

We send matched engineer profiles within 48 hours. Interview the ones you want to speak with.

03

On your sprint

Engineers start within 2 weeks. They join your standups, work in your repos, integrate with your team.

04

Scale weekly

Add engineers when workload grows, reduce with one week's notice. No penalties, no lock-in.

Explore

Engagement models, services and guides

staffai.eu

Ready to scope it?

Talk to the engineer who'd build it.

Book a free 30-minute call with a senior AI engineer — get a build plan, a team, and a straight answer on whether we're the right fit.

Talk to an engineer →