Dedicated development teams, billed by the hour

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What a dedicated T&M team looks like

A dedicated team through staffai.eu is a named group of engineers — allocated to your product, working your sprint, reporting into your process. They’re not shared across accounts, not rotated between clients, and not managed by an offshore delivery lead you never talk to.

Billing is time & material: hours worked, invoiced weekly or monthly. No retainer. No minimum seat count. No 12-month commitment with an exit penalty.

A typical AI or data team configuration might look like:

That’s a common starting point for a team building a production ML pipeline — data in, model trained, model deployed, infrastructure maintained. You can start smaller (one engineer, part-time) or larger, and adjust weekly based on sprint load.

Who this works for

Two types of companies engage dedicated teams through staffai.eu:

Augmenting an existing engineering team. Your in-house team has a product and a backlog, but not enough engineers with the right specialization. You add 1–3 people from Eastern Europe who slot into your existing sprint cadence. They work your tickets, join your standups, use your tools.

Building new capability from scratch. You have product requirements for an AI or data function but no internal team to build it. You stand up a dedicated team that owns the build — scoped, structured, and directed by you, without hiring FTEs or waiting through a 6-month recruiting cycle.

In both cases, you own the work. You set the priorities. You run the sprint.

How this differs from a project engagement

A project engagement delivers a defined scope: you specify what you want, the vendor builds it, and the engagement closes when the deliverable ships. That model has its place — but it’s not what this is.

A dedicated T&M team is different in three ways:

1. You direct the work. The engineers take direction from your product and engineering leads, not from a vendor project manager interpreting a SOW.
2. Scope changes don’t require a change order. Because you’re buying time, not deliverables, you can reprioritize mid-sprint without renegotiating the contract.
3. You scale up and down weekly. If a sprint is light, you reduce hours. If you’re pushing toward a launch, you add capacity. The billing follows reality, not a fixed monthly seat fee.

staffai.eu as employer of record

Every engineer on staffai.eu is employed through staffai.eu. We handle:

• Local employment contracts in each engineer’s country
• Payroll and tax filings under Eastern European labor law
• Benefits, social contributions, and statutory leave
• HR functions during the engagement

You get a single invoice from staffai.eu in EUR. No entity setup in Romania, Poland, or elsewhere. No HR overhead. No local compliance exposure.

Engineers are available across Romania, Poland, and Ukraine, all within the EU legal perimeter or operating under EU-equivalent data frameworks.

Ramp time

Engineers typically start work within 2 weeks of engagement confirmation. That covers contract execution, access provisioning, and a short technical onboarding session. If you have specific security requirements or need additional vetting, that timeline extends — but 2 weeks is the standard case.

Compare that to a direct hire cycle for a senior ML engineer, which runs 3–5 months in most markets when you account for sourcing, interviews, notice periods, and onboarding.

Roles available for dedicated teams

• AI engineers — model development, RAG, fine-tuning, inference
• ML engineers — end-to-end ML lifecycle, feature engineering, model serving
• Data engineers — pipeline architecture, dbt, Airflow, warehouse design

→ Why Eastern Europe: talent, cost, and legal framework

Build your team composition

The AI Engagement Estimator generates a team structure and T&M cost range based on your roles, seniority mix, and weekly hours. Takes 3 minutes. No sales call required to see the numbers.

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staffai.eu · Senior AI and data engineers from Eastern Europe, on T&M