Hire a custom AI developer — not an agency org chart.
One senior developer, directing a fleet of AI development agents, building your system end-to-end. Fixed written quote after a free 30-minute call, live demos every Friday, and every line of code yours at handover. Most projects ship in 4-12 weeks.
Mark Austen, Founder — 18+ years shipping software, replies within 24 hours
What you get when you hire me
The six things that separate hiring a senior custom AI developer directly from hiring an agency or gambling on a marketplace.
Founder-led, no handoffs
The developer you talk to on the discovery call is the developer who scopes, builds and ships your project. No sales engineers, no account managers, no junior bench.
One developer + an AI fleet
You hire one senior developer who directs a fleet of AI development agents. You get team-level output with single-person accountability — one point of contact, one person responsible.
A fixed written quote
After a free 30-minute call you get a written scope and a fixed price. Signed before work starts. Scope changes are explicit and re-quoted — no hourly meters, no surprise invoices.
You own the code
Code, prompts, integrations, infrastructure — all yours at handover. No license fees, no exit fees, no dependency on us to keep running. Take it in-house whenever you want.
Weekly Friday demos
Live software every week from week 2, in your time zone. Not status decks. If something is off-course you see it in week 3, when it is still cheap to fix.
Direct comms
WhatsApp, Slack or email — whatever your team already uses. Async-first, same-day replies on anything urgent, and written decisions so nothing lives in someone’s head.
Three ways to engage
Pick the shape that matches how sure you are about the project. All three start with the same free discovery call.
Fixed-price project
A scoped build with a written spec, a fixed price and a delivery date. Chatbots, AI agents, workflow automation, internal platforms. Most projects ship in 4-12 weeks.
Build, then care plan
The project ships, then a monthly care plan keeps it improving: monitoring, model upgrades, new capabilities as your team finds the next bottleneck. Cancel any month.
Scope first, commit later
Design your system in the builder or bring a rough brief to a call. You get a written scope and quote you can sit on — or shop to other developers. The spec is yours either way.
Not sure what to build yet? Design it yourself in the custom AI system builder and send the design in for a written quote.
How hiring works
Four steps from first contact to owned, running software. No procurement theatre.
Discovery call
Free, 30 minutes. What your business does, where the manual work is, what the AI should own.
Written scope + fixed quote
A one-page spec of exactly what gets built, with a fixed price. Usually within a few days.
Build with weekly demos
Live software every Friday from week 2. You steer while it is being built, not after.
Launch + handover
Deployed to your infrastructure or ours. Documentation, training, and every line of code signed over to you.
Hiring me vs the alternatives
The honest version of the comparison. Marketplaces and agencies are the right call for some projects — the table shows where the founder-led model wins and loses.
| Freelance marketplace | Traditional agency | AI Makers (founder-led) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Whoever bids — seniority varies wildly | A team you meet after signing | The founder you spoke to on day one |
| Pricing | Hourly, open-ended | Day rates or retainers, scope drift common | Fixed written quote before work starts |
| Accountability | Platform dispute process | Account manager relays between you and the builders | One person, directly answerable, every week |
| Code ownership | Usually yours — check the contract | Sometimes tied to their platform or license | Always yours — code, prompts, infra, no exit fees |
| Speed | Fast to start, unpredictable to finish | Weeks of onboarding before the build starts | Scoped in days, most projects ship in 4-12 weeks |
Where I lose: projects that need ten engineers on site, or a brand-name vendor for board cover. If that’s you, start with the comparison of custom AI development companies instead.
What clients hire me to build
The recurring shapes across shipped projects — from single-workflow bots to full operations platforms.
Customer support agents
AI agents that answer, act and escalate across email, WhatsApp and web chat — wired into the CRM and helpdesk you already run.
Workflow & back-office automation
Quoting, scheduling, invoicing, document handling — the repetitive middle of the business, automated end-to-end with audit trails.
Internal platforms & portals
Operations platforms with AI built in: work-order systems, dashboards, admin panels your team actually uses daily.
Voice & phone AI
AI that answers calls, qualifies leads and books appointments — so missed calls stop being missed revenue.
See shipped work on the projects page, or read the questions to ask before hiring any AI developer — including me.
Hiring FAQ
Am I actually hiring you, or a team you manage?+
Me. I scope the project, I write the code (directing AI development agents that multiply my output), and I run the Friday demos. There is no bench of juniors behind the curtain. If your project genuinely needs a large team, I will tell you on the first call and point you at firms shaped for that.
What does it cost to hire a custom AI developer?+
It depends on project shape, not hours. Focused single-workflow builds sit at the low end, multi-integration automation in the middle, full platforms at the top — most AI Makers projects land between €5K and €150K. The cost estimator on this site gives you a realistic range for your specific shape in 30 seconds, and every project gets a fixed written quote before work starts.
How fast can you start, and how long does a project take?+
The discovery call usually happens within a few days of first contact, and the written quote follows within the week. Most projects ship in 4-12 weeks with live demos every Friday from week 2. The timeline page breaks down a typical project week by week.
Can you work with our existing stack and data?+
Yes — that is most of the job. CRMs, helpdesks, accounting systems, databases, internal tools: the value of custom AI is that it plugs into what you already run instead of forcing a migration. Deployment goes to your cloud or ours, and your data is never used to train models.
What happens after launch — are we dependent on you?+
No. You own the code, the prompts and the infrastructure, with documentation and a handover session included. Many clients take a monthly care plan for monitoring and improvements; others take it fully in-house. Both are fine — the walk-away option is in the contract from day one.
What if custom AI is the wrong call for us?+
Then I will say so on the discovery call. If off-the-shelf SaaS covers your case, or the project is really an in-house hire, you will hear that directly — it costs me a project and saves you a bad quarter. The call is free precisely so this filter happens before money moves.
Hire the developer, skip the org chart
Design your system in the builder and get a written fixed-price quote back — or book a free 30-minute discovery call and tell me what you’re trying to automate.
Prefer email? Use the contact page — replies within 24 hours.