Our new developers were able to hit the ground running, we've worked with them for over two years now, and they are truly part of our team.
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSIn-house feel, nearshore
Python Developers
Senior Python engineers working your British day. Python covers three fairly different jobs in UK teams, so we scope whether you need a back end engineer, a data engineer or someone building with models before we match anyone.
- Back end services, data pipelines or machine learning
- Django and FastAPI, matched to your codebase
- Working your hours and embedded in your team
Data WorkflowsAutomation ScriptsAI & ML IntegrationTesting & CI/CDCloud Deployments
Our service
Python engineers embedded in your UK team
The most expensive Python mistake British teams make is hiring a back end engineer when the work is data engineering, or the reverse. Both write Python and share almost nothing day to day. Because Cloud Employee is the employer of record, you get a committed employee rather than a contractor.
- Matched on the actual discipline, not the language
- Comfortable with an established warehouse and pipelines
- Tested on production code rather than notebooks
Tested on production code rather than notebooks
Python skills that deliver
- Build and maintain backends with Flask, Django, FastAPI, and GraphQL.
- Data WorkflowsData cleaning, transformation, and ETL processes using Pandas, NumPy, and Airflow.
- Automation ScriptsAutomate processes and infrastructure using Python scripting and CLI tools.
- AI & ML IntegrationUse Python to build ML pipelines and integrate with AI models and services.
- Testing & CI/CDWrite unit, integration, and load tests with pytest and unittest, CI-ready.
- Cloud DeploymentsDeploy Python services to AWS Lambda, EC2, GCP, or serverless platforms.
The alternative
Get speed, fit and in-house feel without the hiring grind.
Cloud EmployeeIn-house hiringDev agenciesFreelancers
Speed to hire✓-✓✓
Flexibility to scale✓-✓✓
Developer fit (embedded)✓✓✓-
Full-time, only for you✓✓--
No overhead or upfront fees✓--✓
Solid lime = yes · outline lime = partial · grey dash = no
Vetting
You see two people - not 200 CVs.
Engineers vet engineers
A senior engineer runs a live technical conversation on the candidate's real stack, not a recruiter working from a keyword list.
Live coding, not take-homes
Real problems solved in front of an assessor, with anti-cheating checks. You see how they actually work, not what they submitted overnight.
A full profile, not a CV
Every candidate arrives with a CV, interview summary, coding-test breakdown and rate in pounds. You decide on evidence.
Every tab is a stage a candidate has to clear. Six of them, all run by our own internal engineers at Cloud Employee, before you see a name.
- Overview
- CV
- Tech interview
- Coding test
- Psychometric
- Soft skills
Scored by people. We use AI to cross-check our own consistency - never to decide who reaches your shortlist.
✓Luka M.
VettedSenior Python Engineer · Python · FastAPI · Postgres · 6 yrs · Zagreb, Croatia (GMT+1)
Assessment
Six years in production Python, the last three on LLM systems - retrieval pipelines, eval suites, and agent tooling for UK fintech. Owns delivery end to end.
Stack
Python · LangGraph
English
C1 fluent
Overlap
8 hrs UK
Notice
2 weeks
AI in practiceShips with Copilot and Claude Code daily, and rewrote 40% of the generated code in his observed task - the judgement is his, the tooling only makes him faster.
Career history
2023 - now
Senior AI Engineer
UK payments platform · 40-person product team
Built the retrieval assistant now resolving 30% of tier-1 tickets; owns its eval suite and guardrails.
2020 - 2023
Backend Engineer, Python
Travel booking SaaS · Zagreb
Moved fraud scoring onto a real-time feature pipeline; cut false declines by 18%.
2019 - 2020
Data Engineer
Agency · Python, Postgres, AWS
- Python
- FastAPI
- LangGraph
- pgvector
- Evals & tracing
- AWS
- Docker
Technical interview
Assessed by Marco R., Principal Engineer
12 Jun 2026
55 min · live call
"Walked me through an assistant that was quietly hallucinating refund policy, how he caught it in evals, and what he got wrong on the first fix. Hire-ready for a senior seat."
Live coding test
Repair a slow ingest pipeline
88
score
Tests passed
21 / 21
Time used
62 of 90 min
Anti-cheat flags
0
retrieval.py · submitted diff
- hits = index.query(q, k=50)+ hits = index.query(rewrite(q), k=50, filter=tenant)+ hits = rerank(hits, q)[:8] # recall 0.62 -> 0.91+ assert_context_budget(hits, max_tokens=6000)
Psychometric · technical thinking
How he reasons under a real deadline - not a personality quiz.
Top 9%of engineers
we test
A 45-minute reasoning test, scored against the 4,000+ engineers we have already placed. Our assessors do the marking - AI only flags where our own scoring looks inconsistent.
Soft skills · working with your team
Spoken English
C1 · assessed on call
References
2 of 2 verified
"He raised the payment edge case nobody else had spotted, in writing, two days before release."
This is what you receive - not a CV.
Ask our AI anythingWhy Cloud Employee
Engineers who stay past the first pipeline
Data work compounds, and so does losing the person who built it. 97% of our engineers stay beyond two years, supported by a 1,000 pound annual learning budget and dedicated Talent Success Managers, at 50 to 75% less than hiring the same seniority in Britain.
- Vetted on shipped work, not a CV
- Working your hours and onboarded to your stack
- Continuing support from our operations team
More than developers
Our HR, technical and client success teams support delivery from day one, with a UK-based account manager as your point of contact.
Fully supported
We handle the rest so your engineers can focus on building.
Performance reviews
Payroll & complianceEquipment
WorkspaceIn-house, without the friction
No upfront fees. No lock-in contracts.
- No placement or upfront fees
- Rolling 30-day contract, cancel anytime
- One monthly rate, everything included
Ready to find your engineer?
Tell us exactly who you need.
In 90 seconds
Two matched engineers in 7 days. No fees, no obligation.
What role are you hiring for?
Pick one to start - you'll see matching engineers at the end.
- Founded in 2014
- 97% stay 2+ years
- Replace if it isn't working
Got questions?
The questions CTOs and founders ask.
01How much does it cost to hire a Python developer in the UK?
Typically 50 to 75% less than a comparable British hire once salary, employer national insurance, pension, recruitment fees and overheads are counted. We do place UK-based Python developers, and some clients want exactly that. Most end up with engineers in Eastern Europe, the Philippines or Latin America instead, because the quality is equal and the cost is not. The point is the strongest quality-to-cost ratio we can find, excellent engineers at a price the business can sustain. Python pay in Britain is pushed up because several disciplines draw on the same pool.
02What is Python used for, and why do teams choose it?
Python reads close to plain English, which is why it turns up everywhere from a two-line script to a bank's risk model. British teams use it for three fairly separate things, back end services and APIs, data engineering and pipelines, and machine learning. Its dominance in the last two comes from the libraries rather than the language, and that gap has widened as AI work concentrated there. It is rarely the fastest option at runtime, and for most business software that does not matter, because engineering time costs more than compute.
03What skills should I look for in a Python developer now?
First decide which of the three Python jobs you are hiring for, because the skills barely overlap and the titles blur constantly. Then, systems first, code second. Python makes it easy to produce something clever that nobody can follow six months later, and generated code compounds that, so look for people who write for the next reader. Type hints are a good signal. For data work, ask about pipelines failing silently, because data bugs do not announce themselves the way application bugs do.
04How do I assess a Python developer, and what should I ask?
Ask them to review real code rather than write new code, with their normal tools available. Reviewing surfaces judgement faster than writing does, and judgement is what you are buying. Ask them to walk you through how they would structure a project of this size, and describe a piece of data work that failed silently and how they found it. If the role touches machine learning, ask how they would know a model had stopped working after deployment. Then show them plausible generated code with a subtle flaw.
05Are Python developers in demand, and is it worth building on?
Python is among the most in-demand skills in Britain and has been for years, and AI work has intensified that rather than diluting it. Plenty of candidates, fierce competition for genuinely strong ones, particularly at the data and model end. The market has also shifted, because routine scripting is increasingly generated, so demand has moved towards people who can architect data flows and judge what comes back. For a new project Python is a safe long-term choice, though not always the right one if your team knows something else better.
06Do your developers use AI tools, and how do you know the code is sound?
Yes, and Python is where this needs the most care, because the language is permissive and generated code will run happily while being quietly wrong. A model will produce a pipeline that executes and silently drops rows. So what we assess is whether an engineer verifies rather than trusts, checking outputs against expectations, writing the test before accepting the code, and understanding the data well enough to notice when a number looks plausible but is not.
07How does Cloud Employee vet Python developers?
We use AI to augment our own hiring, screening and matching across a large amount of data, but the decision stays human, because recruitment is a human endeavour. Vetting is CTO-led rather than recruiter-driven, and for Python it starts by establishing which discipline the candidate actually practises. From there a technical assessment on real code, live pair programming with a senior engineer, and a psychometric assessment built for software engineers. We look for the mindset that builds systems, then place them where they will thrive.
08How quickly can a developer start, and how does the engagement work?
You are typically interviewing matched candidates within 7 working days of a requirements call, and developers are often embedded and pushing code within about two weeks. From there it is a rolling monthly contract with 30 days' notice, one monthly fee, and no placement charges. You can scale up or down as the work changes, and you pay nothing to interview.
09What happens if the developer is not the right fit?
There is a two-week money-back guarantee, and if you want to continue we replace the developer free of charge. In practice this rarely comes up, because you interview a shortlist of two candidates who have already passed a CTO-led technical assessment and a live pair programming session, so the fit question is largely settled before anyone starts.
Proof, not promises
Hear from our customers
In their words
What the difference feels like
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSWhat I love about Cloud Employee is that you have taken all of that hard work off my shoulders.
Marcus KilgourCTO, Salmon SoftwareWorking with Cloud Employee developers is great, because they're not afraid to push back. They're proactive, they're positive, and they feel like part of the team.
Doran EskinaziHead of Engineering, HealthpointeWe actually hired the whole team remotely, having never met them. And we made a bunch of really good hires.
Euan CameronCEO, WilloCloud Employee provides a level of professionalism, communication and support we haven't found elsewhere.
Trevor SathorManaging Director, Square EyeWorking in tandem with Cloud Employee we have successfully released a major version of our main software product during a critical period for us.
James StringerManaging Director, CleanLink