In-house feel, nearshore
Vertex AI Developers
Teams already committed to Google Cloud usually want their ML on Vertex, and UK engineers with genuine Vertex production time are scarce. We embed ML engineers who have trained, tuned and deployed on the platform, full time on your hours.
- Genuine production time on Vertex AI pipelines
- Training through to deployment on Google Cloud
- Full time in your team, on British hours
AutoML & GenAIMLOps PipelinesPrediction ServingMonitoring & TuningData Engineering
Our Service
ML delivery inside your Google estate
Your engineer works inside your GCP projects, tooling and MLOps conventions rather than beside them. We handle sourcing and employment, put matched candidates in front of you within seven working days, and keep it to one monthly fee with no placement charge.
- Works inside your GCP projects and conventions
- Interviews within 7 working days, embedded in about two weeks
- One monthly fee, nothing beyond 30 days notice to leave
Flexible rolling terms
Model to product, end to end
- Use Vertex AI for custom model training, evaluation, and optimization.
- AutoML & GenAILeverage pre-trained and custom-tuned models using Google's GenAI offerings.
- MLOps PipelinesBuild training and deployment pipelines with Vertex Pipelines and CI/CD integration.
- Prediction ServingDeploy scalable endpoints with latency targets and autoscaling.
- Monitoring & TuningTrack model drift, monitor performance, and schedule retraining.
- Data EngineeringPrepare and manage training data using BigQuery, Dataflow, and Cloud Storage.
The alternative
Get speed, fit and in-house feel without the hiring grind.
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 AI Engineer · Python · LLM systems · RAG · 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.
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
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.
Backend Engineer, Python
Travel booking SaaS · Zagreb
Moved fraud scoring onto a real-time feature pipeline; cut false declines by 18%.
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 leaking retrieval pipeline
88
score
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
"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?
Platform knowledge plus model judgement
Vetting for ML roles is CTO-led and practical, pairing candidates with a senior engineer on live problems and testing how they use AI tooling in their own work. Engineers cost 50 to 75% less than a comparable British hire all-in, and 97% stay beyond two years.
- Live pairing on real ML problems, CTO-led throughout
- Tested on their own use of AI tooling
- 97% of engineers stay beyond two years
Supported beyond the hire
We run HR, development and a 1,000 pound annual learning budget, with a UK-based client success manager.
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
What role are you hiring for?
Pick one to start - you'll see matching engineers at the end.
- 300+ teams built
- 97% stay 2+ years
- Replace if it isn't working
Got questions?
The questions CTOs and founders ask.
Yes. Most of our clients are in the UK, the US and Australia. Your developer works your hours, and a UK-based client success manager is your point of contact throughout.
Cloud Employee is the employer of record, so your developer is our full-time employee rather than a contractor you engage directly. We handle their payroll, benefits and HR in their own country.
Typically 50-75% less than a comparable UK hire once salary, employer costs and overheads are counted. Rates run from roughly £28 to £63 an hour ($35-80, depending on seniority), billed as one monthly fee with no placement charges.
Vetting is CTO-led and covers a technical assessment, a live pair programming session and cultural fit screening, all run by senior engineers rather than recruiters. You interview a shortlist of two matched candidates.
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.
There is a two-week money-back guarantee, and if you want to continue we replace the developer free of charge.
Your developer's working hours are aligned to yours, so stand-ups and pairing happen through the UK day, and we keep cover available outside standard hours for anything critical.
There are no placement fees and you pay nothing to interview. Vetting is run by our in-house CTO with peer review from senior engineers, and after the hire we stay responsible for HR, payroll and retention rather than disappearing once the invoice clears.
Yes, always. Your developer sits in your Slack, email and daily channels as a full member of your team, and can even list your company on their LinkedIn if you prefer.
Yes, clients are welcome at our offices, which are set up for exactly that. Hire four or more developers and we cover the flights and accommodation for a visit.
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.
Proof, not promises
Hear from our customers
In their words
