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Stage 3: Own

From Understanding to Ownership

You've explored AI and planned your approach. Now it's time to build the team that makes it real.

Building Your First AI Team

The first hire matters most. Get it wrong and you'll spend months undoing the damage.

Start with a Senior Generalist

  • →Someone who can prototype, deploy, and iterate
  • →Comfortable with ambiguity. Your first AI work won't have clear requirements
  • →Can make architectural decisions that won't need to be undone later
  • →Contract first is fine. Test the fit before committing

Common Mistakes

Hiring juniors first

No one to guide them, slow progress, technical debt accumulates fast.

Hiring a "Head of" before there's a team

Expensive, often frustrated, leaves within 18 months.

Building a team before validating the use case

Hire to scale something that works, not to explore if it might.

No clear ownership

AI team that "supports" other teams but owns nothing = failure.

When to Add Each Role

Stage
Team Size
Who to Add
Why
Proving it works
1
Senior AI Engineer
Build the POC, validate the approach
First production use
2-3
Data Engineer
Your data is probably messier than you think
Scaling up
3-5
MLOps Engineer
POC → production is where most fail
Multiple products
5+
Team Lead / PM
Coordination becomes the bottleneck

Questions to Ask Before Hiring

  • ?Do we have a validated use case, or are we still exploring?
  • ?Is our data ready, or do we need to fix that first?
  • ?Do we need someone to build, or someone to lead?
  • ?Contract or permanent? What's our confidence level?

Three Ways to Hire

Each has trade-offs. Here's how to decide.

Contract

Fast & Flexible

Advantages

  • +Start in 5-10 days
  • +Test fit before committing
  • +Ideal for POCs and projects
  • +Scale up/down as needed

Trade-offs

  • -Higher day rate
  • -Less long-term commitment
  • -Knowledge can leave with them

Best for

Proving concepts, filling gaps, specific projects with clear end dates.

Contract-to-Perm

Best of Both

Advantages

  • +See them work before you commit
  • +Lower risk than direct permanent
  • +Candidates motivated to prove themselves
  • +Fee adjusted for time worked

Trade-offs

  • -Contractor may not want to convert
  • -Can feel like extended probation
  • -May lose good people to competing offers

Best for

When you want permanent but need proof first. Reduces hiring risk.

Permanent

Build Your Team

Advantages

  • +Long-term knowledge retention
  • +Cultural integration
  • +Lower total cost over time
  • +Compound capability building

Trade-offs

  • -Slower to hire (4-8 weeks)
  • -Higher upfront commitment
  • -Less flexible if needs change

Best for

Core capability, strategic roles, when AI is central to your business.

Ready to Build Your Team?

Let's talk about what you need. Contract, permanent, or a mix.

Book a Discovery Call