Insights
Hire an AI engineer, hire an agency, or get an AI department? What each costs a UAE company
By Anton Krashennikov · Published
Most companies with 10 to 300 employees run on disconnected tools and spreadsheets: sales in one tool, finance in another, tasks in a third, inquiries in WhatsApp. Nothing talks to each other, so AI has nothing to build on. When an owner decides to change that, there are four ways to go, and each has a catch.
The four options
| Option | The catch |
|---|---|
| Hire an AI engineer | One senior AI engineer in Dubai costs AED 40,000 to 60,000 a month in salary alone. It takes months to find one, and one person can’t cover every department. |
| Add another tool | Every new tool adds one more place where your data lives. |
| Hire an agency | Most deliver one project and move on. Nobody stays accountable for the whole picture. |
| Build a custom system | One system for the whole company costs USD 40,000 to 250,000 and 3 to 12 months to build. Usually only large companies can justify that. |
What the numbers say
The two figures with a source are the engineer’s salary and the cost of a custom system. A senior AI or machine-learning engineer in Dubai earns a base salary of AED 40,000 to 60,000 a month. Custom ERP development runs from USD 40,000 to 100,000 and 3 to 6 months for a small business, to USD 100,000 to 250,000 and 6 to 12 months for a growing company with several departments.
An AI department as a service, the model Backend&Co works on, costs from AED 12,000 a month plus onboarding, priced by company size: less than one senior AI engineer, for a dedicated CTO, a business operations expert, a team of AI engineers and one central system that is live in the first month.
What to ask whichever way you go
- Who stays accountable? An engineer is one person without a team or a strategy behind them. An agency delivers a project and moves on. Ask who answers for the whole picture a year from now.
- Is there one system, or one more tool? AI needs one place where sales, finance, tasks and inquiries sit together. Without it, every new tool is one more place your data lives.
- What happens every month? A system that gets better every month beats a growing pile of tools. Ask what goes live next month, who trains your team on it and who keeps it running.
- Whose data is it? Ask for an NDA before anyone sees your data, and for a full export whenever you want it.
Sources
- Base salary for a senior AI/ML engineer in Dubai: AED 40,000 to 60,000 a month, Quantalent placement data, Q1 2026.
- Custom ERP development: USD 40,000 to 100,000 and 3 to 6 months for a small business, USD 100,000 to 250,000 and 6 to 12 months for a growing company with several departments. CMARIX, 2026.
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