Recruiter field notes · Technology · AI / LLM Engineering
Recruiter field notes: AI / ML / LLM Engineer
Search snapshot
The search
Still open. The client (Dubai-based) needs speech-to-text for intercepted calls, but the JD demanded contradictory scope: cloud-level power delivered on-prem, agentic AI with no external system access, and MLOps for air-gapped systems. Spending significant time consulting with clients to translate vague internal AI ambitions into a coherent technical brief before sourcing even starts.
Compensation
The compensation reality
Local Dubai market is asking AED 70K-80K/month for this skillset. The client is instead hiring from Europe at $80K-90K/year (roughly AED 27K-28K/month effective) via an Employer of Record, despite having no EU entity, to control budget.
Market insight
What changed, and what the market gets wrong
A rising pattern of employers using LLMs themselves to draft AI/ML job descriptions, producing technically incoherent requirements, since the model doesn't understand the client's actual product.
The real bottleneck isn't finding AI talent, it's that clients haven't done the human critical thinking to define what they actually need before sourcing starts.
Hiring signals
Candidate and job description signals
If you want to hire people to help you advance in large language models, don't use large language models to build the job description. Decide within your organization what's genuinely going to add value. Don't let LLMs direct you. That's an area of critical thinking mankind should preserve.
Recruiter field note, byteSpark.ai