Freelance vs Full-time AI Talent: What’s Best for Your Use Case

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Deliveroo

Jul 4, 2025

AI is rapidly changing the landscape of industry, and businesses must be able to move quickly in putting together the right high-impact AI teams that enable them to innovate and scale. A million-dollar question businesses need to ask is, "Do we invest in full-time AI expertise for the sake of scaling our vision, or be nimble, flexible, and cost-effective by utilizing freelance AI talent?"

In today's constantly evolving market both paths have some excellent benefits but they also have some significant trade-offs. For example, freelancers are 54% more likely to make eligible advanced AI learners than full-time employees based on the upskilling of freelancing and being exposed to numerous projects.⁽¹⁾ Meanwhile, full-time employees will have you committed to a deeper organization. Whether you're just learning how to start your first AI project or are successfully launching and scaling, how you decide to hire for your project will play a role in speed, innovation and cost. In this blog, we will examine the pros and cons of each strategy- so you can make a more informed and strategic hiring decision to make it work for the goals of your business.

Freelance AI Talent vs. Full-Time AI Employees

Freelance AI Talent

Specialist freelancers are independent professionals that are either hired for a project, or on a temporary basis. They offer several benefits:

Flexibility & Scalability: Quickstart and shut down when a project demands.
Cost-Effective: No long-term overhead like benefits, payroll taxes, office space.
Niche Expertise: Commonly very strong in certain AI domains (e.g., NLP, image recognition, or model optimization).
Ideal For: Clear-cut, project-based work, fixing something that’s gone wrong, where speed and specialized skills are the priority.

Full-Time AI Employees

A full-time hire is a permanent, established member of the team who can contribute to long-term strategies. Benefits of this type of hire include:

Deep Integration: They are embedded in an operation, so they have a clear understanding of the company's goals, products, and culture.
Long-Term Growth: They can grow into, potentially, leadership roles, mentor more junior hires, and build intellectual property over time.
Higher Engagement: Full-time hires may often be more aligned with the company and mission, and level of commitment to the success of the outcomes, especially if they are engaged in the original development of the innovation.
Ideal For: Multi-year AI initiatives, Strategic Innovation Planning, Continuous Improvement.

Key Factors for Choosing the Right AI Talent

Freelance vs Full-Time AI Talent: A Comparison

Factor	Freelance AI Talent	Full-time AI Employees
Availability	Limited by project scope and duration	Available year-round for ongoing and evolving needs
Cost Structure	Hourly or project-based fees, often flexible	Fixed salary, providing predictable ongoing costs
Scalability	Can scale quickly for short-term projects	Scaling requires hiring and onboarding more employees
Expertise	Specialized expertise for niche AI projects	Broader expertise and more flexibility within the company
Creativity	Brings creative solutions with outside perspective	In-house knowledge for company-specific problem-solving
Commitment	Limited to project-based commitments	Long-term commitment with potential for growth within the company
Management	Requires regular oversight and coordination	Integrated into the company structure, less management required
Adaptability	Adapts quickly to changing project requirements	Better suited for long-term goals, less agile in shifting roles
Risk	Limited risk due to short-term engagements	Higher risk in case of mismatched roles or attrition

When to Choose Freelance AI Talent

Freelance artificial intelligence experts are an excellent match for:

Quick Turnaround: Ideal for short, clearly defined assignments with immediate needs.
Cost-Effective Solutions: Perfect when you're not ready to commit to long-term salaries, benefits and onboarding.
Scalable Resources: Flexible add-on and reduction to accommodate changing project needs.
Specialized Expertise: Helpful for the work that requires niche skills — prompt engineering, computer vision, fine-tuning large language models — your in-house team may lack.

Example Use Cases:

Creating a custom AI model for a targeted marketing campaign
Creating and deploying AI chatbots for customer service
Completing a one-time audit or analysis of an AI model or data for performance improvement

When to Choose Full-Time AI Employees

Full-time AI employees are a better fit when:

Long-term AI strategy: You need dedicated talent to help drive AI transformation into an ongoing business transformation. In fact, 92% of companies anticipate raising their AI investments over the next three years, which indicates the demand for dedicated teams internally with committed time. ⁽²⁾
Business integration: You want deep integration of AI into the business processes you have, aligned with specific needs of the company. That is, AI-embedded and planned strategies in organizations provide clear visibility to the returns on the investment made, alongside providing improved workflows.
Team collaboration: Full-time employees are the best option for continuity, collaboration and knowledge-sharing across teams. Nearly all (99%) AI/data professionals work cross-functional and value teamwork within their organization.
Company culture fit: You want employees to have exposure to your organization's mission, vision, culture, and long-term objectives. Research indicates that high-engagement teams grow revenue as much as 2x faster than others.

Example Use Cases for Full-time Employees:

Building and utilizing AI-powered capabilities throughout an entire portfolio of products.
Driving the application of artificial intelligence technology and models across multiple business units.
Developing proprietary machine learning models for longitudinal customer insights and analysis.

Hybrid AI Talent Model: Combining Freelance and Full-time Talent

Across industries, organizations are taking the plunge into a hybrid AI talent model, utilizing freelance talent while keeping their full-time team; and they report promising results. Freelancers are not only viewed as temporary hires—they are equally as likely to be advanced in AI competency as full-time contributors, with 54% of freelancers and 25% of full-time employees reporting advanced proficiency in AI. Additionally, 29% of the freelancers have hands-on experience with training machine learning models vs. only 18% of full-time employees. ⁽³⁾ Organizations which leverage freelancers also report significant outcomes—45% experienced more organizational agility, 40% had higher quality work, and 39% provided more innovation.

Full-time employees offer a level of consistency, alignment, and business strategy comprehension that no one else can. By merging the two—think, full-time AI engineers to drive a longer-term project while the freelancer complete narrowing works, such as custom model training or prompt engineering—companies receive both speed, through the use of freelancers to complete bits of the larger project, and depth of employees who can fully understand the full scope of their long-term outcomes. Given the highly-speed of AI innovation, these blended workforces offer the advantages of utilizing the flexibility of specialists with the stability and cultural fit that permanent staff might provide.

Conclusion: Which AI Talent Model is Right for You?

Whether you decide to hire freelancer AI talent or full-time AI employees — what’s best for your business boils down to individual requirements, budget, and a long-term vision. If flexibility, the ability to scale fast and specialized expertise for short-term projects are your primary drivers — that is, if independent contractors are potentially a best fit for you. That being said, if you want to develop an end-to-end AI strategy that’s tied closely with your company’s culture and goals, hiring full-time AIists is the way to go.

But why settle for just one? With a hybrid workforce that marries the flexibility of freelancers with the stability of full-time employees, you can have the best of both worlds — you can respond to short-term needs while you position your company for sustaining longer-term growth.

At CodeMax Consulting, we help businesses like yours make strategic choices about talent. Whether you are in need of highly skilled freelance AI talent or want to hire full-time AI talent we are here to help with your unique AI staffing needs.

Still unsure which model fits your needs? Talk to our AI hiring experts at CodeMax Consulting and get tailored talent solutions that move your business forward.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the difference between freelance AI talent and full-time AI employees?
Freelance AI talent is often hired for short-term projects and is flexible; a full-time employee is typically a long-term hire that will be embedded in your business.

2. When should I hire freelance AI talent?
Freelance AI talent is best for discrete, time-sensitive projects which require specialized skills. It can also be best for budget limitations or quick scalability.

3. When is it better to hire full-time AI employees?
Full-time AI employees are ideal for businesses that require long-term AI development, put AI into company systems, and ongoing department collaboration.

4. Can I combine freelance AI talent and full-time employees?
Yes, a hybrid model where full-time employees are doing the long-term or strategic work on AI and use freelancers to do specialized work or short-term projects is common.

5. What are the cost differences between hiring freelance AI talent and full-time employees?
Hiring freelancers can often be cheaper, especially since they are usually paid by the hour or project for shorter work. Full-time employees who are paid a fixed salary and benefits can quickly ramp up costs and will often make project costs predictable at the end of the life of the project.