AI engineers are being paid a premium to work as consultants to help large companies troubleshoot, adopt, and integrate AI with enterprise data\u2014something traditional consultants may not be able to do.<\/p>\n
PromptQL, an enterprise AI platform created by San Francisco-based developer tooling company Hasura<\/a>, is doling out $900-per-hour wages to its engineers tasked with building and deploying AI agents to analyze internal company data using large language models (LLMs). <\/p>\n The price point reflects the \u201cintuition\u201d and technical skills needed to keep pace with a rapidly-changing technology, Tanmai Gopal, PromptQL\u2019s cofounder and CEO, told Fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gopal said the company hourly wage for AI engineers as consultants is \u201caligned with the going rate that you would see for AI engineers,\u201d but that \u201cit feels like we should be increasing that price even more,\u201d as customers aren\u2019t pushing back on the price PromptQL sets.<\/p>\n \u201cMBA types\u2026 are very strategic thinkers, and they\u2019re smart people, but they don\u2019t have an intuition for what AI can do,\u201d Gopal said. <\/p>\n Gopal declined to disclose any customers that have used PromptQL to integrate AI into their businesses, but says the list includes \u201cthe largest networking company\u201d as well as top fast food, e-commerce, grocery and food delivery tech companies, and \u201cone of the largest B2B companies.\u201d <\/p>\n Oana Iord\u0103chescu, founder of Deep Tech Recruitment, a boutique agency focused on AI, quantum, and frontier tech talent, told Fortune enterprises and startups are competing for senior AI engineers at \u201cunprecedented rates,\u201d and which is leading to wage inflation.<\/p>\n Iord\u0103chescu said the wages are priced \u201cfar above even Big Four consulting partners,\u201d who often make around $400 to $600 per hour.<\/p>\n \u201cTraditional management consultants can design AI strategies, but most lack the hands-on technical expertise to debug models, build pipelines, or integrate systems into legacy infrastructure,\u201d Iord\u0103chescu said. \u201cAI engineers working as consultants bridge that gap. They don\u2019t just advise, they execute.\u201d<\/p>\n AI consultant Rob Howard told Fortune he wasn\u2019t surprised at \u201cmind-blowing numbers\u201d like a $900-per-hour wage for AI consulting work, as he\u2019s seen a price premium on projects that have an AI component while companies rush to adopt it into their businesses. <\/p>\n Howard, who is also the CEO Innovating with AI, a program to teach people to become AI consultants in their own right, said some students of his have sold AI trainings or two-day boot camps that net out to $400 or $500 per hour.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pricing for this is high in general across the market, because it\u2019s in demand and new and relatively rare to find, you know, people who are qualified to do it,\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n A recent report<\/a> published by MIT\u2019s NANDA<\/a> initiative, revealed that while generative AI holds promise for enterprises, 95% of initiatives to drive rapid revenue growth failed. Aditya Challapally, the lead author of the report and a research contributor to project NANDA at MIT, previously told<\/a> Fortune the AI pilot program failures did not fall on the quality of the AI models, but the \u201clearning gap\u201d for both tools and organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cSome large companies\u2019 pilots and younger startups are really excelling with generative AI,\u201d Challapally told Fortune earlier this month<\/a>. Startups led by 19- or 20-year-olds, for example, \u201chave seen revenues jump from zero to $20 million in a year,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s because they pick one pain point, execute well, and partner smartly with companies who use their tools,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Jim Johson, an AI consulting executive at AnswerRocket, told Fortune the $900-per-hour wage \u201cmakes perfect sense\u201d when considering companies have spent two years experimenting with AI and \u201chave little to show for it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow the pressure\u2019s on to demonstrate real progress, and they\u2019re discovering there\u2019s no easy button for enterprise AI,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThis premium won\u2019t last forever, but right now companies are essentially buying insurance against joining that 95% failure statistic.\u201d<\/p>\n Gopal said PromptQL\u2019s business model to have AI engineers serve as both consultants and forward deployed engineers<\/a> (FDEs)\u2014hybrid sales and engineering jobs tasked with integrating AI solutions\u2014is what makes their employees so valuable. <\/p>\n This new wave of AI engineer consultants is shaking up the consulting industry, Gopal said. But he sees his company as helping shift traditional consulting partnership expectations and culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe demand is there,\u201d he said. \u201cI think what makes it hard is that leaders, especially in some of the established companies\u2026 are kind of more used to the traditional style of consultants.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Gopal said the challenge for his company will be to \u201cdrive that leadership and education, and saying, \u2018Folks, there is a new way of doing things.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n