Machine Learning Engineers: Hire The Qualified Ones With Outsourcing

According to an industry report by GlobalNewsWire, experts expect the machine learning market to reach $20.83 billion and increase by 42.8% at a compound annual growth rate by 2024. This growth has led to higher demand for professionals in AI and the machine learning domains. Thus, it might be challenging to find the right people for the job.

This article will show how you can outsource machine learning projects in order to fill the talent pool in a quick and easy way. 

Machine Learning & AI Market - A Quick Glance

There is a rapid increase in the global demand for artificial intelligence and machine learning experts. Unfortunately, there is already a serious shortage of AI & ML engineers and data scientists in many countries.

Besides the insufficiency of qualified experts, the growing investment in machine learning has led industry leaders to search for alternatives to traditional in-house recruitment. In such a context, outsourcing can make hiring a whole AI engineers team faster and easier. 

The talent shortage in the machine learning domain in the US

The number of available professionals in AI and machine learning domains cannot accommodate the growing global demand. With more than 87,000 Machine Learning jobs in the United States, machine learning expertise is one of the demanded skills, (according to indeed.com). Meanwhile, the whole country has over 46,000 AI experts (according to LinkedIn). 

This mismatch between talent supply and demand has led companies to look for other ways to fill their positions. There is an ongoing competition for talents in machine learning and AI fields, while industry leaders are working hard to hire the best AI experts. You can leverage machine learning outsourcing to solve the talent shortage problem.

Skill gaps in AI and ML in the US

The industry leaders not only in the US but also in most Western countries are facing a prevalent problem, which is the serious lack of experienced engineers. In the meantime, there are numerous IT professionals and outsourcing sites in Southeast Asian countries. If you are contemplating hiring outsourcing teams for your machine learning projects, South East Asia should be your first consideration.

Why Vietnam is among the best options when it comes to outsourcing

Vietnam is one of the biggest IT powerhouses among other Southeast Asian countries. Its talent pool consists of numerous software engineers and machine learning and AI experts. The number of engineers alone is a good reason, as you should be able to find a reliable IT services partner to help you hire the entire team of machine learning experts.

In addition to being the vast source of talent in the region, the country provides several advantages to anyone looking to outsource machine learning projects.

An abundance of reliable software development companies

A quick LinkedIn search results in more than 54,000 software engineers in Vietnam distributed among hundreds of software development companies. A small percentage of those companies offer expertise in AI and machine learning domains, which leaves you with a wide selection of potential partners. Vietnam is one of the fastest-rising IT hubs in South East Asia, and the country solidifies this status not just with a large number of IT professionals but with the quality of the services provided as well. 

Strong STEM education

Vietnam is known for the quality and accessibility of higher education, and there are many universities across the country that offer Bachelor's degrees programs in Computer Science, which includes AI and machine learning specializations. Each year, thousands of students graduate from the universities to later pass training and become developers in one of many software development companies across the country.

Growing AI and machine learning expertise

AI and machine learning are among the fastest-growing areas of emerging technology among Vietnam software developers. A significant number of projects Vietnam software companies work with are related to machine learning expertise, followed closely by other emerging technology projects. Vietnam data scientists and machine learning engineers have been working on AI and machine learning projects for years, which equipped them to build solid expertise in that area.

Vietnam is a modern Asian country where people adopt many of the western values and have a similar approach to western standards of professionalism. You can rely on frequent communication and utmost care for your project, and more importantly, you can definitely trust the mutual understanding between you and your development outsourcing partner.

Additionally, nowadays, most Vietnamese developers have a good command of English, which is essential for effective collaboration between the client company and the development team.

Vietnam also offers convenient travel too, which allows business visitors to easily travel to this country to meet and interview the potential partners in person as well as visit the development site and facilities as needed. Today, the flexible working model including remote working offered by most companies also allows for comfortable uninterrupted communication with the team.

HOW TO SELECT THE RIGHT PARTNER FOR MACHINE LEARNING OUTSOURCING

With access to the many possibilities and options, choosing the right partner for your next AI/ML project can be quite a challenging endeavor. If you seek to outsource your ML/AI projects, you need to know who your potential partners are, what types of AI services they offer, how established their brand is, and if they can deliver the expected project's results.

Check out past ML/AI projects and portfolio

The first thing to do is to narrow down the list of potential partners by checking out platforms like Clutch or Goodfirms.co and filter out the final choices based on direct interviewing and checking out their previous projects. This will boil down your research to only a few selected firms.

Once you have limited your list to only the best software development companies, look at the results of their AI and machine learning projects. Make sure your potential partners have real hands-on experience working with AI and ML projects.

Prioritize large and medium-sized software development outsourcing firms

Your ML project requirements and scope may change from time to time and you may want to extend/enhance the functionality of your product or incorporate new features to keep up with the market. It should be noted that as the scope of the project changes, so does the composition of your development team, in terms of both expertise and quantity. To prepare for project changes, as a leader, you need to ensure that your future Vietnam outsourcing partner has enough Machine Learning talents pool to fulfill your changing needs.

When working with firms of scale that is too small, growing your team size can be difficult and time-consuming. In contrast, medium-sized and larger firms have the ability to scale (up or down) their development team faster, especially when it comes to advanced skills in machine learning and AI. With a large number of ML experts, your potential technology partner can provide a scalable team for outsourced machine learning/AI projects.

End-to-end development service

Some outsourcing software development companies only pay attention to certain aspects of the entire development process. Meanwhile, other companies offer full-cycle solutions that take the project from one stage to another, all the way to market. It is obviously more convenient to work with a full-cycle partner since all stages of development will be handled by a single team full of qualified developers. 

Full-cycle machine learning outsourcing allows you to have all the project-related operations in one place, which maximizes the efficiency of communication, optimizes spending, reduces redundant managerial effort, and simply makes the project delivery process more convenient for you and your dedicated development team. This might also include after go-live support and maintenance for keeping your product healthy and fully functional for a long period of time.

With a full-cycle machine learning outsourcing partner, you get all project-related requirements handled in one central place, maximizing communication efficiency, optimizing costs, reducing unnecessary administrative effort, and facilitating the project delivery process for you and your development team. It can also help with post-live support and maintenance to keep your product sustainable and fully functional for a long time.

Data security 

When you work with a machine learning outsourcing team, you need to share some of the most sensitive data about your business with them. Thus, you will need a partner who is capable of complying with all the security standards such as PCI DSS and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ensures complete protection of sensitive data.

CONCLUSION

The competition to hire qualified machine learning engineers in the industry has begun, and talent from the United States and the West is becoming harder and harder to find. As a result, the idea of outsourcing machine learning projects to other countries like Vietnam is becoming more appealing to many industry leaders. Outsourcing machine learning projects to external software vendors allow business organizations to gain quick and easy access to the best machine learning professionals in the industry.