AI-Readiness
Not a framework checklist. How they think about and use AI end to end.
Hire Prompt Engineers
Hiring prompt engineers is hard enough without the risk of it not working out. Tecla matches you in 5 days and covers you for 90, so the only thing you have to focus on is building.
- Top 3% Acceptance Rate
- 50,000+ Vetted Developers
Tecla: the AI talent partner for product teams
Getting into Tecla's network means clearing four bars: AI-readiness, technical depth, soft skills, and English fluency. AI-readiness measures how an engineer thinks about and applies AI across their work, from tooling decisions to architectural choices to how they approach complex problems. We evaluate everything before you meet anyone.
Technical Depth
Assessed by engineers who have built the same things your team is building.
Soft Skills
Evaluated for how they show up in standups, reviews, and cross-team work.
English Fluency
Tested in live technical conversation, not a form.
Generalist agencies pivoted to AI. Tecla was built for it.
What our Prompt Engineers build for you
Prompt Design & Optimization
Prompts that work in production, not just in testing. Few-shot learning, chain-of-thought reasoning, and structured output formats built to handle edge cases, maintain brand voice, and stay within token budgets.
Evaluation & Testing Frameworks
Evaluation datasets, automated testing, A/B experiments, and quality metric tracking. Frameworks that catch regressions before users see them, not after.
Cost Optimization & Token Management
Prompt length optimized, caching implemented, simpler tasks routed to cheaper models, requests batched intelligently. Your monthly API bill drops while performance stays strong.
RAG System Integration
Context management, relevance filtering, and citation formatting designed to ground answers in your documentation. Prompts that retrieve accurately, not confidently hallucinate.
Prompt Engineers ready to start
These are representative profiles from our active network. Request your shortlist and we will match you with engineers fit for your models, use cases, and product stage.
.avif)
Rachel KimSenior Prompt Engineer
United States
8 years experienceDesigned and scaled prompt frameworks for SaaS products used by 300K+ business users. Specializes in chain-of-thought reasoning, few-shot design, and cross-model portability. Cut average prompt iteration cycles by 60% through internal testing tooling.
Skills- Ethan BrooksPrincipal Prompt EngineerUnited States10 years experience
Developed enterprise-grade prompt systems for legal and financial services platforms. Expert in structured output design, evaluation pipelines, and compliance-safe generation. Improved accuracy scores by 45% through systematic prompt iteration.
Skills - Roberto ÁlvarezSenior AI Solutions EngineerBrazil8 years experience
Designed prompt strategies for enterprise clients across finance and e-commerce. Specializes in brand voice consistency and compliance requirements. Led prompt optimization projects reducing costs by $40K+ monthly.
Skills - Camila TorresSenior LLM Integration EngineerCosta Rica6 years experience
Architected complex prompt workflows for business automation tools. Expert in function calling and multi-step reasoning. Cut average task completion time from 8 prompts to 2.
Skills - Mateo SilvaSenior AI Content EngineerChile5 years experience
Created structured output systems for data extraction from documents. Specializes in consistent formatting and error handling. Strong collaboration with product teams on AI feature UX.
Skills - Diana VargasSenior Conversational EngineerMexico6 years experience
Built chatbot experiences for healthcare and legal tech applications. Deep expertise in context management and multi-turn conversations. Reduced hallucination rates by 70% through retrieval strategies.
Skills - Lucas MontenegroLead AI Product EngineerArgentina7 years experience
Designed prompt systems for content generation platforms processing 500K requests daily. Expert in evaluation frameworks and A/B testing prompts. Improved output quality scores from 3.1 to 4.6/5.
Skills - Sofia RamírezSenior Prompt EngineerColombia5 years experience
Built prompt libraries for customer support automation serving 200K+ users. Specializes in output consistency and cost optimization. Reduced API spending by 55% through better prompt design.
Skills
Why hire Prompt Engineers through Tecla?
Zero timezone hassle
Full overlap with US business hours. No more waiting overnight for responses or fixing Spark jobs alone at midnight while your data team waits for their morning reports.
Top 3% acceptance rate
Only 3 in 100 applicants make it through our vetting process. Every developer you meet has built production NLP systems with real accuracy requirements, not just completed a Hugging Face tutorial.
5-day average placement
We match you with qualified Prompt Engineers in 5 days on average. Traditional recruiting firms take 42+ days and that is before the notice period.
The talent is there. You decide where they are based
Tecla places senior Prompt Engineers in the US and Latin America. Go US-based when that is what the role needs. Go nearshore when you want to reinvest the savings into shipping faster. Same expertise, your call.
Stop rehiring the same data engineering role every 18 months
A Prompt Engineer who understands your lakehouse architecture, Delta tables, and cluster configs gets more valuable over time. Our 97% year-one retention means that investment stays on your team.
Teams building with AI trust Tecla to hire
Eleven years, 500+ companies, 50,000+ vetted professionals. What they say about working with us.
Tecla is organized and provides a strong partnership experience. From hiring multiple engineers within weeks to maintaining consistent communication and feedback, they've shown real professionalism. Their follow-up and collaboration made the entire staffing process efficient and enjoyable.
Kristen MarcoeDirector @ Credo AI
I’m very happy with Tecla. Their support has improved our QA process, reduced bug reports by half, and made our onboarding process twice as fast. The team is responsive, cost-effective, and delivers high-quality candidates on time. Tecla has truly become a trusted extension of our internal hiring team.
Meit ShahPrincipal PM @ Stash
It was a pleasure working with Tecla. Their team quickly understood our hiring needs and found candidates that matched our technical requirements perfectly. Communication was seamless, and they were always quick to respond and deliver results. Tecla’s attention to quality made the entire experience smooth and efficient.
Mayya BozhilovaManager @ Three Space Lab
Tecla successfully found candidates for our team and handled the entire process from scheduling to interviews. They were timely, responsive, and always kept communication flowing through email and messaging apps. I was really impressed with Tecla’s follow-up and thoroughness throughout the process.
Jessica WarrenHead of People @ Chowly
Tecla's business model and team set our company up with engineers that we have the real possibility of working with long-term and can grow with our business. Tecla came in highly recommended, and their pace from introduction to engagement to presenting candidates was very fast.
David BradleyFounder @ QPilot
Internally, we're moving much faster than we were without the remote engineers Tecla recruited for us and we've been able to implement far more features. Once we brought on our first full-time designer in South America, it made the quality of our user interface, product, and marketing efforts increase substantially.
Drew BatshawCTO @ Waggl
When we started our recruiting initiatives for LATAM developers, it was crucial for us to rely on a company that could provide deep local expertise to help us identify the best software developers in Latin America. The teams at Tecla really go the extra mile to understand our needs, which is what has made our partnership so successful!
Douglas SantosLead Tech Recruiter @ HomeLight
Hire AI Prompt Engineers in 4 simple steps
Tell us what you need
Share your models, use cases, and product stage. No lengthy forms. No back-and-forth for days. One focused call and we handle the rest.
Receive your shortlist within 3 to 5 business days
Every profile includes verified production experience, not self-reported skills. You are reviewing engineers who have shipped real AI features, not people who experimented with ChatGPT.
Run your own technical interviews, we prepare them on your stack
See how they approach prompt design, handle ambiguous requirements, and think about evaluation and iteration. You are assessing fit, not teaching fundamentals. Candidates arrive briefed on your product context.
Start working together in week 2 to 3
We handle contracts, compliance, and paperwork across borders. You focus on aligning them with your product goals, brand voice, and model stack.
90-day replacement guarantee. If the match is not right, we find you another at no extra cost.
What is a Prompt Engineer?
A prompt engineer is the person who makes your AI features work with real users, not just in demos. They design the instructions, examples, and constraints that get foundation models like GPT-4 and Claude to produce consistent, on-brand, cost-efficient outputs at scale. The person you hire when your AI outputs need to be reliable enough to put in front of customers.
When you hire prompt engineers, your AI features go from "works in demos" to "works with real users." Most companies see output quality improve 30-50%, API costs drop 40-60% through optimization, and fewer edge cases breaking the user experience.
Here's where the ROI shows up. Building a customer support chatbot? A prompt engineer designs responses that match your brand voice and actually resolve issues instead of frustrating users. Content generation producing generic fluff? They craft prompts with examples that capture your style and deliver useful output.
Your AI features work great with test data but fail with real users? Prompt engineers build evaluation frameworks that catch problems before launch. They test edge cases, handle ambiguous inputs, and design fallbacks when models produce nonsense.
API bills climbing as usage grows? Good AI prompt engineers optimize token usage, implement caching for common queries, and route simple tasks to cheaper models. Your costs scale slower than your user base.
Your job description filters candidates. Make it specific enough to attract qualified prompt engineers and scare off people who just discovered ChatGPT last month.
Job Title
"Senior Prompt Engineer" or "AI Product Engineer" beats "AI Wizard." Be searchable. Include seniority level since someone who's experimented with prompts can't design production systems with evaluation frameworks yet.
Company Overview
Give real context. Your stage (seed, Series B, public). Your product (customer support automation, content generation, document extraction). What models you use (OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source). Team size (solo AI hire vs. 10-person ML team).
Candidates decide if they want your environment. Help them self-select by being honest about what you're building.
Role Description
Skip buzzwords. Describe actual work:
- "Design prompts for customer support chatbot handling 10K conversations daily"
- "Optimize our content generation system to maintain brand voice while cutting API costs"
Technical Requirements
Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. "2+ years building production prompt systems" means more than "AI experience." Your tech stack matters, GPT-4 versus Claude, LangChain versus custom code, RAG systems.
Be honest about what you need. Few-shot learning expertise? Evaluation framework experience? Multi-turn conversation design? Say so upfront.
Experience Level
"3+ years in product or engineering roles, 2+ years specifically with prompt engineering in production" sets clear expectations. Many strong prompt engineers came from copywriting, product, or software backgrounds. Focus on what they've shipped.
Soft Skills & Culture Fit
How does your team work? Fully remote with async? Role requires collaborating with product designers on AI UX? Team values systematic testing and iteration?
Skip "team player" and "creative thinker", everyone claims those. Be specific about your actual environment.
Application Process
"Send resume plus a prompt you designed for a real product and what made it effective" filters better than generic applications. Set timeline expectations: "We review weekly and schedule calls within 3 days."
Good interview questions reveal production experience versus casual experimentation.
Technical Depth
Walk me through your process for designing a prompt for a new task.
Strong candidates discuss understanding the task deeply first, creating evaluation criteria, starting with simple prompts, testing with edge cases, iterating based on failures, and implementing few-shot examples. They should mention measuring quality systematically, not just eyeballing outputs.
How do you handle situations where a prompt works 80% of the time but fails on edge cases?
Experienced prompt engineers discuss identifying failure patterns, adding specific instructions for those cases, using conditional logic in prompt chains, implementing validation and retry strategies, or routing edge cases to different models. Watch for systematic debugging approach.
Explain few-shot learning and when you'd use it versus zero-shot prompting.
This reveals depth of understanding. They should explain few-shot provides examples to guide output format and style, discuss trade-offs (token usage versus consistency), and mention scenarios where each works best. Listen for practical experience, not textbook definitions.
Problem-Solving
Your AI feature's API costs doubled last month. How do you investigate and optimize?
Practical candidates check which prompts use the most tokens, analyze if outputs are unnecessarily verbose, look for redundant API calls that could be cached, and consider routing simple queries to cheaper models. This shows cost-conscious thinking.
Users report your chatbot sometimes gives completely wrong answers. Your debugging approach?
Strong answers investigate what types of questions trigger bad answers, check if the model is hallucinating versus retrieval problems in RAG systems, review prompt instructions for ambiguity, and implement better output validation. Avoid candidates who blame the model without checking their prompts first.
Experience & Judgment
Describe a prompt you're proud of. What made it effective?
Their definition of effective matters. Consistency? Quality? Cost efficiency? Strong candidates explain the problem it solved, iterations they went through, how they tested it, and what metrics improved. Vague answers about "really good outputs" signal thin experience.
When would you fine-tune a model versus investing more effort in prompt engineering?
Experienced prompt engineers acknowledge most cases don't need fine-tuning. They discuss scenarios where it helps (consistent style, domain-specific language, extreme cost sensitivity) versus when better prompts solve the problem. This reveals understanding of trade-offs.
Collaboration
How do you work with product designers who want AI features but don't understand limitations?
Good answers: show what's possible with quick prototypes, explain limitations through examples not lectures, propose alternatives when requests aren't feasible, and iterate based on user feedback. They help teams understand AI capabilities without gatekeeping.
Describe working with engineers to implement your prompts. What issues came up?
What do they focus on? Handling API failures? Managing rate limits? Parsing structured outputs reliably? Good answers mention technical constraints they hadn't considered and how they adapted prompts. Listen for collaborative mindset.
Cultural Fit
Do you prefer iterating on existing prompts or designing new ones from scratch?
Neither answer is wrong. But if you're optimizing production systems and they only want greenfield work, that's a mismatch. Watch for self-awareness about preferences and work style.
How do you balance perfectionism in prompt design with shipping features quickly?
Strong candidates discuss starting with working prompts that solve the core problem, measuring quality to know when good enough beats perfect, and knowing when technical debt in prompts becomes worth addressing. Avoid candidates who never ship or never refactor.
The real cost to hire Prompt Engineers with Tecla
Whether you hire in the US or Latin America, Tecla's Prompt Engineers bring the same production depth, the same overlap with your hours, and the same fluency. You choose where they are based.
US Salary Ranges
- Junior
- $100,000-$140,000 annually
- Mid-level
- $140,000-$190,000 annually
- Senior
- $190,000-$260,000+ annually
LATAM Salary Ranges
- Junior
- $45,000–$60,000 annually
- Mid-level
- $60,000–$85,000 annually
- Senior
- $80,000–$115,000 annually
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to hire Prompt Engineers through Tecla?
Tecla has Prompt Engineers in the US and Latin America. Hire US-based and pay US market rates. Go nearshore and pay $45K to $115K per year for the same production experience, same tools, same frameworks. Same skill. You choose what fits your team and budget.
How does Tecla's process work to hire nearshore prompt engineers?
Post requirements on day one. Review pre-vetted candidates in days 2 to 5. Interview matches in week one to two. Hire and onboard in week two to three. Total: 2 to 3 weeks versus 6 to 12 weeks traditionally. We maintain a vetted pool of 50,000+ developers, so there are no sourcing delays and no reviewing candidates who discovered prompt engineering last month.
Do your vetted prompt engineers have the same skills as US-based engineers?
Yes. Our engineers work with OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models. They have built production prompt systems, evaluation frameworks, and RAG integrations. 80%+ are fluent in English. The cost difference reflects regional economics, not a gap in capability.
How quickly can I hire prompt engineers through Tecla?
Traditional recruiting takes 8 to 16 weeks from job post to start date. Through Tecla: 2 to 3 weeks total. You hire 6 to 13 weeks faster. While other teams are still sourcing, you are onboarding a prompt engineer who starts improving your AI outputs this week.
How do you handle contracts and compliance for international hires?
We manage all contracts, local compliance, and payment logistics so you do not have to navigate cross-border employment law. You engage one vendor with a straightforward services agreement.
What happens if the prompt engineer is not a good fit?
Every placement comes with a 90-day replacement guarantee. If the match is not working, we find you another engineer at no additional cost.
.avif)
See who is available for your stack this week
No commitment. A 30-minute call and a shortlist in 5 days. 90-day guarantee if the fit is not right.