Westover Labs brings a decade of US big tech engineering to European companies. Custom AI infrastructure that keeps running after the engagement ends — better ROI than a five-year hire.
Most companies hire a staff engineer to build AI once, then keep them on indefinitely. There is a faster, cheaper, and more reliable model.
Senior AI engineers command EUR 150–250k in total compensation. Companies hire them to solve a specific architectural problem, then keep them on to justify the headcount. The system never ships. The dependency never ends.
A focused 3–6 month engagement. We assess your stack, design the AI infrastructure you actually need, build it in production, document every decision, and train your team to own it.
Systems that keep running. Runbooks your team can follow. AI agents handling work that used to require constant human hours. Infrastructure that maintains itself. ROI that shows up in year one.
Each engagement is scoped to outcomes, not hours. You know what you are getting and when.
Full AI infrastructure buildout tailored to your domain. Custom agent teams for your workflows, production ML pipelines, infrastructure as code, documentation, and team training for a clean handoff.
Ideal for companies that know they need AI but are not sure where to start — or have started and got stuck.
Strategic technical leadership without full-time overhead. Architecture decisions, technical roadmap, hiring guidance, vendor evaluation, and AI strategy — 10-20 hours per week.
Ideal for funded startups without a technical co-founder, or companies scaling their engineering function.
Fix broken systems, unblock teams, clean up technical debt. Root cause analysis, hands-on fixes, automated testing and CI/CD setup, and AI-assisted maintenance so it stays fixed.
Ideal for companies where something critical has broken down and needs a senior engineer, not another meeting.
Not sure which engagement fits? See the full guide — including pricing, deliverables, and the Trial Month option — at westover.expert.
James Westover, founder of Westover Labs, has built production systems at Uber, HERE Technologies, and Postmates. Here is what that means in practice.
German national. Physics background. Ten years in US big tech. Now building AI infrastructure for European companies at exactly the moment they need it.
We have built systems handling 10M+ requests per second. We know the difference between a demo and a production system. European companies deserve the same engineering rigor — without the lock-in, the complexity, or the cultural mismatch of US-first software.
Privacy compliance was a constraint we engineered around at Uber — not a legal checkbox at the end. Every system we build starts with data minimization, retention policies, and deletion strategies. DSGVO compliance is not an add-on. It is the architecture.
Westover Labs operates as a German UG. Contracts are straightforward for European companies. No currency risk, no cross-border complexity. We are in your timezone, in your regulatory environment, and aligned with how European businesses operate.
Most consultants create dependency. Our engagement model is designed to do the opposite. We build AI infrastructure that keeps working after we leave — documented, trained, and handed off. You own everything. No retainer required. That is the whole point.
No retainers, no ambiguity. A fixed arc with defined deliverables at every phase — and a clean handoff when we are done.
Audit your current stack, codebase, and team. Identify where AI creates real leverage versus where it adds noise. Produce an architecture decision record.
Design and deploy the AI infrastructure. This is the bulk of the engagement — actual production systems, not prototypes. Your team is in the loop throughout.
Load testing, observability, runbooks. Identify failure modes before they find you. Documentation that an engineer two years from now can follow.
Knowledge transfer sessions with your team. Everything is yours: systems, credentials, runbooks. Optional 30-day post-engagement availability.
Instead of a months-long hiring process: engage us for a trial month. We assess your architecture, start building, and mentor your team. After 30 days you have actual output, not a pitch deck.
A recruiter charges 15–20% commission. On an €80K hire, that is €12,000–16,000 just for the introduction — and you still do not know if the hire will work out. A trial month costs less and delivers real output you can evaluate directly.
Weeks 1–2: architecture assessment and stack audit. Weeks 3–4: first production systems built, team mentoring running in parallel. At the end of 30 days you have tangible deliverables and a clear read on fit.
Systems that run. A team that understands how they work. If it is a fit, we continue. If not, you are out less than you would have paid a recruiter — and ahead on architecture regardless.
The Berlin market is correcting. Staff engineers at FAANG companies earn $750K–1M+ total compensation. The same title in Berlin pays €110–140K. Google just opened their AI Center in Berlin-Mitte with €5.5B committed through 2029. Senior engineers know what their work is worth — and the gap to the US market is narrowing. Don’t take our word for it: levels.fyi/Berlin.
Every engineer James Westover hired at HERE Technologies and Uber is still there — in the Bay Area where average tenure is 18 months. That is not luck. It is the result of leveling correctly, paying fairly, and actually mentoring people. That comes with the engagement.
A recruiter reads a CV. We know what good engineers actually look like — because we hired and retained them at Uber and HERE Technologies across a decade and thousands of microservices.
Direct hiring, no commission. We source, screen, and hire your engineering team. No middleman. No keyword matching. Someone who understands what strong engineering performance actually looks like — and has the track record to prove it.
Recruiters charge 15–20% per hire. For an €80K salary, that is €12K–16K per person, just for an introduction. For €20K you get an experienced hiring manager personally evaluating every candidate. For multiple hires, the math works out immediately.
€10,000 for one month. Architecture assessment, first production systems, team mentoring. Thirty days of real output.
Costs less than a single recruiter commission and delivers measurable output you can hold us to. If it is a fit, we continue. If not, no further commitment required.
Strategic technical leadership, architecture decisions, hiring guidance, AI strategy. Without the full-time overhead — or the full-time compensation package.
10–20 hours per week on a monthly retainer. Scales with your needs.
If you have a concrete problem — AI infrastructure that needs building, a team that needs unblocking, a system that needs to actually work in production — let's talk.
Academic researchers: Consulting for university and research institutions is available at reduced or no cost on a discretionary basis. Cost should never be a barrier to good engineering.