Hire vetted
AI specialists.
A pre-screened bench of AI builders for hire by hour, project, or fractional. 5-stage vetting kills the resume theater. Escrow-backed milestones mean nobody disappears mid-project. 15% platform fee, transparent on both sides.
Free to post. Free to message experts, free to do intro calls. You only pay when you fund the first milestone — and we re-match you within 48 hours if the fit is off.
Companies with a build
and no one to do it.
Hands on the keyboard, not slides about strategy. Best for teams that know what they want and need a vetted builder to ship it.
- You have a clear AI build but no in-house engineer free to do it
- You tried Upwork or Toptal and got middling work or a mid-tier portfolio
- Your scope is too small for a $30k+ Nolola productized build but too real for a freelancer
- You want someone vetted, not someone whose portfolio you have to verify line by line
- Your in-house engineers are busy and you need to extend the team for one quarter
Don't know what to build yet? Start with the 28-Day Audit — it produces a written roadmap with vendors named, then the marketplace executes against it.
Post or browse.
Hire when ready.
Five steps from posting to launched build. No subscription, no premium tier to unlock matching.
Post a project (or browse)
Free. The AI-assisted scope writer turns your brief into a structured spec experts can actually quote against.
Get matched in 24 to 48 hours
3 to 5 hand-matched experts surface with proposals, rate, and timeline. You can also browse the public bench and reach out directly.
Interview + hire
Free messaging, free intros, free 30-min calls. Hire when you're ready. No platform fee until you fund the first milestone.
Escrow-backed milestones
Fund milestone 1, expert delivers, you review, escrow releases. Repeat per milestone. 15% platform fee comes out of expert side — transparent.
Rate, repeat, retain
Both sides rate after delivery. Good experts get higher placement. Re-hire for the next project in one click.
5 stages.
Under 5% pass.
Vetting is the moat. We're AI-specialists only, and every approved expert has shipped real work that a Nolola partner personally reviewed. Below is the funnel they walked through.
Auto-screen
Resume + portfolio + form data filtered against ICP and quality heuristics. About 60% drop here.
Technical assessment
Hands-on coding challenge. Real codebase, real ambiguity. We grade the work itself, not multiple-choice.
Interview
30-minute call with a Nolola partner. Pressure-test on past projects, real-world tradeoffs, and how they handle “I don't know.”
Sample project
A paid 1- to 2-week mini-engagement to see how they actually ship. Most candidates drop here, not in the interview.
Approval committee
Final review with delivery + community signal-check. Approved experts go onto the bench with a Nolola-verified profile.
Hire one expert,
or the whole engine.
AI Talent Marketplace
- Deliverable
- Vetted experts, escrow-backed milestones, 15% transparent fee
- Right fit
- You have a scoped AI build, no engineer free to do it
Hired Thursday.
Shipped in three weeks.
“Posted on a Monday. Had three proposals by Wednesday, hired Thursday, MVP live in three weeks. The expert I picked had built three RAG systems before mine — I didn't have to teach him anything.”
“We needed a Claude integration for a customer-facing feature and our engineering team was buried. The marketplace had three experts who'd shipped exactly this kind of integration. Hired one, shipped, moved on.”
“I'd been burned by Upwork twice. The vetting here is real — every expert I interviewed had ship-it experience and could actually answer pressure questions. Hired one for a 6-week sprint, extended for a second.”
Common questions
5 stages: auto-screen, technical assessment, partner interview, paid 1-2 week sample project, and approval committee. The target accept rate is under 5%. Most candidates drop at the sample project — that's where pretending they ship breaks down. Every approved expert has a Nolola-verified profile so you know we've seen them work.
Three things: (1) Upwork is open-bench, anyone can list — quality is your problem. Toptal markets “top 3%” but adds 30-50% margin and hides it from talent. We are AI-specialists only, vet against actual ship-it work, and our 15% platform fee is transparent on both sides. (2) Every expert has a real portfolio reviewed by a Nolola partner, not a self-attested skill checklist. (3) Disputes go through us, not into a void.
15% on transactions, taken from the expert side. Listed transparently on every proposal — you see what the expert sees. For comparison: Toptal is 30-50% (and they don't tell talent how much), Upwork is 5-20% sliding. We're cheaper to talent, so we attract better talent.
Yes. Post a project, get matched, message experts, do 30-min intro calls — all free. You only pay when you fund the first milestone of a hired engagement. No subscription, no premium tier to unlock matching.
Funds sit in escrow per milestone. If a milestone is contested, both sides submit evidence within 7 days; a Nolola partner mediates within 3 business days. Most disputes resolve in revision; for the rest, we refund the unspent portion of the milestone and offboard the expert if at fault.
Yes, and there's no “recruiter fee” if the engagement has run for 90+ days. Under 90 days, we charge a placement fee equivalent to one month of their listed rate. Most full-time conversions go fee-free because both sides want a real trial period first anyway.
Median is a 4 to 8 week sprint at $8-25k total. Short engagements (one specific build) and fractional retainers (8-16 hours/month) both work. Anything over $50k tends to convert to a full Nolola productized engagement or a Fractional AI Officer.
First milestone is a paid trial — fund it, watch them work, decide. If the fit is off, you don't fund milestone 2, the expert keeps what they earned, and we re-match you within 48 hours. We track no-fit rates per expert; chronic mismatches lose their listing.