Model monitoring and MLOps · Large organisation (250 staff or more) · Retail and e-commerce
Model monitoring and MLOps for a large retailer
Monitoring and operating discipline for the machine learning models a large retailer already runs: drift and performance alerts, repeatable deployment and a retraining process. Pricing and recommendation models across several teams.
Illustrative cost
£18,000 to £56,000 ex VAT
- Typical
- £30,000
- Duration
- About 11 weeks
- Effort
- 39 to 72 days
Illustrative estimate, not a quote. Real prices vary.
Worked out from UK freelance contractor day rates in job adverts, with no consultancy or agency margin added. Consultancies and agencies usually charge more.
Source: IT Jobs Watch. Rates read on ; costs computed on .
What is included
- Assessment of current models and deployment
- Monitoring design for data drift, performance and fairness
- Implementation of monitoring, alerts and a deployment pipeline
- Runbooks and handover
Deliverables
- Monitoring dashboards and alerts
- Deployment pipeline
- Runbooks
Assumptions
- Up to eight models in scope
- Models already run on a cloud platform
- Tool licences and cloud costs are paid by the client
Not included
- Building new models
- Platform migration
Project plan
Phases run one after another, about 11 weeks in all.
| Phase | Weeks | Main tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment | 2 | Review models and pipelines; Agree metrics |
| Monitoring design | 2 | Drift and performance metrics; Alert thresholds |
| Implementation | 5 | Monitoring; Alerts; Deployment pipeline |
| Runbooks and handover | 2 | Runbooks; Knowledge transfer |
Who does the work
Person-days per role in each phase, low and high effort.
| Phase | Role | Days (low to high) |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment | MLOps engineer | 6 to 9 days |
| Monitoring design | MLOps engineer | 6 to 9 days |
| Monitoring design | Data scientist | 3 to 6 days |
| Implementation | MLOps engineer | 15 to 30 days |
| Implementation | Cloud engineer | 6 to 12 days |
| Runbooks and handover | MLOps engineer | 3 to 6 days |
How the cost adds up
| Role | Low (days × 25th percentile) | Typical (days × median) | High (days × 90th percentile) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MLOps engineer | 30 × £480 = £14,400 | 42 × £550 = £23,100 | 54 × £804 = £43,416 |
| Data scientist | 3 × £481 = £1,443 | 4.5 × £600 = £2,700 | 6 × £788 = £4,728 |
| Cloud engineer | 6 × £428 = £2,568 | 9 × £513 = £4,617 | 12 × £675 = £8,100 |
| Total, rounded | £18,000 | £30,000 | £56,000 |
How these estimates are worked out
Effort: for each phase we estimate how many days each role works, as a low and a high case. These are our estimates for a typical project of this kind, not measured data.
Rates: each role's daily rate comes from UK contract job adverts over the last six months, as published by IT Jobs Watch. These are freelance contractor rates as advertised, not what was paid, and not what a consultancy or agency charges.
Low end: the low-effort days at each role's 25th-percentile rate. We use the 25th percentile, not the 10th, because the lowest effort at the cheapest rates gives a floor few buyers would ever meet.
Typical: the mid-point between low and high effort, at each role's median rate.
High end: the high-effort days at each role's 90th-percentile rate.
Totals are rounded to the nearest £500 below £10,000 and the nearest £1,000 above, and exclude VAT. Phases run one after another.
Not included:
- Software licences, model and hosting fees
- Travel and expenses
- Your own staff's time
- A consultancy's or agency's margin, overheads and risk
Real prices vary with the supplier, the state of your data and systems, how much of the work your own team does, where the work happens and how much risk the supplier carries. Consultancies and agencies usually charge more than these contractor rates, and a fixed price usually costs more than time and materials because the supplier takes the risk.
Sources
Source: IT Jobs Watch: UK contract job adverts quoting a daily rate, 6 months to 15 November 2026. Each role's page was read on . Published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
| Role | IT Jobs Watch page | Rates quoted | 25th percentile | Median | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MLOps engineerIT Jobs Watch has no "MLOps Engineer" title with daily rates; these are contract adverts citing the MLOps skill, of any title. | MLOps (skill) | 278 | £480 | £550 | £804 |
| Data scientist | Data Scientist | 201 | £481 | £600 | £788 |
| Cloud engineer | Cloud Engineer | 513 | £428 | £513 | £675 |