What profile should we hire to build enterprise-grade internal tools on Airtable?

It’s not a OR question. You need both: A Solution Architect/Consultant to design the system and an Engineer/Builder to implement the design. Here is how a builder operates vs a Consultant:

A builder takes a specification and builds it. If you know exactly what you need, a developer will build it precisely. The limitation is that a developer is not a consultant. They are not trained to diagnose problems, evaluate different approaches, or determine whether what you have asked for is actually the right solution to your underlying problem. You can end up with a well-built solution to the wrong problem.

A consultant covers the ground between diagnosis and delivery. They understand your business first. They figure out what actually needs to be fixed. They evaluate multiple approaches and recommend what makes sense for your stage, your budget, and your ROI timeline. 

Source: This article on what is an ai automation consultant.

Hey ​@alexandrepropseller,

This is tricky as usually those roles “overlap” so it seems to be mostly a matter of title name as framed.
What I would actually take into consideration:

• Experience building robust and scalable Airtable bases (maybe even ask for referrals/references from their existing or past clients).
• Experience building automations and integrations (e.g. n8n).
• Someone you can trust (do not trust anyone who tells you it can be achieved with a couple of hours of work -this is probably not robust nor scalable architecture)

The latter being as important as the first two items probably. I’d probably try to avoid huge agencies, and really cheap upwork profiles.

(Yes, my opinion might be completely biased as I offer services myself lol). Feel free to grab a slot if you’d like to bounce some ideas.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel

What’s the update on this ?