Claire Maguire
Co-founder and lead engineer
Twelve years of experience in applied machine learning. Previously at Kainos and Deloitte. Specialises in time-series forecasting and natural language processing.
How we started
Essential AI Focus was founded in 2021 by two machine-learning engineers who had spent the previous decade working inside large consultancies. The pattern they saw again and again was the same: a company would pay six figures for an AI strategy document, receive a polished slide deck, and then struggle to turn any of it into working software because the people who wrote the slides had moved on to the next client.
We set up shop to do the opposite. No slide decks. No strategy documents that sit in a drawer. We scope a problem, build a model, deploy it, and make sure it keeps working. The team has stayed deliberately small so that the person you talk to on the first call is the same person who writes the training code.
Our office is at United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, West Romagueraington, WK04 7RJ, 27 Dale Street. Most of our client work happens remotely, but we meet in person for kick-off workshops and quarterly reviews when clients prefer it.
What we believe
These are not aspirational slogans. They are rules we follow on every project, and we are happy to be held to them.
Honesty about feasibility
If your data is not good enough for a useful model, we will say so during the discovery sprint, before you have spent real money. About one in five discovery sprints ends with a "do not proceed" recommendation. We would rather lose the project than build something that disappoints.
Fixed-price transparency
Every project gets a fixed quote after discovery. We do not bill by the hour, and we do not add change-request fees unless the scope genuinely changes. If we underestimate the work, we absorb the cost.
Measurable targets
Before the build phase starts, we agree on a specific accuracy metric and a threshold. "The model should be good" is not a target. "F1 score above 0.88 on the held-out validation set" is. We track this number weekly after deployment and share it with you monthly.
Full handover
You own the model, the code, and the data pipeline. We hand over everything in a documented Git repository. If you want to bring maintenance in-house after six months, you have everything you need to do so.
The team
Six people, each with a specific role. No account managers, no project coordinators. Every team member writes code or analyses data.
Niall Brennan
Co-founder and data architect
Background in database engineering and cloud infrastructure. Built data platforms for three FTSE 250 companies before co-founding Essential AI Focus. Handles all data-pipeline and deployment work.
Saoirse Kelly
Machine-learning engineer
PhD in computer vision from Queen's University Belfast. Joined the team in 2022. Leads all image-classification and object-detection projects.
Arjun Patel
Data scientist
Statistician by training, moved into applied ML four years ago. Runs the discovery sprints and writes the feasibility reports that clients receive before committing to a project.
Our track record
Numbers from January 2021 to December 2025.
47
Projects delivered
14
Active retainer clients
92%
Models still in production
4.1
Avg. weeks to first prototype
Talk to us
We respond within one working day. Initial consultations are free and carry no obligation.
United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, West Romagueraington, WK04 7RJ, 27 Dale Street