How To Hire Great Offshore Developers In 2025

Hiring offshore developers is a great strategy that enables businesses to easily scale up their in-house tech capabilities. Tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are well-known to have their dedicated offshore software development teams situated across the ASEAN region.

Moreover, the strategy is not exclusively for those on the upper echelon; startups can also reap significant benefits for their software development cycle with offshore developers.

In this article, we will show you practical pointers on how to find and hire great offshore tech talent.

Why Businesses Are Hiring Offshore Developers

As offshore software development is on the rise, businesses are sought for top candidates in order to catch up on the current trends. While hiring offshore developers and building remote tech teams overseas offers numerous advantages, they typically boil down to three key factors:

Cost Effectiveness 

Offshore developers are highly sought-after because they often cost much less than hiring local developers. Let's say there's a tech startup in Singapore that is planning to expand its in-house tech team. If they hire a software developer with five years of experience from Vietnam, it will only cost them 40% to 60% less compared to hiring from Singapore or the US. 

In other words, businesses can either double their hiring or allocate a more substantial budget to other critical operations. This is why companies with restricted tech recruitment budgets often choose offshore developers instead.

Tech Talent Pool

Great developers are hard to find and secure, particularly for businesses located in regions like Singapore, where top-tier tech talent is scarce and expensive. With industry giants already snapping up the best talent, SMEs and startups find themselves in fierce competition for the remaining pool of developers.

Moreover, companies might face situations in which developers possessing the necessary skill sets are unavailable locally, prompting them to adjust their recruitment strategy and seek out the ideal candidate overseas.

Quality & Expertise 

Businesses can cast a wider net into the talent pool overseas, allowing them to secure top-tier developers that would otherwise be impossible to find within the local market. As a result, companies no longer have to settle for mediocre talent; instead, they can now acquire exceptionally skilled tech professionals to empower their technological capabilities to the next level.

Hiring Offshore Developers - Where To Begin

Before initiating the hiring process, it is imperative for businesses to meticulously assess the objectives, scope, and extent of resources that can be allocated.

Define Your Tech Talent Need

Understanding your offshore tech talent needs is crucial, as it shapes your entire recruiting strategy. Start by identifying the type of offshore developers you need, the required skills, and, importantly, the preferred working style.

Businesses will also need to determine the nature of their tech project—do you need short-term, project-focused developers, or a long-term commitment of over a year? If it's the former, there is a high chance that freelancers or outsourcing software development would be the better option.

Define Your Hiring Processes & Requirements

Besides the tech talent requirements, it's essential to thoroughly assess your hiring process. Do consider factors like legal and compliance issues, screening and interviewing, and the onboarding process.

Create a detailed blueprint outlining what the company can and cannot implement for the hiring process to further optimize the chance of success. This strategic planning will not only enhance the efficiency of the recruitment procedure but also contribute to a more successful integration of offshore developers into your team.

Budget For Hiring

When considering the recruitment budget, it's crucial to recognize that businesses will have to spend more than just pay the salaries of offshore developers. Various additional expenses will come into play, which may include office space, equipment, compensations, onboarding, and others. 

While the overall cost is often still lower than hiring onshore developers, it can eat up a substantial amount of your recruitment budget if not carefully monitored.

The Location Of Offshore Developers

Picking the ideal location is another important factor that will affect the success of your offshore recruitment plan. In today's landscape, businesses are presented with numerous compelling options. However, this abundance of choices also has its challenges due to the multitude of factors influencing whether a location is deemed ideal.

Having said that, we have observed the growing prominence of ASEAN countries as leading destinations for offshore software development over the last several years. Among them, Vietnam emerged as the preferred choice for many, thanks to its cost-effectiveness, wide tech talent pool, and the presence of exceptional-quality developers.

Read on: Explore The Latest Vietnamese Developer Salary Report For 2025

How To Find & Hire Great Offshore Developers 

On average, it takes a company around 28 days to successfully fill tech roles, but for offshore hiring, the duration may double due to heightened complexities. To ensure companies can find and hire great developers overseas in a more efficient manner, there are several recruitment strategies that they should consider:

#1 - Use Reputable Recruitment Platforms

Using reputable recruitment platforms is a great way to reach potential offshore developers. However, depending on the country you want to tap into for tech talent, there will be a different set of platforms considered the go-to for hiring developers. For those interested in Vietnam, we highly recommend starting with the LinkedIn Job portal, Vietnamwork, ITviec, or Top CV. 

It's also worth noting that developers are famously known for their passive approach when it comes to seeking job opportunities. Thus, depending on the hiring season, the number of developers actively searching for jobs on these platforms may fluctuate significantly.

#2 - Tap On The Referral Network

Referrals stand out as a highly effective and influential approach for locating and securing offshore developers. By leveraging the network of friends, colleagues, and professional associations, businesses can seamlessly connect with exceptionally skilled, reliable, and trustworthy tech talent. It essentially mirrors a pre-screening process, guaranteeing recommendations only for individuals with a strong track record. 

Additionally, a notable advantage of referrals lies in the increased likelihood that developers will readily accept job offers when backed by a trusted recommendation. Referrals not only expedite the hiring process but also contribute to a smoother onboarding experience. If you're in the process of hiring offshore developers, we strongly recommend tapping into your existing network for referrals. The ideal candidate may emerge sooner than anticipated. 

For those lacking direct referrals to a specific country for software development outsourcing, considering the services of a third-party tech talent referral network provider remains a viable and strategic option.

#3 - Offer Competitive Compensation

Let’s address the elephant in the room. While salary will always remain a top priority for developers when considering job opportunities, we are noticing an increasing focus on competitive compensation and benefits packages for better future career development and work-life balance. 

Depending on the country you are interested in tapping into for the tech talent pool, the expectations for what should be an ideal and competitive benefits and compensation package will be different.

Moreover, a report shows that more than half of surveyed developers are expected to have a flexible schedule, giving them the option to adjust the best-fitted plan to finish the project while dedicating more time to personal development. 

As a result, companies can take advantage of these insights and make adjustments to their job offers to further increase their chances of attracting and securing developers.

#4 - Faster Screening Process

When screening candidates, companies usually check references, verify qualifications, and assess skills through interviews and tests. The challenge is how long it takes to go through all the resumes and find the best candidates. In the competitive world of hiring great developers, especially offshore, a slow screening process puts companies at a disadvantage, as it will cost you the best talent.

To reduce time and complexity, businesses can use tools to automate part of the reference-checking process. Another option is to get help from external agencies or specialists for the initial stages of screening.

#5 - Conduct Rigorous Interview

The interview process often consists of three stages: a phone call for screening, technical tests, and online 1v1 interviews. For senior roles at CTO, the interview can last up to five or even six rounds. 

Similar to the screening process, you want to streamline the interview stages for maximum efficiency in the shortest time possible to reduce not only the operational cost but also the mental strain for both the companies and developers. Therefore, organizations must have a clear interview pipeline to optimize every step. 

There will also be a need to conduct interviews and assessments online, so you will need to take into account the appropriate tools and platforms. For our client interviews with developers in Vietnam, Google Meet is our preferred choice due to its stable connection and user-friendly interface, unlike our previous choice, Microsoft Teams, which frequently caused disconnections mid-session. 

#6 - Utilize Recruitment Agency

While hiring developers is already a challenging task, executing it seamlessly overseas is even more formidable, demanding companies to invest both time and resources strategically. This will require twice the effort if you are intended to build an offshore tech team. 

For businesses venturing into this strategy for the first time or those still navigating the nuances of offshore operations, the key to ensuring project success may lie in partnering with a trusted recruitment agency. They should be able to handle everything from the initial stages of finding and hiring to the crucial processes of onboarding and managing offshore developers.

More importantly, these tech hires become your employees, ensuring their commitment to the company even if you choose to transition to other service providers or opt for in-house hiring.

Conclusion

As businesses embrace digital transformation and technology-driven solutions, the demand for skilled offshore developers will continue to skyrocket. By implementing the practical strategies mentioned above, organizations can optimize their hiring processes, improving their chances of securing dedicated tech talent, as exemplified by Alfagomma, one of our clients. 

Securing offshore developers is just the beginning; the true potential of the offshoring strategy lies in the ability to scale up these individual hires into a robust tech team that can keep businesses at the forefront of innovation.