How To Hire An Offshore Development Team in 2023: A Complete Guide

The vast variety of technologies in IT means there is a lot of room to experiment and create ambitious, industry-disrupting projects. However, staffing your company with experts in every relevant technology is impossible. Thankfully, with the outsourcing and offshore development industries booming, you don’t have to.

Offshore development is the process of delegating your projects to overseas teams. These vendors can get the job done at a fraction of the cost and without any dip in quality. Offshore is one of the most popular forms of outsourcing, and for a good reason.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to hire an offshore development team that matches your goals and delivers a quality product. GetTrusted offers a secure and curated platform where companies can find agencies to handle projects of any scope. However, GetTrusted is built on transparency and keeping the client informed at all times, so we suggest reading this guide to keep yourself in the loop. 

We’ll list the reasons why one may need off-shore devs, what factors should impact your choice, and how to verify the team’s quality. In our decentralized world, where remote work is the norm, off-shore simply seems like the future. Without further ado, let’s talk about how to hire offshore software developers.

What is an Off-shore Development Team?

First things first, let’s define what is an offshore team and how it’s different from just an outsource project. While offshore developers will be doing the work you outsource, what sets them apart is that off-shore always means abroad. Thus, if your company is in the US, an off-shore team can’t just be from another part of the country with more appealing salary rates.

In most cases, when choosing where to hire developers, companies will opt for Europe, as it mixes good rates with reliable quality. But don’t think that price is the only thing that matters because offshore development isn’t just about saving money on projects.

What Makes Offshore Development Popular?

In addition to being an effective way to cut costs, off-shore development really owes its popularity to the flexibility it creates. A company can have a small department dedicated to making software if it can delegate the task to another country. This lets businesses keep their focus on the core processes while still evolving.

It’s also important to remember that managing offshore development teams can be easier than managing in-house employees. Thanks to many teams with project managers included, the company won’t have to assign its own management to the project.

Another important point in favor of off-shore is that signing a contract with developers from certain regions can mean a more optimal tax structure. We’ll cover this part in full in the next section, but for now, let’s sum up the general benefits of offshore development:

• Lower costs
• Fewer full-time employees
• Simplified management
• Lower taxes

Why Hire Off-shore for Your Business?

Let’s expand on what makes off-shore devs a good choice, with several essential facets to cover different needs. After all, not every company starts an offshore collaboration just to have fewer expenses. This is what you should be on the lookout for to make the most out of your off-shore partners.

High-Class Employees

Since you are not limited by region, a wealth of experienced and skilled developers are available for offshore work. The process is usually seen as a chance to work with renowned companies, so many such teams are filled with the cream of the crop developers. With a diligent approach to finding a team, you can really strike gold.

Same Project, Fewer Taxes

This depends on where your off-shore team is. Yet, quite a few countries will offer the chance to get a star vendor without paying the high taxes associated with North American professionals. It’s an added advantage that lets you make the project fit the budget even while choosing a team that’s a step above others.

Shorter Hiring Time

When it comes to hiring in-house employees, there’s a lot of waiting involved. Firstly, you need several rounds of interviews because you’re getting a team member for a long-term commitment. Second, the candidate has to actually agree to your conditions and be open to a lengthy project. Some developers are averse to it, choosing freelance work instead.

Third, which a lot of companies overlook, is the onboarding process. It takes time to acclimate an employee to your ecosystem and get them working smoothly with the rest of the department. Meanwhile, off-shore teams are pre-built, meaning there’s no need to interview many devs separately or get them familiar with one another. It’s like having a remote department working for you.

Keeping Development in One Spot

A core advantage of this model over regular outsourcing is that all development will traditionally be handled by one team. It’s turnkey solution with all aspects of the product created by a tight collective instead of separated employees in different departments and companies. That makes it easier to coordinate changes, keep everyone in the loop and bring the project in line with a unified vision.

Delegated and High-Quality Management

You won’t need to manage the project and team daily, as an off-shore team usually comes with its own managerial squad. This eases the resource strain and frees up your managers to handle the core business.

Of course, that wouldn’t mean much if the management on the team’s side wasn’t up to par. Thankfully, when you find a good set of developers, the managers will fit the high level of quality as well.

More Flexibility

When you assemble an in-house team of developers, you set your tech stack in stone, more or less. That is fine for off-shore devs, who are part of a company whose entire focus is having a broad stack that can face any project. Even if you decide to rearrange some things in the project halfway through, they can shuffle things around to accommodate your needs.

With an in-house department, this is simply not possible, or at least highly impractical, where getting an employee with a whole new skill set can take months. If you want to ensure the project can weather any storm and adapt to new directions, offshore is the answer.

Save Money

Last but not least, the classic reason for outsourcing development is that it’s a great way to run an ambitious yet budget-friendly project. Depending on the region you pick your team from, the savings can be huge as the question of “how much to hire a software developer?” can have a shallow answer in some parts of the world.

Hiring Off-Shore Teams: Where to Start?

We understand that after such an extensive list of advantages, you likely want to know where to find such skilled developers. International teams use various resources to advertise their services and get in touch with potential clients, so finding them shouldn’t be difficult. Thus, we will tell you both where to find them, the easy part, and how to pick out a good team, the hard part. Let’s start with the easy part first.

GetTrusted.io

Speaking of easy, if you want to be connected to a high-quality team without sifting through hundreds of potential candidates, the GetTrusted platform is a prime choice. 

GetTrusted: 

• Provides a quick estimate of your project
• Connects you to the top three vendors that can cover your specific needs
• Guarantees financial protection via an escrow service

The biggest advantage of GetTrusted is our client protection. First off, in line with our privacy policy, all the vendors we work with are vetted professionals who sign NDAs to work with our clients. Second, GetTrusted offers an escrow service, meaning that the client’s money is protected while the work is ongoing and only released once the result is approved.

Working with a selection of prime teams that have a provable history of successful projects, GetTrusted eliminates all the risks and uncertainty associated with outsourcing and offshore work. If you want a smooth and simple process, request an estimate now.

Review Aggregators

One of the better ways to pick out an off-shore team by yourself is to read reviews of their work on websites that collect them. You still need to exercise caution and ensure that what you’re reading was written by a real ex-client. 

In addition to that, remember that hundreds of reviews don’t necessarily mean compatibility. It’s not just about having a high rating, it’s about seeing approval from companies with a similar status as yours. If you’re a fintech startup and all the reviews for a team are from giant corporations, chances are that team is out of your budget or too busy to work on a smaller project.

Freelancer Websites

Heading over to something like Upwork is also a solid choice if you don’t need a huge team and have a small project scope. Sites that list freelancers will usually have some reviews, as well as basic scam protection systems, making them a safe-ish choice. However, these usually have a huge number of candidates with the ratio of great teams to amateurs being too low.

Published Articles

This method is unconventional and wouldn’t work for a project with a tight deadline but, if you’re just considering the idea of hiring offshore devs, try paying attention to popular blogs and articles. Especially things that you may see in your feed on LinkedIn, Substack and more. Most professional developers are passionate about their work and will often write personal blogs where they talk about new ideas and projects.

Whenever you spot a blog where the author talks about topics relevant to you and works for an offshore agency, make a note and save it for later. That way, you will have a backlog of possible candidates when a project requires it.

Listings

Similar to freelance aggregating websites, listings will provide you with a huge trove of potential teams. However, listings are not an ideal choice as they’re often filled with listings that are misleading or just not well composed. Finding a team to your exact specs in such an environment can be quite difficult.

Such an option should only be used if you have a simple project that you don’t want to be handled in-house but want to quickly delegate instead. Still, we’d suggest this as the last place to look.

How to Hire Offshore Software Developers in Six Quick Steps

Now that you know where to look for off shore consultants and developers, here is a quick tutorial on structuring your hiring process. This is intended to minimize friction and make hiring painless and fast.

Step 1: Specify Your Target and Possible Issues, Set Project Scope and Budget

Before seeking help with a project, you need to have a full, solid understanding of what the finished project should look like, how much you’re willing to spend on it, and, most importantly, why you need help.

Setting the budget lets you narrow down potential candidates as you’ll know the available price range. Identifying possible issues will also help make the choice easier as you’ll know what specialty the developers need to have to deal with the most pressing points. This whole step is you laying the groundwork to ensure the project goes smoothly and that your choice of devs will be simplified.

Step 2: Write Out Tech Requirements, List Your Needs

When you know what the project is and that you definitely need help, keep narrowing down the search. Create documentation with all the relevant technical information and your expectations for the project. This includes possible pivots, changes and ideas that you haven’t set in stone yet but would ideally like to see realized.

Step 3: Choose What Matters Most in the Team

If you’re looking for a team on public platforms, it’s essential not to get distracted by the variety. Make a list of what the developers should be able to offer you, in order of priority. Some companies will put price first, while others will be more focused on flexibility to ensure that the project can adapt to future changes. Either way, know what you want and what is a bit more extraneous.

Step 4: Prep for an Interview Call

Before settling on a candidate, you need to know what you’ll ask them in the introductory interview. This is your prime opportunity to test their knowledge, their professionalism and just general attitude. The call needs to be fully controlled by you or a third-party mediator, so going as far as writing down specific questions and phrases is a good idea.

Consider that first interview your primer on how to manage offshore development team processes. You need to take charge and get only the relevant information from the team leads.

Step 5: Narrow Down Your Selection

Now that you have everything prepared, it’s time to make a shortlist of candidates. This should not be bigger than 5 teams, ideally even fewer. It’s the last step you have before extended interviews and negotiations, which take a while, so having as few options as possible is ideal. Don’t be afraid to cut teams from the list based on small details, your intuition should help you find the right vendor.

Step 6: Make a Final Choice, Start Collaboration

After you’ve held the calls and interviewed every candidate, use your priorities list to make the final cuts. Once you arrive at the prime choice, sign the contract and NDA. With all of that finalized, your work can finally start. Hiring ends up being a lengthy process but it’s worth it to have a perfect result.

Or Skip It All By Contacting GetTrusted.io

All of those steps are essential if you’re approaching offshore collaborations alone. But why not skip them all and use the GetTrusted platform to connect with a professional agency of developers?

GetTrusted is focused on three things:

• Speed
• Transparency
• Quality

You get an estimate on your project within 48 hours, followed by a top three vendors tailored to your goals. We help mediate the interview calls and establish a rapport between you and the developers, to guarantee that work goes smoothly. 

The teams we offer are vetted professionals with provable experience, and we don’t collaborate with freelancers or inexperienced newcomers. So if you want an efficient hiring process and a great experience working with offshore teams, get in touch now.

Who Usually Needs Off-Shore Teams?

While having an off shore team handle development is nice in general, there are two particular types of businesses that benefit the most from their help. These are:

1. Startups
2. Small- and medium-sized businesses

Startups

These ambitious new companies usually don’t have the biggest number of employees, leaving some gaps in their tech stack. Such gaps can be handily filled by off-shore devs, letting the core team handle your main product while they create a mobile app, polish your other offerings or simply do the work that your in-house teams cannot.

Small- and Medium-Sized Companies

When you’re a mid-range business that isn’t trying to rival big corporations, it’s important to budget well and keep a modest team. That means the combination of affordable prices and external work that offshore offers are a perfect match. Instead of expanding needlessly, you just delegate the technical tasks to the professionals.

What Do You Need to Know Before Hiring an Offshore Development Team?

If you don’t have experience working with offshore teams, here’s a handy list of what you need to be on the lookout for when you’re choosing a partner.

Optimal Hiring Regions

These fluctuate as time goes by, but most companies tend to pick their teams from a certain part of the world. This is usually based on local rates, cultural compatibility, and the overall reputation of the region’s developers. For example, Eastern Europe is often chosen for its high-skill engineers that agree to reasonable salaries.

Price Range

Speaking of salaries, knowing the standard price range for a project of your scope is important. These ranges depend on the region, the complexity of the task, the size of the team and a lot of other factors. Don’t just rely on your industry contacts. Try to look up some solid market-based data.

Skillset

Get acquainted with the teams’ tech stacks and overall skills in management and collaboration. Some teams may have an impressive knowledge of the technology but simply won’t work well on outsourcing projects. Skills aren’t just about being able to code, and you want a well-rounded team.

Managing Structure

Find out how the team you’re eyeing approaches management. Do they have effective leaders with experience in curbing issues and bringing the project to the end of its development cycle successfully? A good team with a newbie manager is nowhere near as good as one might assume, as efficient leadership is the key to success.

Who Does an Off-Shore Team Include?

Most of the time, such a team will consist of a project manager, several developers, both frontend and backend, and a designer, if one is required. Obviously, it is up to you to choose which team members you need. There is no need to settle for teams with too many members, as that will just inflate the project cost.

How to Check Offshore Development Team Quality

Once you’re actively looking for a team, time is of the essence. That leaves some companies rushing to make their final choice and overlooking fairly obvious flaws in the team they picked. In order to prevent this, here’s a guide on how to verify that you’re choosing the right option and will get a team that’s professional and delivers exactly what it promises.

Portfolio

First things first, check the team’s website to get acquainted with their previous projects. Verify that they’ve tackled things of similar scope or direction to your task and that the tech stack matches your needs.

It’s also important to verify the portfolio, as certain teams may embellish their involvement with major corporations or boast about a project that didn’t actually satisfy the client’s needs. That leads us to the next point.

Reviews

Search to see if the company you’re looking at has any reviews. There should be plenty available if you’re looking via a platform like Upwork, which is one of the biggest upsides of such an approach. Reviews might also be available on the company’s website but, just as with a portfolio, you should verify them.

Reviews can also teach you how to work with offshore teams that you’re considering for a partnership. If most of the customers praise the result but say that communication wasn’t great on the developers’ end, that’s something you can take control of. Reviews will reveal a vendor’s flaws but can also point you to important advantages, helping you reach a better result.

Project Complexity

In addition to checking for projects that match yours in direction and scope, check whether this team ever tackled a truly serious, ambitious venture. If the vendor only ever works on small, safe projects, that’s fine, but it says something about their direction. Some companies prefer not to work with agencies that tackle small-scale and easy tasks, as their developers are unlikely to challenge themselves and solve problems in creative and innovative ways.

Team Composition

Check who the team members are and what each of them brings to the table. This is both to see if there are any gaps in the vendor’s stack and whether they’re trying to saddle you with extra developers who might not be needed for the project.

Also, try to verify how long each engineer has been part of the team. If it’s mostly newcomers, that’s a bad sign for the internal situation in the company. Constant departures of employees don’t reflect well on the vendor’s culture.

Workflow

This is something you can only really do once you’ve established contact but it’s still an important step. Ask the team’s project manager to describe their regular development cycle and how they approach road bumps in projects. It goes without saying that a vendor boasting that they never encounter problems in their work is not someone you should put your trust in.

How to Manage Offshore Developers

There is no intrinsic trick to managing offshore development teams that makes them all that different from in-house employees. Firm leadership, consistency and well-organized work processes will deliver a good result. Still, a few tips could prove useful so let’s do a quick primer on managing offshore development teams.

Centralize Communication

Ensure that all messaging and any other forms of communication are done through the same people and channels. This can be Slack, email or any other means that you or the team prefer. The important thing is consistency and keeping records so that nothing is lost and nobody is left out of the loop.

KPIs are Key

Measuring your off-shore developers’ progress and setting appropriate deadlines is crucial to meeting the goals you’ve set. Don’t let anyone dip below expectations and track the data to predict potential future problems.

Establish Structure

There must be not just a firm chain of command but a firm schedule for the project’s lifecycle. This is the framework of a successful collaboration: structured check-ins, regular reports and a work routine that’s adhered to by both you and the team. 

Average Cost of Off-Shore Teams by Region

We’ve covered all the advantages of working with off-shore engineers, so at this point you should be asking “How much to hire a software developer offshore?”. The answer depends entirely on how experienced the team is and where they are based. We’ll single out three big regions and provide the answer.

Eastern Europe

Based on our data, the average ranges for 2023 are as follows:

• Project Manager – $25-35/hr
• Frontend Developer – $25-70/hr
• Backend Developer – $30-100/hr

As you can see, the rates for developers can be quite different, as it depends on both the country where they’re located, with Poland being more expensive than Ukraine, and their expertise level.

Asia

• Project Manager – up to $30/hr
• Frontend Developer – up to $45/hr
• Backend Developer – up to $55/hr

You might be feeling excited at the sight of these low prices but remember that this is mostly skewed by India, where developers are plentiful. They knock down prices for the rest of the region but it’s notoriously tough to find the perfect team there. It’s a budget-friendly choice but not the most reliable one.

South America

• Project Manager – $30-40/hr
• Frontend Developer – $30-60/hr
• Backend Developer – $40-75/hr

Being a relatively fresh market for outsourcing, South America offers rather competitive prices while still delivering on quality for the most part. It’s a huge region with many teams vying for clients so it may be best to have a consultant help you out when dealing with teams from that part of the world.

Successful Offshore Development with GetTrusted

As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to working with off-shore teams. You need to know where to find a good one, how to narrow down your choices, how to manage an offshore team, and what you can do to ensure the project’s success.

In order to make the process of collaboration easier, turn to GetTrusted — a platform working only with verified vendors that guarantee quality. Our team can provide you with a project estimate within 48 hours, handpick the three best agencies for your task and help set up the initial interview between you. Once you’re settled on the offshore team, GetTrusted will keep the payment in escrow and only release it to the devs once you’re happy with the project’s result.
With all this, GetTrusted eliminates risks and uncertainty, creating a more secure and transparent exerience. If you want to work with offshore developers, do it through GetTrusted, starting now.