7 reasons for outsourcing software development to Argentina in 2024

Known for years for a passion for football and many renowned football players such as Lionel Messi, Argentina today is much more than that. Having grown leaps and bounds, Buenos Aires is now a highly modern, cosmopolitan city with a continuously developing software sector.

It might come as a surprise, but if any company in the US is considering software development outsourcing to Argentina, they can expect top-notch services, smooth communication, and excellent quality of developers. Let’s learn more about one of the top countries for offshore development outsourcing in Latin America — Argentina.

What to know about Argentina

• Capital: Buenos Aires
• Official Languages: Spanish
• Currency: Argentine peso
• Population: 44,938,712
• Timezone: UTC−3
• Number of developers: 132,120~
• Average developer’s salary: USD 39,151 per year
• Business Climate: B*
• Risk Assessment: C**
• Political Stability (scale -2.5 to 2.5): -0.1
• Ease of doing business: 59/100

* Business climate risk ratings: A1 (very low), A2, A3, A4, B, C, D, and E (extreme).

** Country risk assessment: an estimate of the credit risk on business in the country. Ratings: A1 (very low risk), A2, A3, A4, B, C, D, and E (extreme).

Advantages of Argentina as an offshore software development country

Emphasis on higher education and tech skills in Argentina

Argentina believes in creating a strong foundation for the growth and skill development of its future professionals, including software developers, and this foundation is visible in the importance of Argentina gives to schooling. As of 2021, Argentina had ranked 34th in a global list of top countries for education, proving that the country has been investing significantly in the education sector.

Seven Argentinian universities are listed among the Best Global Universities.

The Universidad de Buenos Aires is the highest-ranked university in Argentina, with over thirteen departments offering a wide variety of courses. It also ranked first in Argentina for Computer Science education. 

The Universidad Austral has departments and subsections based in the Parque Austral which is an R&D tech park, thus giving students more opportunities to participate in the software development scene of Argentina.

Meanwhile, ITBA is another great university with computer science and IT as well as development courses, ranked 60th all over Latin America. Thus, with such a large amount of talent streaming out of universities every year, and Argentina’s constant endeavors to invest and support the higher education pursuits of students, companies that are thinking of outsourcing developers from Argentina will get only the best and most skilled developers from here for their projects.

In Coursera’s Global Skills Index Report 2020, Argentina ranked 22nd in the global data science skills rating that included such technologies as Python, SQL, R, TensorFlow, Cloud APIs, NLP, and others. But among Latin American countries, it was the first.

Source: Coursera

Same, Argentina is the top LatAm country in a category of tech skills which includes such technologies as C, AI, JavaScript, Web Development, UX Design, Cybersecurity, Convolutional Neural networks, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, and Application Programming Interface.

Source: Coursera  

And in 2020, Argentina got a remarkable first place in global ranking in technology.

Source: Coursera

Support for Government of Argentina

In 2016-2020 took place a massive nationwide governmental campaign of 111 mil. Its aim was to prepare more than 100K software engineers. Moreover, it was supposed to raise the number of women in tech. In 2022, about 40% of females from countries such as Argentina and Uruguay arenvolved in tech professions.

An initiative of the Ministry of Economic Development and Production Programa Aceleradoras Buenos Aires Emprende helps to co-finance highly efficient enterprises, support the start-up process in creative economies, and to strengthen the newly emerging companies. It also involved five accelerators for co-finance high-performing local businesses: Cygnus Capital, EastPoint Ventures, Emprender Salud, Nxtp Labs, and Wayra.

But even without special programs, there is quite a good climate for startups in Argentina. For instance, an Entrepreneurs’ Law allows one to register a new business online in just one day. And according to it, tech startups should get a 75% tax deduction. Those companies that are interested in getting zero-interest loans as their Seed round funding can use a program by the Fiduciary Fund for the Development of Entrepreneurial Capital. Another available option to get funding according to this law is using equity or even selling convertible notes, and all this is possible through online crowdfunding.

But the most important “gift” from the government to businesses in Argentina is political stability. Thanks to this, Argentina became the top choice for international companies looking for offshore outsourcing partners.

Innovation and Argentinian tech parks

Strongly following a culture of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, Argentina’s software development sector has been growing steadily over the years as programming and software development have become in-demand skills everyone wants. Over the decades, Argentina has seen some major tech companies growing, such as OLX, Globant, and MercadoLibre, a thriving e-commerce platform with its own payment service app, MercadoPago. Experts had estimated that by the end of this year alone, Argentina’s software development sector would bring in about $7.33 billion, and the country has been investing steadily in this industry. 

Moreover, there are upcoming and developing tech parks such as Catalinas Norte, Buenos Aires, with 19 buildings for commercial use and lots of tech companies. The Technology Park of the Litoral Centro SAPEM, Santa Fe is another shining example of Argentina’s blooming IT scene, with its massive R&D focus, technological transfers, and the Technology-based Business Incubator, which engages business with technological innovation, business ideas, and knowledge exchanges.

Besides this, there are different startup communities and programs that support tech companies. For instance, one of the noticeable ones is SUBA from Buenos Aires.

All this is full proof evidence that offshore software development in Argentina is indeed a good choice.

Quick communication with development teams from Argentina

Real-time communication and collaboration is easily possible if you hire software developers from Argentina for your US-based business. Since Argentina is only one hour ahead of the US in terms of time zones, it’s considered a nearshore country. The developer team in Argentina will likely be working at the same time the US company is working, or with most hours overlap, at least.

In that sense, Argentina becomes a preferred destination to outsource software developers from, in comparison to India and other Asian countries, the time zones of which may differ from the US by about 12 hours. Because of the one-hour time difference between Argentina and the US, the response time becomes shorter, any queries or errors can be resolved swiftly and projects can be completed faster. Thus, the time zone is a definite advantage that is attractive for US-based companies to hire remote development teams from Argentina.

A half-day overlap between Argentinian and Western European countries makes it possible to easily cooperate between these regions too.

More about time zone management tools for remote teams.

High talent retention in software outsourcing companies of Argentina

Although in the past, Argentina has gone through severe inflation and has seen troubled times economically, the software industry continues to grow, and jobs are plentiful due to an increase in demand from foreign companies seeking development teams. By all reports, it is a flourishing industry, and it is seen that the rates of attrition in the sector are pretty low as developers are happy to stay in one job for a long period of time.

For you, if you are seeking to hire overseas programmers from Argentina, this is very good news because the high rate of retention means you will likely get to work with the same development team throughout the duration of your project with them.

That also means there are much lesser chances of miscommunication and loss of knowledge or technical info because the same developers are handling the project from start to end. If you choose to hire software developers from Argentina, your projects will get completed within the stipulated time frame and you will have the comfort of working with one team throughout, making it a hassle-free experience.

Professional service and English-speaking developers

Another concern many companies, especially US-based ones, have regarding software development outsourcing to Argentina is that the developers may not be fluent in English, which would cause communication problems. However, this is not something to particularly worry about, as in 2022, Argentina scored 562 on the English Proficiency Index, the highest score among all countries in Latin America.

Therefore, the software developers you hire from Argentina will likely have upper-intermediate English, and communication won’t be a problem.

Sometimes in outsourcing companies where not every developer speaks English well, there is a practice to build communication with a project manager. This may be a signal for you when you’re warned that the communication will have such flow. If talking to developers is important for you, make sure to have them on the call before signing up with the agency.

When you choose to hire software developers from Argentina, you can rest assured that the developer team you hire will do their very best and will commit to completing your project in the most seamless and skilled manner possible. Since Argentinians share many of the same facets of work culture as that followed in the US, such as an emphasis on innovation and striving to create something different, you will find that the quality of work you receive from the developers is high and that they will often share your mindset. 

Moreover, here’s something cool to further assure you. YouTeam will offer you full freedom to pick the development team you wish to hire for your project when you finally decide to take up offshore software development in Argentina. This is an important choice because you can then have the chance to decide if the developers you interact with are capable and will gel well with you and your team as well. However, eventually going ahead with the project, you will find that Argentina has some of the best and most skilled software developers out there.

Reasonable costs of software development services in Argentina

Considering that the Argentinian economy is not booming and inflation occurs every few years, combined with the fact that a software developer in Argentina earns a lot less than a software developer in the US or Western Europe does. The average software developer’s monthly salary is a bit more than 3000 USD. But for senior software developers, companies should be ready to pay at least twice more.

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You might notice that the rate is higher than in other offshore software destinations. The reason is that you pay for the convenience of communication. Many Silicon Valley companies work with Argentina, which stimulates the engineers’ rate growth.

Now, there is a fair concern when the work is cheaper than at home is that the quality may not be very high.  But the actual reason is simply the lower living costs compared to the US. Plus, Argentina’s software development market has still not become too competitive, so the rates for hiring these teams are still reasonable.

What will be the cost of hiring software developers from Argentina?

The costs associated with involving a software developer depend on many factors:

• Geography: high living costs and high demand in some regions make it almost impossible to hire good developers for a reasonable price.
• Experience: senior developers with a proactive work attitude will always get higher salaries than the average ones. And that’s mostly the type of professionals companies are looking for nowadays.
• Language proficiency: financial compensation of developers with good English can increase up to two times. 
• Tech stack: the more unique the tech stack a company requires, the harder to find developers that will fit perfectly. And that’s why those who fit, usually require higher financial compensation.
• Type for work relationships: an average salary of hiring in-house developers will always be lower than the average outsourcing price because the last one already includes taxes, benefits, vacations, office costs, etc. Remember about all these extra costs if you decide to hire in-house.

Let’s compare salaries in some of the categories.

Software developer salaries based on Geography

As we already mentioned, living costs have a high impact on the salary that developers get. As an illustration of this, we compared the salaries that receive engineers in Argentina and their US colleagues.

For convenience, we use the salaries of senior developers. Startups are types of businesses that need to speed up their development process from one side and need the best developers who can work independently with minimal project management input from the other. Therefore, more often they prefer to work only with high-quality engineers. That the senior engineer’s salary will represent a more realistic development budget.

Source: Glassdoor, YouTeam

Software developer salaries based on Seniority

We used data from the Glassdoor Salary report to analyze how years of experience influence the size of compensation engineers get for working on a software project. In the case of some programming languages, it’s possible to get almost 7 times more from a starting point.

Source: Glassdoor

Software developer salaries based on Tech stack

As might be expected, knowledge of new technologies is paid better than mainstream technologies widely known by numerous developers. This tendency can be easily noticed in the tables above.

Similarly, the front-end stack, where the barrier to entry to the profession is relatively low, and the supply of developers is high, is less well paid.

Source: Glassdoor

Software developer salaries based on Employment type

There many ways to organize employer-employee relationships. For convenience, we divide them into three main groups: in-house, staff augmentation, and freelance.

In the first case, with in-house hiring, the relationship and obligations are the strongest, the same as the commitment. This type is perfect when you need a full-time employee that will become a part of your core team. Usually, only big and mature companies choose to set up a research and development center in foreign countries.

With staff augmentation, you will get pretty the same — a full-time engineer that will dedicate all the time to your project. the difference is only that officially this developer is an employee of the outsourcing company which becomes your dev contractor. In terms of the working process, nothing changes, you’re still working and managing this developer directly. But because of how the process is organized, you can easier terminate your work with this developer with no hard feelings as soon as your initial scope of work is done. Usually, companies choose to use staff augmentation when they want to deal with a secondary backlog. So if you feel that it’s your case, read more about how YouTeam can help you.

Finally, freelancing is the best hiring model when you have short and really specific tasks.

So let’s look closer at how the amount of money and efforts that you need to invest in each of these employment models.

Source: Glassdoor, YouTeam, Upwork

What to watch out for when outsourcing software development to Argentina

Whenever you outsource from other countries, there are always a few things to keep in mind. In case you are considering software development outsourcing from Argentina, while it is indeed a trustworthy option for any US-based company or client, there are still some project and development-related points you should test out before going ahead with the hiring.

A lot of the technical work in the project will be done for you by the development team, so be sure to speak with them clearly beforehand about the kind of timelines you will expect them to follow, and specific dates for tasks, milestones, etc. Doing this before going ahead with the team for the project will ensure there is no confusion on either end and that you will get the best out of your experience with offshore software development in Argentina.

Since you will be investing your time, money, and efforts in hiring these developers, before committing to the outsourcing, ensure that you have done a complete background verification of the developers and that you have sufficiently tested their skills and capabilities. Look for reviews on the developer’s work and ask for supporting documents/work wherever required.

Particularly if the project you are outsourcing developers for is an integration-based project, do make sure that on your side there is a technical person to help you out in relaying the requirements and specifics of the technical work to the developers. This will prevent huge errors from taking place and will also ensure that the coding done by the developer is reviewed carefully by the technical expert.

After you make it through the above checklist and are ready to hire software developers from Argentina, these are some points you may want to keep in mind before and during the project.

Always keep the communication open and regular. Not only will this create trust and an atmosphere of confidence between the developer team and yours, but it will also help you supervise the amount of work completed in the project, what needs to be addressed or fixed, and will make it easy for you to quickly seek relevant help that your team may need from the developers.

Just as important as regular communication is for offshore software development in Argentina to be a success, it is equally vital that key deadlines and project delivery dates are fixed and adhered to as closely as possible. Naturally, on some occasions, there may be an unforeseen delay, but that must be communicated clearly by whichever party is accountable for the same. 

Earlier we mentioned that it is a good idea to have a technical person beside you to review the developer’s work, as a prerequisite. The importance of having such a member on your team through the project cannot be stressed enough. The fact is that if you don’t have a technical expert to oversee the development team’s work and guide them through specific processes, it would leave a lot of room for mistakes and you would lose precious time, money, and resources.

Further, always keep in mind that irrespective of the country you outsource to, you must use these pointers as a guide, because errors in communications and remote work relationships can occur with anyone anywhere. And just as there are many advantages of outsourcing, there are some disadvantages as well.

Disadvantages of offshore software development in Argentina

Every country you can consider outsourcing comes with its own sets of pros and cons. For instance, India and China, among other countries, were once considered among the top options to seek outsourced work from; they are still fairly viable options in a way, but due to the vast difference of 10-12 hours in time zone between these countries and the US and UK, they have lost some of the old attraction. There are a good many advantages to hiring remote development teams from Argentina, such as easy communication, close time zones, highly skilled developers who are punctual and can speak English, low cost, etc, but there are some distinct disadvantages as well.

For one, the economy of Argentina is still struggling to rise after too much inflation. While the software industry is doing fairly well, there is sometimes the risk that the more struggling tech companies might be unable to sustain at some point and cease operations. Another possible concern is the unreliability of government laws regarding the entry of foreign businesses and contractors into the Argentinian market. While the government has lately reduced the stipulated time needed to set up a business or project in Argentina, there is no telling when the laws might become restrictive again, making it cumbersome for US firms to seek entry when they want to hire software developers from Argentina. 

Argentinians have often spoken up about the excessive bureaucracy, which often interferes with businesses and their daily operations. There are still several labor unions that often clash with foreign entities and other parties with their own agenda, which can make it tough to outsource from Argentina. However, despite all these lingering issues, it has been noted that the government of Argentina has been hard at work to bring about a change and encourage growth in business and technology, which may well be positive for US companies that want outsourced developers for their projects from this country. 

The last obstacle can be easily overcome with the help of YouTeam. On our platform, you can hire a developer or even a whole team of Argentinean engineers that are employed by the top outsourcing companies in their country. That will help to avoid all possible bureaucracy and restrictions on this matter.

Where to find and hire Argentinian developers?

If you decide to go for individual hiring, we collected a list of top Argentinian job boards:

• Zonajobs – 2,411 job offers in tech. This nationwide job board was founded in 2008. One of the coolest features of this platform is that recruiters can advertise their jobs without contacting anyone. Supports only Spanish.
• Discover Computrabajo – 17,963 job offers. Argentina has a local domain of leading job boards in Latin America. To create an ad, your account should be validated. The website supports only Spanish.
• Bumeran.com.ar – 20,424 job offers. It’s a job portal for Latin American countries with a domain dedicated to Argentina. To advertise on this job board, you need to have a fiscal number, but apart from this, you need to contact nobody. It’s even possible to post for free. This job board has mobile apps, which makes it convenient to use. But still, the same as other websites on our list, it is available only in Spanish.
• Buscojobs – 61 347 jobs in Argentina, more than 24 000 of them are related to tech. To place the information, you need to create an account and wait for it to be validated. For Argentina, this website is available in Spanish only, but the language changes when you’re changing a target country.
• Un Mejor Empleo – 670 job offers for Argentina. This website represents Spanish-speaking countries. As a recruiter, you have to provide a list of info to create your account (phone, address, company name, and description). But after registration, you can make posts for free. The job board is available only in Spanish.

Key Takeaways

In this day and age, as markets and industries grow increasingly competitive, there are also many options to choose from if a company wants to try outsourcing. However, outsourcing software development to Argentina emerges as one of the top choices because of several factors that make it compatible with US-based companies and their requirements:

Focus on education and skill: Argentina has been putting in a lot of effort to develop the education system, provide further opportunities for students to access higher studies, and offers some great software engineering and development courses in its top universities.

Innovation and advanced tech parks: Argentina has a growing number of IT and technology parks, employing several thousands of developers and tech personnel every year, so finding and hiring skilled developers from the country is quite easy.

Quick communication: Most of the communication that would happen between a US-based company and the developer team in Argentina would be current and in real-time, due to the time difference of only one hour. Projects can be completed on time or before time, and there is no delay in communicating important matters.

Same development team due to high retention: The chances of the developers moving on to another team or job while on the project with another company are very low, which means you get a tension-free experience working with the same team throughout the project.

Professional services: Software engineers from Argentina take their job very seriously and will deliver top-notch services at every juncture of the project, so quality is never compromised and you get only the best.

Reasonable costs: As compared to what it would cost you to hire software developers in the US, the overall cost is much more reasonable, and you get the same superb quality development work from this outsourced team.