6 Reasons Why the Latin American Software Industry Is Thriving

Latin America's software industry has moved well past the experimental stage. Its largest market, Brazil, grew 18.5% in 2025, well above the 14.1% global average, and brought in US$67.8 billion in IT revenue, according to ABES, the Brazilian Association of Software Companies. 

Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile are also building deep engineering benches. These countries have strong computer science programs, a workforce that speaks strong English to work directly with US clients, and hours that overlap a US workday.

This article looks at software development in Latin America through current data. It covers the six forces behind its growth, the countries leading it, what the talent pool looks like, and what developers earn. 

What Is the Current State of the Software Industry in Latin America?

Latin America’s software industry is expanding quickly, with Brazil and Mexico leading a group of countries that now anchor established engineering hubs.

Brazil sets the pace for South American software development. Its IT market grew 18.5% in 2025, above the 14.1% global average, according to ABES’s 2026 market study. Its share of Latin American IT investment also rose from 34.7% to 38.4% in a single year.

The growing demand from US companies is helping set that pace. According to Hire With Near’s 2026 State of LatAm Hiring Report, demand for software engineers in Latin America grew 250% year over year. That lifted the role from 18th to 6th among the most-hired positions in our company. 

That demand comes from two directions. Tech companies hiring in Latin America are growing their product teams, and companies in other sectors need to hire software engineers to build in-house instead of relying on agencies.

Which countries lead the Latin American software industry?

Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia lead Latin America’s software industry, with Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay close behind. Each hub has a different strength:

• Brazil: The largest market in the region, holding 38.4% of Latin American IT investment in 2025. São Paulo is the region’s biggest startup and fintech center. See our guide about hiring developers in Brazil.
• Mexico: The second-largest share of regional IT investment, at 22.1% in 2024, according to ABES’s 2025 study. Its business hours roughly line up with US Central Time, which makes it a natural fit for hiring developers in Mexico.
• Argentina: Held 13.6% of regional IT investment in 2024. Its software sector added 6,131 jobs in 2024, and the US is its main export destination, taking 46.9% of software exports, according to CESSI, Argentina’s software chamber. Our guide to hiring developers in Argentina covers costs, tech hubs, and skills.
• Colombia: More than 1.6 million developers on GitHub as of Q1 2026, up 37% year over year, according to GitHub’s Innovation Graph. Bogotá and Medellín have become go-to hubs for US companies building senior engineering teams. Our guide to hiring developers in Colombia covers salaries and timelines.
• Costa Rica: Small pool, big-company pedigree. Intel and Amazon trained much of its engineering workforce, and GitHub counts more than 230,000 developers there as of Q1 2026, up 30% year over year, according to GitHub’s Innovation Graph. Here’s how to go about hiring developers in Costa Rica.
• Chile: Up 35% in a year, its GitHub developer base passed 800,000 in Q1 2026. Chile is the stability pick, with an OECD-member economy and a Santiago scene nicknamed “Chilecon Valley.” Read more on hiring software developers in Chile.
• Uruguay: The smallest of the group, at about 160,000 GitHub developers as of Q1 2026, but it’s growing 30% a year, and Mercado Libre and Globant both run large operations there. Our Uruguay developer hiring guide has the details.

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Why Is Latin America’s Software Development Industry Thriving?

Latin America’s software industry is thriving for six specific reasons: startup ecosystems, government support, a growing talent pool, nearshoring demand, international collaboration, and resilience built through tough economic cycles.

1. Hotspot for startups and entrepreneurship

Cities like São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Bogotá have become hubs for tech startups, and each one attracts ambitious founders and engineers.

These startups create jobs and train engineers in modern product work: shipping quickly, owning features end to end, and working in lean teams. That experience spreads through LatAm software development as engineers move on to other companies.

A few years ago, when I talked to founders building remote teams, they used to ask whether Latin America could handle serious engineering work. Now, the question has changed: they ask which country to start in and how fast they can get a team running.

If you’re planning engineering headcount, that shift is why nearshore staffing companies now sit on the shortlist next to local recruiters.

2. Government support

Governments across the region back the software sector with policies that attract investment and reward software development.

Argentina’s Knowledge Economy Law (Law 27,506) is one example. It reduces income tax and employer payroll contributions for qualifying software companies, with benefits in place through 2029.

Other policies across the region include tax incentives for software development companies and programs that support small companies and startups through incubators, accelerators, and innovation hubs.

3. An abundance of tech talent

Latin America’s developer communities are growing at more than 30% a year. According to GitHub’s Innovation Graph, Brazil had more than 8.3 million developers on GitHub as of Q1 2026, up 36% from a year earlier. Mexico followed at 2.9 million (up 35%), then Colombia at 1.7 million (up 37%) and Argentina at 1.6 million (up 31%).

Universities feed that growth. Brazil produced about 238,000 STEM graduates and Mexico about 221,000 in 2020, the latest year in a 2023 cross-country comparison by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The same research found that just 20% of US graduates earn a STEM degree, a smaller share than in Mexico.

Outside universities, companies partner with local organizations on training programs. Coding bootcamps and specialized courses focus on practical skills and real-world projects, giving aspiring developers a faster, hands-on path into the industry.

4. The rise of nearshoring

Nearshore hiring has become a mainstream way for companies to build software teams at a lower cost without giving up quality. For US companies, Latin America is the natural nearshore region.

Appetite for external talent keeps growing. According to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey, 80% of executives plan to maintain or increase their investment in third-party outsourcing. 

At the same time, AI and time zone alignment are pushing more US companies to hire developers in Latin America, instead of in distant offshore regions like Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. 

Our guide to hiring remotely in Latin America covers what to expect when hiring in the region.

5. Increasing industry collaboration

Latin American software companies and founders increasingly work with international partners and sell to clients abroad.

That work brings practices from US and European clients back into local teams. Engineers learn international code review, documentation, and delivery standards without leaving the region, and they carry those standards into the next company they join.

6. Ability to overcome challenges

Latin American tech companies have grown despite real obstacles: limited funding, infrastructure gaps, complicated bureaucracy, and skill gaps in emerging technologies.

Building under those constraints taught many teams to run lean, ship on small budgets, and solve problems without waiting for outside help. Those habits carry over when their engineers join US product teams.

What Advantages Does Latin America’s Software Industry Offer US Companies?

Latin America’s software industry offers US companies five practical advantages: lower salary costs, overlapping working hours, cultural familiarity, an experienced talent pool, and a workforce that already knows remote work.

Cost savings

In our experience, hiring in Latin America costs 30–70% less than comparable US salaries. The gap reflects the region's lower cost of living, and it lets you grow your engineering team without waiting for next year’s budget. 

Depending on your industry, some Latin American countries also offer tax incentives or government programs that lower the cost of doing business there.

See how much US companies save by hiring in Latin America for real examples.

US-aligned work hours

Latin American developers typically work hours that overlap most of your business day, though how much depends on where your US team is based and which country your hire is in.

Here’s how the main hubs roughly line up during US Daylight Saving Time:

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Chile isn’t on the table because its case is more complex: it still changes its clocks, but on a southern-hemisphere schedule: back an hour in early April, forward an hour in early September. 

From April to September, 9 a.m. in New York is 9 a.m. in Santiago. The rest of the year, Santiago runs one to two hours ahead, so check the calendar around the changeover weeks when scheduling recurring meetings.

Even a team in Seattle shares a solid morning-to-midday block with a developer in Buenos Aires. That’s not what happens with an offshore team in Asia. 

They work while your US office is closed, so a question sent in the afternoon waits until the next day. A developer in Latin America can join your stand-ups live and fix a broken build the same afternoon. 

This is one of the main reasons companies look to the region. Hire With Near’s analysis of 2,000+ hiring conversations found that 30% of US companies looking at Latin America are moving work from offshore locations, primarily to get real-time overlap with their teams. 

Our comparison of nearshore vs. offshore software development goes deeper into the tradeoffs.

Cultural affinity and easy communication

Latin American professionals tend to be closely familiar with US business culture, which makes day-to-day collaboration easier.

Shared business norms and similar working styles support long-term working relationships. English skills are also strong among software professionals in the region’s main tech hubs, which matters when developers write documentation, review code, and join client calls.

One client put it simply when describing what they look for in engineers hired from the region:

One of the reasons I like hiring in Latin America is because I love the stereotype of [being] very open, warm, kind, thoughtful, and communicative. I really like that. And that’s what we would expect in engineers.

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For more on communication and other common concerns, read the questions tech leaders ask about hiring developers in Latin America.

Skilled talent pool

Many Latin American developers have years of hands-on experience with modern frameworks and have already worked with US and European clients, directly or through freelance work.

That exposure gives them a working knowledge of US client expectations, project management practices, and international business standards. Julia Guillen, Senior Tech Recruiter at Hire With Near, sees the same reaction from clients again and again:

Clients are consistently surprised with the caliber of talent that’s available in Latin America. They don’t expect to find senior engineers who’ve worked with major U.S. companies, understand modern development practices, and often have more hands-on experience with specific frameworks than candidates they’d find locally.

— Julia Guillen, Senior Tech Recruiter, Hire With Near

Expertise in remote work

Many Latin American developers already work remotely and know how distributed teams operate.

They’re familiar with remote collaboration tools and async communication, so on a remote-first team they often start contributing within their first few weeks.

How Much Do Software Developers Earn in Latin America?

Software engineers in Latin America typically earn $36K–$108K a year, according to our salary data, compared with $100K–$238K for software engineers in the US.

Where a hire lands in that range depends mainly on seniority and tech stack. A software developer in Latin America with one to two years of experience sits near the bottom, while a senior engineer who can own architecture decisions sits near the top.

Stack matters too. .NET developers and PHP developers work in widely used stacks and usually have lower salary expectations. Specialists in newer or niche technologies, such as Golang programmers, Swift developers, Elixir, Clojure, and AI developers, command higher salaries.

To put that in concrete terms, here’s how salaries for software development roles in Latin America compare with US salaries, according to Hire With Near’s salary benchmarks:

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For the most up-to-date figures, see Hire With Near’s US vs Latin America Salary Guide.

For your budget, the takeaway is that hiring a senior engineer in Latin America often costs less than hiring a mid-level engineer in the US. That lets you add senior people to your roadmap sooner. For more roles, see our IT roles Salary Guide.

ParkMobile, the parking app used in more than 4,200 cities across 21 countries, shows what global companies are doing with this market. After years of relying on third-party agency developers, it hired 9 senior platform, backend, and iOS engineers in Colombia through Hire With Near, a market it had never recruited in. 

The company saves $1,066,085 a year compared with US rates, a 73% reduction, with a 24-day average time-to-hire. 

Akshay Gokarnakar, ParkMobile’s TA Lead, summed up the results:

The engineers we hired are performing exceptionally well. They show up, they take accountability, and they take a genuine interest in the team.

— Akshay Gokarnakar, Talent Acquisition Lead, ParkMobile

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You can watch Akshay describing the partnership with Hire With Near in the video below:

Final Thoughts

Latin America's software industry is thriving because the fundamentals are solid: growing developer communities, government backing, active startup scenes, and steady demand from US companies.

From building Hire With Near as a distributed company, the lesson that holds up for me is simple: the companies that get the most from Latin America treat it as a long-term engineering hub from day one, hiring senior people and bringing them fully into the team.

The region has no shortage of skilled software developers; the work is finding the right ones. You can compare the companies to hire top developers in Latin America, or ask us to source and screen software engineers for you.

Whether you need a software engineer, a front-end engineer, or an engineering leader through our executive search service, most of our clients make a hire in under three weeks.

To see the caliber of talent available, fill out this form to get a list of pre-vetted candidates you can interview for free. You only pay once you make a hire.

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