The trend of hiring remote talent in Latin America has surged as U.S. tech and creative companies seek strategic advantages. This approach – often called nearshore outsourcing – offers a skilled workforce in similar time zones at competitive costs.
Latin America’s tech talent pool is expanding rapidly; as of 2023, the region counts over 1 million software developers (with Brazil alone boasting ~500,000). Major hubs like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina have cultivated strong developer communities, producing top-notch engineers, designers, and support specialists.
The appeal for U.S. firms is clear: shared time zones, cultural compatibility, and lower costs make Latin America an ideal extension of their teams. In fact, experts project 10 million new IT job openings in LatAm by 2025, driven by demand from U.S. companies “looking for cheaper talent in the same time zones” under nearshoring models.
From startups to high-profile companies, many success stories illustrate how leveraging Latin American professionals solves business challenges. Below, we highlight ten U.S.-based companies, such as Amazon, Google, Stripe, Shopify, and others, that have outsourced operations or hired remote talent in Latin America and reaped significant benefits.
1. Amazon
Believe it or not, the retail giant started benefiting from the outsourcing model a very long time ago. Amazon needed to scale customer and seller support as its Marketplace grew. To handle the surge of third-party sellers and maintain service quality, Amazon expanded its support operations into Latin America in 2029.
The company established large Seller Support and customer service centers in Costa Rica, hiring teams of support associates and specialists. Starting with 30 employees, Amazon’s Costa Rica hub grew to 900+ employees by 2018. These teams assist small and medium-sized businesses on Amazon’s platform with issues like account management and vendor support.
The countries involved were primarily Costa Rica (San José) for its major support center, along with other regional offices in Brazil and Mexico for local market operations. Costa Rica was chosen for its stable business environment, bilingual talent, and proximity to the U.S..
By nearshoring to Costa Rica, Amazon gained a skilled, customer-obsessed workforce at a lower cost than in the U.S..
At the same time, the time-zone alignment allows real-time collaboration with U.S. teams and customers, boosting efficiency. Amazon’s investment (over $10 million in Costa Rica facilities) paid off in improved seller satisfaction and the ability to rapidly onboard thousands of support staff.
The Costa Rica team’s success in delivering first-class support has directly helped Amazon’s sellers grow their businesses globally.
2. Pinterest
Pinterest, the visual discovery and social media company, faced the challenge of scaling its engineering team to support rapid user growth and global markets. By 2021, Pinterest had over 475 million users and needed more development capacity and local insights to serve non-U.S. audiences. In response, Pinterest decided to open its first Latin American office.
The company launched a new office in Mexico City as its first engineering hub in Latin America. Pinterest committed to hiring ~50 people in Mexico, including software engineers and a local sales team.
The Mexico City engineering team works on a range of core product areas – for example, backend services, mobile app features (iOS/Android), internal tools, and Pinterest’s content safety and machine learning data labeling platform. This hub complements Pinterest’s engineering efforts in the U.S. by handling projects that benefit from local perspectives (such as features for international markets).
Mexico (Mexico City) is the focus, becoming Pinterest’s second office in Latin America (after Brazil). Mexico City was chosen due to its strong pool of engineers (aided by top universities like UNAM) and its alignment with U.S. time zones for smooth collaboration.
Bringing in Latin American remote talent has helped Pinterest build a more inclusive and globally aware product. The company stated that having “worldly perspectives at the table” – engineers from different backgrounds and geographies – leads to a product that serves everyone better.
The Mexico City team gives Pinterest access to world-class engineering and machine learning talent that matches its needs. Additionally, the nearshore location allows easier communication with headquarters, and the cost of talent in Mexico is generally lower than in Silicon Valley.
Overall, Pinterest’s Latin America expansion has enabled it to innovate faster for international users and work more closely with local advertisers, while enjoying cost savings and a broadened talent base.
3. Google
Google needed to expand its core R&D beyond Silicon Valley to meet global demands. In the mid-2000s, Google’s challenge was to improve its search engine technology and services by sourcing talent worldwide. Latin America emerged as a promising region for innovation, so Google made a strategic move in 2005 by acquiring Akwan, a search startup in Brazil. This gave Google a foothold to establish an engineering center in Latin America.
Google set up an advanced Engineering Center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which became its first R&D facility in Latin America. This center is dedicated largely to the research and development of Google’s search engine and related data science (it handles the “research, development, and statistical control of searches” for Google).
Headed by the former professor who founded Akwan, the Belo Horizonte office started with a team of local engineers and researchers focusing on improving Google’s search algorithms and has since expanded to contribute to other Google products.
Google chose Belo Horizonte due to its strong tech talent pipeline – the city is often called the “Brazilian Silicon Valley” and has a cluster of universities and over 200 tech companies producing skilled engineers.
Google also has a commercial office in São Paulo (for sales/marketing), but the technical talent is concentrated in the Belo Horizonte development center.
Regarding the outcomes and benefits, the Latin America engineering hub has been a success for Google. It confirmed that Google could find world-class talent in the region: over 100 tech professionals were working at the Belo Horizonte center as of 2016, and Google announced plans to double that headcount.
The expansion of the Brazil center – including a new, expansive facility – demonstrated Google’s “faith in Brazilian tech talent,” strengthening Belo Horizonte’s reputation as an innovation hub. By developing search features locally, Google also benefits from the cost advantages of Brazil’s lower labor costs and the ability to collaborate within a similar timezone.
The decision to nearshore R&D to Latin America has given Google access to a broader diversity of ideas and expertise, helping drive its search engine improvements while saving on costs and retaining a high-quality service. This approach has contributed to Google’s continued leadership in search, showing that innovation can thrive outside of Silicon Valley by leveraging global talent.
4. Microsoft
Faced with intense competition for software engineers in the U.S., Microsoft looked to Latin America to expand its talent pool. The company has had a presence in the region for decades and began tapping into local expertise to support product development and services.
Microsoft set up development centers and support operations in countries like Costa Rica and Brazil. In Costa Rica, for example, Microsoft established an engineering and R&D center (alongside other tech giants) to work on software development and IT services. These centers handle tasks ranging from software engineering to technical support for Microsoft’s global products.
While Costa Rica has been a key hub, thanks to its highly educated workforce and strong tech infrastructure, Microsoft also engages talent in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina via regional offices and partnerships. By nearshoring in Latin America, Microsoft accesses skilled engineers in locations that share U.S. time zones, improving communication and agile collaboration.
Hiring in Latin America has also allowed Microsoft to reduce costs while maintaining quality. Latin American engineers earn lower salaries on average due to cost-of-living differences, generating significant savings (often 30–50% per role) without compromising on expertise.
Moreover, Microsoft benefits from real-time teamwork with nearshore teams (versus offshoring to distant time zones). The result has been faster project delivery and access to a growing pool of tech talent, helping Microsoft support its products and customers more effectively across the Americas.
5. Eventbrite
Eventbrite, a U.S.-based SaaS startup for event ticketing, sought to expand its platform and enter new markets. In 2013, Eventbrite faced the challenge of localizing its product for Latin America and boosting its development capacity. It addressed this by acquiring Eventioz, an Argentinian ticketing company, gaining an established team in the region.
This move was aimed at accelerating Eventbrite’s product development (especially payments and music event features) and tapping into Latin America’s tech talent.
After the acquisition, Eventbrite fully integrated the Mendoza, Argentina team into its global engineering organization. The Argentine office now hosts major engineering squads responsible for core parts of Eventbrite’s platform.
For example, teams in Mendoza handle the Payments infrastructure (the code that processes ticket transactions) as well as features for music events and post-purchase experiences. In practice, this means a significant portion of Eventbrite’s payment processing code is written and maintained by developers in Argentina.
Argentina (city of Mendoza) is the key location. The choice was driven by the presence of a skilled team (Eventioz’s founders and engineers) and the broader tech talent available in Argentina’s startup ecosystem. (Eventbrite also later expanded into Brazil and other countries via acquisitions.) The Mendoza team works closely with U.S. colleagues, taking advantage of overlapping time zones to collaborate in real time.
Hiring remote talent in Argentina has delivered tangible benefits for Eventbrite. The Mendoza engineering teams built new features that saved Eventbrite millions of dollars a year in payment processing costs, directly impacting the company’s bottom line.
By leveraging Latin American developers, Eventbrite achieved cost efficiencies (Latin American developer salaries are significantly lower than those in San Francisco) while maintaining high code quality.
The time zone compatibility and strong engineering culture in Argentina meant the remote team could integrate seamlessly and contribute at the same level as U.S. teams. This nearshore strategy has allowed Eventbrite to accelerate innovation (with dedicated teams for critical product areas) and better serve a growing user base in Latin America, all while benefiting from lower operating costs and top-tier talent.
6. Stripe
Stripe, a U.S. fintech giant, faced an acute challenge: scaling its engineering team amid fierce competition for developers in Silicon Valley. To sustain its rapid growth and better serve global customers, Stripe embraced a distributed workforce model. In 2019, the company launched a “remote engineering hub,” hiring 100+ engineers outside its main offices in one year.
A key part of this initiative was tapping into Latin America’s talent. Stripe even appointed a Head of Engineering for Latin America, Juan Pablo Buritica, tasked with building engineering teams across the region. Buritica, a Colombian native and remote-work expert, noted that Latin America holds a “very special place” in his mission to assemble distributed teams.
By nearshoring development to LatAm, Stripe could hire highly skilled developers in countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina – all in U.S.-adjacent time zones. This helped Stripe overcome the “talent crunch” at home while improving product localization. “Deploying engineers closer to customers has been a boon,” Stripe reported, as distributed teams on three continents enabled more locally relevant features and round-the-clock support.
Approximately 30–40% of Stripe’s workforce is now remote, with Latin American engineers contributing significantly. The outcome has been positive: Stripe gained access to a broader talent pool and built resilient, diverse teams that ship products faster and serve customers worldwide more effectively.
This success highlights why hiring developers in Latin America is a smart strategy for scaling engineering without sacrificing quality or collaboration.
7. Shopify
Shopify, the e-commerce platform powerhouse, experienced explosive growth during the pandemic as retailers worldwide moved online. Faced with surging demand and a need to rapidly expand its services, Shopify fundamentally changed its work strategy.
In mid-2020, CEO Tobi Lütke declared that “office centricity is over” and announced Shopify would be a “digital by default” company. Practically, this meant closing offices and letting the vast majority of employees work remotely permanently. With over 5,000 staff globally, Shopify seized the opportunity to hire talent wherever the best people are – including Latin America.
This shift to remote work allowed Shopify to build distributed teams for customer support, engineering, and design across time zones. For example, Shopify could now outsource customer support to Colombia or other Latin American countries known for bilingual service skills. In going fully remote, Shopify unlocked access to Spanish-speaking talent to better serve merchants in Latin America, a rapidly growing market for the platform.
The company’s Chief Talent Officer noted that even as Shopify maintains recruitment hubs in North America, it can “hire across the country for a decentralized, remote way of working” – a model it has extended globally.
By hiring remote creative professionals and developers in LatAm, Shopify augmented its teams handling store onboarding, theme design, and tech support for its users. The outcome: Shopify successfully scaled its operations during a critical growth period, aided by a worldwide talent strategy.
The company not only kept pace with demand but also gained flexibility to support merchants in-region without the overhead of new offices. Shopify’s story shows that embracing remote talent in Latin America (and beyond) can future-proof a business for digital growth.
8. Venmo (PayPal)
Venmo, the popular payments app (owned by PayPal), provides a striking example of outsourcing success. As Venmo’s user base and feature set grew, the company needed to quickly scale up its development and support capabilities. Rather than hire hundreds of engineers solely in high-cost U.S. cities, Venmo partnered with outsourcing providers to tap into Latin America’s tech talent.
The results were dramatic: an outsourcing firm went from contracting 10 Latin American developers for Venmo in 2019 to around 600 by 2022. This nearshore outsourcing strategy brought on software engineers from tech hubs like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia to work on Venmo’s platform.
By leveraging Latin American engineers, Venmo was able to accelerate feature development and maintain reliability, all while optimizing costs. Latin America’s cheaper labor rates (relative to Silicon Valley) meant Venmo could do more with its R&D budget, an important factor for a growing fintech.
According to Rest of World, outsourcing agencies in the region offer U.S. companies skilled developers at lower cost, selling “cheaper Latin American labor” to meet foreign demand. For Venmo, this translated into significant savings without compromising on talent quality. Many of these remote engineers are highly qualified – often earning 3–5 times the average local salary, yet still cost-effective for U.S. firms.
Venmo’s expanded nearshore team contributed to new app features and stability improvements that kept the payment service competitive. This success story showcases how a U.S. fintech solved scaling challenges by hiring developers in Latin America, achieving both speed and cost efficiency. It’s no surprise that today Latin American tech professionals are integral to Venmo’s operations – a win-win for the company and the region’s developers.
9. HubSpot
HubSpot, a Boston-based marketing and sales software company, looked to Latin America not only for cost savings but also for strategic market expansion.
In 2018, HubSpot announced it would open a Latin America headquarters in Bogotá, Colombia, to serve its growing customer base in the region. The background: HubSpot saw “amazing appetite” for its products in Latin America and wanted to be closer to its users. The challenge was scaling its sales and support teams to engage Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking customers, and doing so in a way that balanced quality with budget. Colombia emerged as an ideal solution due to its skilled workforce, business-friendly environment, and strategic location.
By hiring remote professionals in Colombia and setting up a regional hub, HubSpot solved multiple issues. First, it gained a local, bilingual team of sales reps and customer success specialists who could build relationships in-market. These Latin American professionals helped educate businesses about HubSpot (the “inbound” marketing movement) in a culturally relevant way.
Second, Bogotá offered competitive costs and high-caliber talent, which meant HubSpot could grow without exorbitant expense. The Colombian Minister of Commerce noted that the country’s quality workforce and strategic location have made it a global business services hub, and “we have no doubt that Colombia will become a significant factor in HubSpot’s success in the region”.
Indeed, HubSpot’s Bogotá team started by focusing on sales and agency partnerships across LatAm, contributing to HubSpot’s international revenue growth. The investment group Invest in Bogotá highlighted that a company like HubSpot choosing the city “demonstrates how human talent and competitive costs…are attracting multinational companies”.
HubSpot’s regional operation has since flourished, expanding to customer support roles and more. This success story underlines why Latin America (especially Colombia for outsourcing customer support) is becoming a go-to region – the talent is there, and they deliver results when given the opportunity.
10. GitLab
GitLab, the DevOps platform trusted by thousands of companies, has operated as an all-remote company since its inception. With employees distributed across more than 65 countries, GitLab has consistently prioritized talent over location, hiring wherever the best people are, including Latin America.
GitLab has hired developers, product designers, support engineers, and security analysts from countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, seamlessly integrating them into global teams. Their open-source roots and commitment to asynchronous work have made GitLab a magnet for skilled professionals across time zones.
Latin American team members contribute across product and infrastructure development, localization efforts, and support services. GitLab has even featured LatAm-based employees in company handbooks and success stories, demonstrating how crucial they are to the company’s growth.
By tapping into Latin America’s time-zone compatibility and cost-effectiveness, GitLab reinforces that great teams can be built anywhere, as long as the structure and culture support them.
Why Latin America Is the Go-To for Outsourcing
U.S. companies are increasingly looking south for nearshore outsourcing and remote hires. Here are key reasons Latin America has become a premier talent hub for tech, creative, and support roles:
Time Zone Alignment
Teams in Latin America work on U.S.-friendly schedules, enabling real-time collaboration without the overnight calls required when outsourcing to Asia. Proximity means a developer in Buenos Aires or a support agent in Bogotá can sync with a New York team’s working hours easily. This alignment boosts productivity and communication.
Skilled, Educated Workforce
Latin America boasts a highly skilled talent pool, with over a million tech professionals and growing. Countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina turn out thousands of STEM graduates yearly and host thriving tech ecosystems.
Many Latin American developers and designers are as technically proficient as their U.S. counterparts – global coding tests show LatAm engineers perform at or above global averages in skills like JavaScript and React.
In creative fields, designers and digital marketers from the region are producing world-class work for international clients.
Cost-Effective Talent
Engaging talent in Latin America is cost-efficient for U.S. companies. While offering competitive salaries by local standards, companies can often save 30-50% compared to U.S. payroll costs.
Lower living costs in LatAm mean roles like software engineers, customer support reps, and remote creative professionals can be hired within a more manageable budget, without compromising quality. This arbitrage has been a major trend driver (as seen with Venmo’s large outsourced team).
Cultural and Language Compatibility
Latin American professionals often share cultural affinities with the U.S., easing integration into company workflows. There is a high prevalence of bilingual talent; many candidates are fluent in English (especially in tech hubs and among university graduates).
Additionally, a “western” business culture, in terms of communication style, creativity, and work ethic, often makes collaboration smoother compared to more distant regions.
This cultural compatibility means a remote team in Latin America can more rapidly align with a U.S. company’s values and customer expectations. For tasks like customer support or creative marketing, understanding U.S. culture (while also bringing regional insight) is a big plus.
Geographical Proximity and Travel
Being relatively close geographically, it’s easy to arrange occasional in-person meetups or team building with Latin American remote staff. A flight from New York to São Paulo or San Francisco to Mexico City is far shorter than one to India or Eastern Europe.
This proximity provides flexibility – key team members can visit the U.S. for summits or, conversely, U.S. managers can visit Latin offices with less hassle. Proximity also aids real-time oversight when needed and helps build trust within distributed teams.
In short, Latin America’s blend of technical prowess, cost savings, and convenient collaboration has made it a go-to region for outsourcing. It’s why companies ranging from bootstrapped startups to Fortune 500 firms are increasingly hiring in LatAm to stay competitive.
How to Get Started: Hiring Remote Professionals in Latin America
For U.S. companies new to nearshoring, taking the first steps can be daunting. Here’s a practical guide to begin leveraging Latin American remote talent:
1. Identify Roles Suited for Remote Talent
Determine which business functions or projects would benefit most from outsourcing or remote hires. Software development is a popular choice (e.g. extending your engineering team with developers in Latin America), but don’t overlook other areas.
You can outsource customer support to Colombia, for instance, where agents can handle inquiries in English or Spanish. Likewise, remote creative professionals – graphic designers, content writers, marketing strategists – in countries like Brazil or Mexico can effectively support your creative and marketing needs.
Start with roles that require overlap with U.S. hours but not physical presence, and define clear objectives for those roles.
2. Choose Target Countries (or Cities)
Latin America is diverse. Research which country aligns best with your needs. For tech roles, major hubs include Brazil (São Paulo), Mexico (Mexico City, Guadalajara), Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba), Colombia (Medellín, Bogotá), and Chile (Santiago). Each has its strengths – for example, Mexico and Colombia offer large pools of English-proficient developers and slightly lower costs than.
If you need bilingual Spanish-English support, countries like Colombia, Costa Rica, or Mexico are known for call centers and customer service expertise. For creative work, you might find exceptional design talent in Argentina’s advertising industry or animation professionals in Brazil’s growing game sector.
Prioritize locations known for the skillset you seek and with a time zone overlap your team is comfortable with (most of LatAm ranges from GMT-3 to GMT-8, similar to U.S. time zones).
3. Leverage Local Partners or Platforms
To simplify hiring, consider partnering with organizations experienced in Latin American recruiting. For example, South is a company that helps U.S. businesses hire top remote talent in LatAm (handling sourcing, vetting, and even payroll). Engaging a partner like South can be a low-risk way to quickly find pre-vetted candidates for roles ranging from DevOps engineers to virtual assistants.
4. Pilot with a Small Project or Team
Start with a pilot program to test the waters. This could mean hiring one or two remote employees on a trial period or outsourcing a specific project module to a Latin American team. Monitor the collaboration closely: are there communication challenges? How is the quality of work and speed of delivery?
Use this pilot to refine your processes for remote onboarding, and to build trust. Many companies find that after an initial adjustment, their LatAm remote team becomes as integrated and productive as their on-site team.
For instance, you might pilot outsourcing QA testing to a team in Perú, or hire a couple of developers in Uruguay to build a new feature – and then scale up the engagement once you see positive results.
5. Integrate and Embrace the Remote Team
To ensure success, treat your Latin American hires as full team members. Set up robust communication channels (daily stand-up meetings via video, Slack channels, etc.) and overlap working hours sufficiently for real-time collaboration.
Be mindful of any language differences – even though many LatAm professionals speak excellent English, clarify expectations and encourage questions to avoid misunderstandings. It’s useful to bridge cultural gaps by learning a bit about your remote colleagues’ culture or even a few Spanish or Portuguese phrases – this gesture can build rapport.
Also, handle the logistics: decide whether to hire individuals as contractors or through an employer-of-record service for compliance. Arrange reliable payment methods (many use international payroll platforms or services like Payoneer, since direct deposit may not be straightforward).
By investing in proper onboarding, mentorship, and inclusion of your remote talent (for example, inviting them to virtual all-hands meetings and celebrating their work publicly), you set the stage for a committed, long-term team.
6. Scale Up Carefully
Once your initial hires or outsourced team deliver value, plan how to expand. You could incrementally add more roles in the same region – perhaps you started with developers in Mexico, now you add a UX designer from Argentina, and a customer success manager in Costa Rica.
Maintain quality by using referrals from your current LatAm team (great talent knows great talent). Also, continuously gather feedback from both your U.S. and Latin American team members on how to improve the workflow.
Over time, you might even establish your own small office or co-working hub in a city that has a concentration of your remote employees (many companies do this after reaching a certain critical mass, though it’s not required).
The key is to scale while preserving the benefits – keep communication seamless and ensure everyone feels part of one organization despite the distance.
By following these steps, U.S. companies can confidently get started with hiring remote professionals in Latin America. The process is becoming more common and easier each year, and as the success stories above show, the payoff can be tremendous.
Whether you start by outsourcing customer support to a Colombian firm or hire your next star developer in São Paulo, tapping into Latin America’s talent pool can drive growth, innovation, and resilience for your business.
The Takeaway
Outsourcing to Latin America isn’t just a trend—it’s a strategic advantage. As we've seen from companies like Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify, Venmo, HubSpot, and Eventbrite, tapping into remote talent from the region has helped solve major challenges: tight hiring markets, high overhead costs, and the need for fast, scalable growth.
Whether you're a startup looking to extend your runway or an established business expanding internationally, Latin America offers a winning blend of skill, affordability, and time zone alignment. And with the right approach, these professionals aren’t just freelancers or contractors—they become embedded, long-term contributors to your team’s success.
If you're ready to explore how remote hiring in Latin America can benefit your company, South is here to help. We specialize in connecting U.S. businesses with pre-vetted Latin American professionals who are ready to deliver results from day one.
Schedule a free call with us and let’s build your own success story together!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What roles can I outsource to Latin America?
You can outsource a wide range of roles, including software developers, QA engineers, UX/UI designers, customer support agents, bookkeepers, digital marketers, and virtual assistants. Latin America is especially strong in tech and creative industries.
Is outsourcing to Latin America cost-effective?
Yes. Salaries in Latin America are typically 30–50% lower than in the U.S., while still offering high-quality talent. This allows companies to scale efficiently without sacrificing expertise or communication.
How do I manage a remote team in Latin America?
Use tools like Slack, Zoom, and project management platforms (e.g., Asana, Jira) to stay connected. Overlapping time zones make collaboration smooth. Building trust, offering structured onboarding, and encouraging regular check-ins are key.
What countries are best for nearshore hiring in Latin America?
Top destinations include Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Each offers unique strengths, such as bilingual talent, strong tech communities, and business-friendly environments.
How can South help me get started?
South helps U.S. businesses hire top remote talent from Latin America—quickly and compliantly. From sourcing and vetting to payroll and onboarding, we handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on growing your business.
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