Latin America an emerging tech talent hub

Latin America has long been a go-to destination for North American companies looking to outsource their software development requirements. This relationship has proven extremely fruitful for the region: Latin America is projected to see an IT industry revenue growth of 5.3 percent over the next decade, 2 percentage points higher than the global average.

By some estimates, LatAm has around 377,000 engineers – many of whom have experience working on advanced software projects. In the last year, the number of engineers grew 35 percent, making Latin America an even more attractive alternative to offshore destinations in Eastern Europe, India, or Africa.?

These and other insights are revealed in ‘The state of software development in Latin America’, an industry report released by the recruiting firm Matilda Explorations in June 2023.

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America in terms of size and economy, so it’s probably little surprise that it leads the pack with more than 180,000 engineers.

What is notable is that Argentina has passed Mexico for the second spot in terms of engineers in the country, according to the Matilda Explorations report. As recently as 2022, Mexico was the second most prominent tech hub in Latin America for its sizable population of software engineers.

While Costa Rica and Uruguay are some of the smallest Latin American countries, they pack a mighty punch in terms of a high concentration of tech talent.?

Uruguay and Costa Rica boast the highest number of engineers per 10k residents in the country, at 14.7 and 11.6, respectively (with Argentina coming in at a close third, with 10.4 per 10k residents).

These numbers are no doubt a testament to their well-educated, English language-proficient workforces and comparatively stable political and economic institutions.

By far, the three most popular technologies in Latin America are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with hundreds of thousands of engineers proficient in these languages. This trend is no surprise, as they are the three most popular languages anywhere in the world.

React and Next.js are the front-end technologies with the highest annual growth in the region. React grew 60 percent across Latin America, and Next.js even higher, with 83 percent, according to the Matilda report.

Java and Python are the most popular backend languages, both with over 100,000 developers, the report added.

The React front-end open-source JavaScript library is well-known in Latin America, with over 91,000 engineers proficient in the technology, according to the Matilda report’s findings.

Some 71,000 engineers in the region are proficient in the back-end Express.js framework – which is used to build web applications and APIs, the report also said.?

Growth in the usage of the once-popular Ruby on Rails framework has slowed across the region. However, there are pockets of growth RoR usage seen in the past year, in Peru (20 percent), and Ecuador (22 percent), the report revealed.?

AgileEngine is well-positioned in LatAm

Latin America is a dynamic region with large pools of highly specialized tech talent. That’s why AgileEngine has offices in leading R&D hubs across the continent, including in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Guatemala. Our strong presence in the region ensures a steady supply of highly skilled experts and a time-zone overlap works in your favor.

We hire the top 1 percent-ranked software engineers and designers in the region. So if your company is looking to nearshore a software development project, or you just need to hire a few developers quickly to augment in-house staff, let’s talk.