Over the last two years, the conversation around where US companies build their IT and Engineering teams has shifted. Rising visa costs, slower approval timelines, and a shrinking pool of available senior engineers at home have pushed hiring managers to look closer, not farther away.
Latin America has picked up a large share of that shift. The region sits in US time zones, shares most of the US workday, and has spent the last decade building a technical workforce that can take on cloud migrations, ERP rollouts, and the dozens of other projects filling up US IT roadmaps.
This article looks at what’s actually driving that growth, how nearshoring compares with offshoring on the things that matter day to day, and where the talent is concentrated across Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
Latin America’s IT services outsourcing market generated about $42.5 billion in revenue in 2025 and is on track to reach roughly $86.9 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Research’s outlook on the Latin America IT services outsourcing market. That works out to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4% from 2026 to 2033, faster than global IT spending overall, which Gartner forecasts will hit $6.37 trillion in 2026, up 14.2% from the prior year.
Latin America IT Services Outsourcing Market, 2025 to 2033
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Market size, 2025 | $42.5 billion |
| Projected market size, 2033 | $86.9 billion |
| Compound annual growth rate (CAGR), 2026 to 2033 | 9.4% |
That growth isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s a direct response to two pressures building on the US side: a widening gap between how much specialized IT and Engineering talent companies need and how much is actually available, and a visa system that’s gotten slower and more expensive at the exact moment companies need to move fast.
Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers earned a median wage of $134,040 in May 2025, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects the field will add about 106,100 openings a year through 2035, a 10% growth rate that outpaces most other occupations. That’s a lot of roles competing for a talent pool that isn’t growing nearly as fast.
The challenge isn’t just how many of these jobs exist. It’s how long they sit open. SHRM’s 2026 recruiting benchmarking data put the median time-to-fill at 39 calendar days for nonexecutive roles, and specialized technical searches, especially for senior engineers with a specific stack or domain background, routinely run well past that median once you factor in sourcing, technical screening, and the back-and-forth of scheduling interviews around a hiring manager’s calendar.
That gap puts real pressure on internal recruiting teams. Many are already stretched thin covering every open requisition across the business, and most were never built to source candidates outside the US in the first place. Every week a senior role stays open is a week a product roadmap slips, a project timeline stretches, or an existing team absorbs work it wasn’t sized for.
Visa timing adds another layer on top of an already tight domestic market. Most H-1B petitions take 10 to 11.5 months to process from filing to approval, according to immigration firm Manifest Law, before a candidate who’s still abroad even clears the consular interview stage.
Cost has moved in the same direction, and the rules keep shifting under it. A $100,000 supplemental fee applies to certain new H-1B petitions filed from outside the US, and its legal status has flipped more than once within a single year, vacated by a federal court, left in place after an appeals court declined to step in, then extended again under a new proclamation. We addressed what that back-and-forth means for staffing budgets in a press release on nearshore cost savings amid H-1B fee uncertainty, and the point we made still holds regardless of which way the litigation goes next: nearshore staffing delivers a 54% weighted average savings against the true cost of a US hire, savings that don’t depend on how any one fee shakes out.
That shift mirrors a pattern taking shape at a much larger scale. Indian IT firms such as Infosys and TCS have long used the H-1B visa to place engineers from India directly onto US client projects, an offshore delivery model built around moving people across borders rather than hiring where the work happens. Reporting on Indian IT firms scaling back H-1B hiring found that Infosys cut its H-1B registrations from 8,886 to 759 for the most recent fiscal year, citing US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, with TCS down from 5,955 to 284 and similar drops at HCL America, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro. Faced with higher visa costs and tighter scrutiny, these firms are shifting toward hiring people already based in the US rather than transferring them in from abroad, the same underlying logic pushing other companies toward nearshore teams instead of a traditional offshore model.
Run the numbers in a couple of minutes and see what a nearshore hire could save against a comparable US-based role.
Nearshoring and offshoring both move hiring outside the US, but the similarities mostly end there. Fast Dolphin’s breakdown of nearshore vs offshore vs onshore models walks through where the two approaches diverge on cost, time zone overlap, and day-to-day collaboration, and the short version is that nearshore teams in Latin America typically overlap six to eight hours with a US workday, while offshore teams in Asia often overlap two hours or none at all.
(Infographic: insert “Latin America IT Staffing, 2026: Why the Market Is Accelerating” HTML block here.)
Cost still favors hiring outside the US, and that advantage holds for both models on paper. The real difference shows up in how a distributed team actually functions. Standups, code review, incident response, and the dozens of small handoffs that make up a normal sprint all get harder the less the workday overlaps, and a detailed cost comparison between US and Latin American development teams shows the savings gap holds even before you factor the time zone difference into total cost of ownership.
Latin America IT Staffing, 2026
Why the Market Is Accelerating
$86.9B
Projected size of the Latin America IT services outsourcing market by 2033, up from $42.5B in 2025
106,100
Average yearly US job openings for software developers, QA analysts, and testers through 2035
10 to 11.5 mo.
Typical H-1B processing time, from filing to approval
Annual Cost, Senior Engineer
Sources: Grand View Research, Latin America IT Services Outsourcing Market · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Software Developers, QA Analysts, and Testers · Manifest Law, H-1B Processing Times · Fast Dolphin, Best Countries for Nearshore Software Development
Brazil and Mexico alone are home to more than 2.2 million software engineering professionals, and together the two countries graduate more than 350,000 new engineering students every year, according to Deloitte’s research on software engineering nearshoring. That’s a talent base that’s grown fast enough to support specialized hiring across cloud, data, DevOps, and ERP, not just general application development.
Fast Dolphin’s own look at the best countries for nearshore software development breaks down how Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile each stack up on cost, specialization, and talent depth, and a separate piece digs into why Mexico has become a top nearshore IT destination for companies that want the closest possible time zone alignment with the US.
Colombia has built a reputation of its own, particularly for mid-level developers and QA talent, even though its overall workforce is smaller than Brazil’s or Mexico’s. A dedicated guide to hiring software engineers in Colombia covers what US companies should know before staffing there. For most US companies, the right country isn’t a single default. It depends on the specific role, the budget, and how much time zone overlap actually matters for that team.
For HR and Talent Acquisition leaders staffing their own IT and Engineering teams, a few questions are worth asking before the next senior requisition goes out. Does the role genuinely need to sit in the US? Does the internal team have the bandwidth and expertise to source and vet candidates outside the country on top of everything else on their plate? Would a trial period attached to the hire reduce the risk of a bad match before committing to a permanent one?
Those questions tend to point in the same direction: toward a partner that already has the sourcing infrastructure, the vetting process, and the time zone alignment in place, rather than trying to build that capability from scratch inside a recruiting team that’s already stretched across every other open role.
Fast Dolphin has placed IT and Engineering professionals from Latin America with US companies for more than 20 years, and that focus is deliberate. We run exactly two staffing models, Temporary Staffing and Direct Hire Staffing, rather than spreading attention across every kind of hire and every market. Temporary Staffing includes Contract-to-Hire as a built-in option, so you can start a placement on a trial basis with a clear path to bringing the professional on permanently if it’s the right fit, without treating it as a separate service to negotiate later.
We can have your first vetted candidate in front of you in 24 to 48 hours, at a cost significantly lower than US-based hiring, and every consultant goes through a vetting process built specifically for technical roles rather than a general screening process applied across every kind of hire. When something comes up, you’re working with people who know your account directly, not a support queue.
For Direct Hire Staffing placements specifically, every hire includes a 90-day replacement guarantee: if the professional leaves or is let go for documented poor performance within the first 90 days, we replace them at no cost, or refund the fee on a pro rata basis if we can’t.
Tell us what you’re hiring for, and we’ll start the conversation. No commitment, no jargon.
It depends on what matters most for the specific role. Nearshoring from Latin America tends to win on time zone overlap and day-to-day collaboration, since teams work largely within the same business hours as their US counterparts. Offshoring can still make sense for work that doesn’t require much real-time coordination, but most product and engineering teams rely heavily on exactly that kind of coordination.
With Fast Dolphin, the first vetted candidate is delivered in 24 to 48 hours. Full placement timelines vary by role and seniority, but starting with a candidate that quickly removes the biggest bottleneck most US hiring teams face: the weeks it normally takes just to build an initial pool of qualified people to screen.
A $100,000 supplemental fee on certain H-1B petitions filed from outside the US has been introduced, vacated by a federal court, kept off the books by an appeals court, and then extended under a new proclamation, all within about a year. That kind of back-and-forth is itself a reason many companies are building hiring plans that don’t depend on the visa process at all, which is part of why nearshoring has picked up momentum.
Contract-to-Hire is a variant within Temporary Staffing, not a separate service. It’s structured from the start as a trial period with the option to bring the professional on permanently, which gives both sides a chance to confirm fit before making a long-term commitment. Direct Hire Staffing, by contrast, is a permanent placement from day one, built around a search for long-term fit and backed by a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Mexico and Brazil currently have the largest and deepest talent pools, with a combined workforce of more than 2.2 million software engineering professionals between them. Colombia, Argentina, and Chile each offer strong, more specialized pools, and the right fit usually comes down to the specific role, budget, and how much time zone overlap the project needs.
