Brazil—with its fast-growing IT hubs and dependable workforce—is definitely a country worth considering when outsourcing software development.
According to the Global Innovation Index 2023 rankings, Brazil ranked first in Latin America and the Caribbean region for innovation economies and 49th worldwide. The country also has 100 technology parks and 57 accelerators nationally, and a continuously growing pool of tech specialists from the top two universities in Latin America.
The Brazilian government recognizes the growing demand for technology innovation and offers tax incentives to corporations investing in the field. This has incentivized the infrastructural growth needed to support the many talented developers.
Outsourcing to Brazil is a great opportunity to work with talented developers in—or close to—your timezone.
In this article, we cover the advantages of hiring software developers from Brazil and provide three options for hiring talented devs.
Why hire software developers from Brazil?
Brazil boasts a young, skilled workforce adept in several programming languages and a software development outsourcing sector that is one of the largest in Latin America.
Here are the top benefits of hiring Brazilian developers:
Productivity
When it comes to work, Brazilians are all about purpose, pride, and working together. These traits are carried into software development teams, resulting in collective productivity that outperforms countries that tend to be hyper-individualistic.
A recent case study conducted by Stanford even identified this high productivity. They found that Brazilian developer teams outperformed the average by approximately 50%.
What’s more, Brazilians are committed to project timelines and delivery dates.
Skill
Software engineers from Brazil have exceptional technical knowledge and excel at problem-solving. They are great at using their resourcefulness and creativity to identify and implement effective solutions. Several of their standard programming languages overlap with the US, including Python, Java, and Ruby and our favorite framework, Laravel.
Brazilian developers also hold many soft-skills that make them ideal candidates for the fast-paced collaborative environment that is the industry standard. Brazilian devs possess strong teamwork capabilities, good communication, and the ability to adapt and adjust to new technologies. These skills combined with their tremendous work ethic allow Brazilian developers to deliver high-quality work on time and within budget.
Culture
The US and Brazil hold many cultural similarities.
Let’s dig in. Their size and histories are largely parallel, starting with the “discovery” by Europeans and followed by subsequent waves of immigration. Both countries have a distinctive national identity and character, and are often inward-looking while also open and hospitable to outsiders.
Free and open media is prevalent. There’s a strong streak of self-criticism and the deeply held conviction that people can improve themselves and their economic status through their own hard work.
The US and Brazil are also the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere. In general, these two countries work well together as natural partners.
Time zone
Time zone gaps with Asia, Africa, or the Middle East affect the ability to effectively schedule meetings, communicate in an asynchronous matter, and handle problems quickly.
Brazil’s geolocation provides an insignificant lag for clients in the US. This overlap of working hours plays an important role in minimizing communication delays.
When you utilize Brazilian developers, you can avoid the negative effects of a large time lag on your decision-making processes and project workflows. This removes one of the major pitfalls of outsourcing your development needs.
And, if you outsource development to a fully managed product team like DevSquad, the time zone similarity is still a major benefit, because your product manager can communicate efficiently with the entire team.
Top 3 ways to hire software engineers from Brazil
When hiring software engineers from Brazil to build your product, you have three main choices.
Fully managed product development agency
Recruiting companies for full-time hires
Vetted freelance networks
Consider your internal resources, availability, and management experience to make the right decision.
Fully managed product development agency
First up, let’s consider the agency model that offers end-to-end development at scale.
What a fully managed product development agency offers
This method of utilizing Brazilian developers is the most comprehensive and scalable. It typically includes everything required to develop, launch, and maintain your product:
Business strategy
Project management
Software engineering
Team Selection
UX/UI
QA Management
DevOps
Agile
Pros and cons
When you choose a fully managed agency, you’re not burdened with the interview and hiring process, coordinating resources, and keeping everyone on track.
However, you do hand over the reins with this type of agency, so make sure that you choose a company that will offboard the product to you when you’re ready and provide team training and smooth handover.
For example, DevSquad enables entrepreneurs and executives to take charge of product management and QA when they are ready.
Example: DevSquad
As a nearshore software development company, DevSquad offers fully managed software development teams who collaborate remotely from Utah and Latin America.
Focusing primarily on SaaS application development, DevSquad handles product development at every step of the way: from strategic MVP roadmapping to engineering, user-friendly design, DevOps, and QA testing.
DevSquad is not only scalable and fully managed, but also offers a dual-track agile approach so that new feature ideas are continuously vetted before they’re built.
Recruiting companies for full-time hires
A recruiting company will provide you a list of qualified candidates for building your team, but interviewing, hiring and integration into your company will still be up to you.
What recruiting companies have to offer
Recruiting companies do the work of screening applicants and finding the candidates with exceptional qualifications. They might even offer groups of applicants that can be hired as teams.
However, the final selection process is ultimately up to you and selecting the right team may require more than just expertise. Achieving a high-quality and cohesive team can be a hit or miss-or just really time intensive.
Pros and cons
A recruitment company can help you quickly find quality candidates to fill positions. You can expect the candidates you interview to meet the qualifications of the positions which can narrow the scope of questions to ask. Another benefit is that there are often recruiters with specialist knowledge which can help in finding candidates needed to fit very specific needs.
While the technical quality of the candidates will be high, assessing cultural fit is not a typical strength of these companies. The best recruiting companies will familiarize themselves with your company’s mission, vision, value and goals, but it will never fully compare to your employees.
And once you find the right talent, you have to make sure you have the processes, playbooks, and managers on board to bring everyone together. Otherwise, you’re wasting money and getting nowhere.
Example: Teamit
Teamit is a boutique technical recruitment agency specializing in software development, project management, business analysis, architecture, and IT management. Located in Calgary, Alberta, they focus on providing qualified candidates from Brazil.
Recruitment companies like this can offer you qualified candidates, but you will need to consider their cultural fit and hire them before finding out how they work as a team.
Vetted freelance networks
Now, let’s look at freelance networks to help you hire vetted developers
What vetted freelance networks have to offer
This type of agency offers either:
Ongoing service fees for working with developers
One-time finding fee for hiring developers
In any case, they do not offer end-to-end software development. They don’t include UX design, QA management, or DevOps along with the software engineering resources. You would have to hire each person separately.
They don’t manage these resources for you. They just give you access to devs, and it’s up to you to produce quality software.
Pros and cons
Employment of software developers is expected to grow by 22% from 2019 to 2029, which is far faster than most other types of jobs. A freelance network can help you find and hire the right software developers, but that’s only half the battle.
Because a freelance network doesn’t help you assemble and manage high-performing product teams, that burden falls on you and your internal resources.
To craft beautiful software that works, you need not only software engineers, but also product managers, DevOps engineers, UX designers, and QA testers.
Example: Toptal
Toptal is a well-known vetted freelance network, but as one of our clients pointed out to us, it’s more of a staffing agency than anything else.
Toptal does not offer end-to-end software development services, leaving it up to their clients to handle business strategy, product management, QA management, and more.
This model could be an okay fit for you if you have world-class product managers on staff, but if you don’t, you run the risk of losing your entire investment in software engineering because you lack the other skills required to support, launch, and maintain their work.
Get a fully managed, high-performing team with Brazilian devs
When hunting for your high-performing team of Brazilian developers, it is a good idea to think beyond the immediate process of hiring. Product development is incredibly challenging and requires so much more than a group of developers.
So why not consider a fully managed development company that is battle-tested and passionate about building great products?
Let DevSquad do the heavy lifting so you can focus on growing your user base.
Learn more about hiring DevSquad and getting a high-performing dedicated development team.
