Firms often struggle when it comes to choosing the country to hire offshore tech talents and build their remote team there. After all, there are plenty of available destinations to choose from but you can only commit to one at a time dues to substantial upfront investments, making the opportunity cost a very real factor.
Businesses also need to take into consideration the disadvantages that they will have to overcome in each country. This often boils down to hiring cost and talent availability.
Keeping that spirit in mind, here are our top 3 ideal countries for hiring offshore tech talent in ASEAN.
Singapore
High-Quality Tech Talents
Considered as the “Silicon Valley of Asia” by many, Singapore is undoubtedly among the nation with the highest quality tech talents in the region. This is mainly due to the country’s continuous investment in both higher education and IT infrastructure, turning it into a regional tech powerhouse with top-notch developers.
Singapore also offers a great business and startup environment that favors the growth of its tech labor force. This is evident from the fact that many tech giants, such as Zoom, Stripe, ByteDance, Tencent, Huawei, and Alibaba, are opening new offices and headquarters in Singapore, allowing the local talent to advance their careers and growth through better job opportunities.
Disadvantage —Tech Talent Shortage
Singapore’s tight labor market does not yet have the capacity to quickly match the demand for tech talent. In fact, the country can only produce 2,800 ITC graduates annually while the expected demand is 60,000 tech talents over the next three years. Meaning 51,600 jobs across the IT sector will be vacant.
Coupled with the fact that tech giants are also ramping up their talent acquisition effort, it has been increasingly difficult to attract and retain quality employees. Thus, foreign firms will need to spend more time finding suitable candidates in the face of fierce competition.
Disadvantage — Expensive For Hiring and Operating
It is no surprise that Singapore developers are expensive. Based on our previous research, the monthly hiring cost of a backend engineer with 5 years of experience is US$7,605 in Singapore, which is approximately 40% higher than in other ASEAN countries, such as Vietnam.
With such an expensive headcount, it can be difficult for firms to scale up their remote tech team in Singapore, especially when you have another more affordable location.
Vietnam
Affordable But Skilled Tech Talents
Vietnam’s tech landscape has been developing rapidly to become the new unicorn of Southeast Asia. The country benefits from a fast-growing population with an extensive tech talent pool, allowing them to keep the cost of software development at much more affordable rates.
Based on our findings, it is around 15 to 50% cheaper to hire offshore tech talents in Vietnam than in other Asian countries such as Thailand or Singapore. Moreover, Vietnamese developers are highly praised for their skill set, ranked 3rd in the Asia Pacific and 13th in the world.
Meaning foreign firms can scale up their business by hiring more talents with the same budget in Vietnam.
Disadvantage — Language Barrier
While Vietnamese developers can use English, their proficiency is not as high as Singaporean or Filipino ones. So do expect some communication challenges when working with offshore developers in Vietnam.
It is worth noting that they can read technical material written in English and execute every task’s instructions perfectly. But when it comes to talking and listening, the developers will take some time to adapt dues to the accent differences.
Philippines
Affordable Developers
Many organizations choose the Philippines for their affordable tech talents, which are among the cheapest in Asia. Even when compared to Vietnam, a Philippine developer’s salary in some fields can still be lower by around 5~10%.
However, a majority of the developers in the Philippines only focus on front-end and mobile development. So hiring tech talents can be pretty excruciating for companies that are looking for talents with niche skills such as blockchain or machine learning.
In addition, compared to Singapore and Vietnam, the country’s IT labor also got outranked when it comes to technical skill level.
Disadvantage – Numerous Holidays
Currently, the Philippines has a total of 18 official non-working holidays, while Singapore only has 11 days. The numerous holidays in the Philippines mean that firms need to organize their software development plans more carefully, so that extended breaks won’t cause a negative impact on time-sensitive projects.
Moreover, having an offshore tech team in a country that was hit by an average of 20 typhoons every year means that project disruptions can happen much more often than most managers think.
Conclusion
Based on the specific requirements and expectations of different companies, all these three countries can be the “best destination” to hire offshore tech talents.
In a nutshell, Singapore developers are at the top when it comes to skills but they are also extremely expensive and not always available for hire.
On the other hand, the Philippines’ developers are the most affordable but their skill sets and performance got outranked by others, especially when taking into consideration of numerous holidays and breaks.
So we highly recommend Vietnam instead as the “safer choice” for hiring offshore tech talents, especially for a job that requires niche programming skills. Their developers are not only affordable but also possess great skill sets.
Explore how to build an offshore team building in Vietnam with ease:
Vietnam Developer Salary Forecast 2025
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