Almost every guide to hiring offshore tech talent in Southeast Asia describes the countries without giving you a single number you can put in a model. Costs are “competitive”. Talent pools are “growing”. English is “improving”. None of that helps you choose.
This guide gives you the numbers instead, for Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, with the source and the year attached to every figure. It also tells you where the data does not exist, because three of these five countries have no publicly verifiable developer salary survey, and a guide that quietly fills those gaps with invented ranges is worse than one that leaves them visible.
The most useful finding is one nobody publishes: the cheapest country on gross salary is not the cheapest country to employ in. Employer statutory contributions across these five range from under 2 percent to 23.5 percent of salary, which is large enough to reverse the ranking.
All figures checked October 2026, with the source and year named. Currency conversions are approximate at the rates stated in the salary section.
Key Takeaways
- All five countries sit in the top 12 of 78 in Kearney’s Global Services Location Index: Malaysia 3rd, Indonesia 6th, Vietnam 7th, Thailand 9th, Philippines 12th. Note that the 2023 edition is the most recent Kearney has published.
- Employer statutory load is where the real cost difference sits. At typical senior developer salaries it runs from roughly 1 percent in Thailand, where contributions are capped at a low wage ceiling, to 23.5 percent in Vietnam. Vietnam’s advantage on gross salary is partly given back here.
- English proficiency is the sharpest single difference between these markets, and it is not close. On the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, Malaysia ranks 24th and the Philippines 28th, both in the High band. Thailand ranks 116th of 123, in the Very Low band.
- The Philippines IT-BPM sector employed 1.82 million people in 2024 on 38 billion US dollars of revenue, per its industry association IBPAP. Its own 2028 roadmap target was revised downward in 2026, which is worth knowing before you model its growth.
- Indonesia’s widely quoted “9 million digital talent” figure is a government target, not a measured shortage. It dates from 2019, has no published methodology, and the World Bank attribution often attached to it could not be verified.
- Verifiable developer salary data exists for Vietnam and Malaysia, partially for the Philippines and Thailand, and not at all for Indonesia. This guide publishes what exists and says where it does not.
- Indonesia spans three time zones. Jakarta is UTC+7, but eastern Indonesia is UTC+9, which matters if you are hiring across the country rather than in Java.
The Five Countries Compared
One table, every figure sourced. No competing page on this topic publishes a side-by-side comparison of all five countries, which is why this is at the top rather than buried at the end.
| Vietnam | Philippines | Malaysia | Indonesia | Thailand | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kearney GSLI 2023 rank, of 78 | 7th | 12th | 3rd | 6th | 9th |
| EF EPI 2025 rank, of 123 | 64th | 28th | 24th | 80th | 116th |
| EF EPI band | Moderate | High | High | Moderate | Very Low |
| EF EPI score | 500 | 569 | 581 | 471 | 402 |
| Time zone | UTC+7 | UTC+8 | UTC+8 | UTC+7 to +9 | UTC+7 |
| Daylight saving | No | No | No | No | No |
| Employer statutory load, headline | 23.5% | ~15% split, employer share capped | 12 to 13% | ~10 to 12% | 5%, capped very low |
| Effective employer load at senior dev salary | 23.5% | ~6% | 12% | ~10 to 12% | ~1% |
| Verified developer salary data available | Yes, named survey | Partial, by industry not seniority | Yes, but sources conflict | No | Partial, ceilings only |
| Verified talent pool figure | ~1.26m ICT workers | 1.82m IT-BPM FTEs | ~357,000 digital talents | Not verifiable | Not verifiable |
Read the last two rows before the others. They are the honest state of the evidence, and they explain why most guides on this topic are written in adjectives.
What We Could Not Verify, and Why It Matters
This section exists because the alternative is pretending. Four things could not be verified to a standard we would publish:
- No Indonesian developer salary data. We found no named salary survey, recruiter guide or government occupation-level figure for Indonesian software developers that is publicly accessible. Robert Walters gates its Indonesia survey, the national statistics agency’s sector wage series sits behind a paywall, and the crowdsourced alternatives disclose no sample. So this guide publishes no Indonesian salary figure. If you need one, requesting a gated recruiter guide is the realistic route.
- No seniority-banded salary data for Thailand or the Philippines. Thailand’s available figures are stated as ceilings (“up to”) rather than bands. The Philippines has solid government occupation data, but cut by industry rather than by junior, mid and senior.
- No reliable IT graduate count for Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia or the Philippines. Malaysia’s statistics office publishes graduate totals without a field-of-study breakdown. A widely repeated Thai figure of “fewer than 3,500 IT graduates a year” appears to describe graduates entering the industry rather than total output, and the underlying study is not named, so we have not used it.
- Kearney’s Global Services Location Index has not been updated since 2023. Every guide citing it, including this one, is citing three-year-old rankings. We say so rather than presenting it as current.
Why this matters commercially: if a provider gives you confident salary benchmarks for all five countries, ask what they are sourced from. The data genuinely does not exist for one of them, and a number presented without a source is a guess wearing a suit.
Developer Salaries: What the Data Actually Shows
Conversions below use rates current at the start of October 2026: 1 USD to 25,935 VND, 62.75 PHP, 4.08 MYR, 33.58 THB. Treat the dollar figures as scale rather than as budget, and see global salary benchmarking for how to build a defensible band from them.
Vietnam: The Best Data of the Five
ITviec’s Vietnam IT Salary and Recruitment Market Report 2025-2026, based on 1,839 respondents, gives median monthly gross figures for software developers:
| Seniority | Median monthly gross | Approximate USD |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-level developer | 30,100,000 VND | ~1,160 |
| Senior developer | 39,900,000 VND | ~1,540 |
This is the only one of the five countries with a current, named, sample-disclosed developer salary survey that is publicly available. For the market in depth, see our guide to software developers in Vietnam.
Malaysia: Good Data, But the Sources Disagree
Malaysia has three credible sources and they produce very different numbers, which is worth understanding rather than resolving by picking one.
| Source | Figure, monthly | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Randstad Malaysia 2025 Job Market Outlook and Salary Guide | Junior 3,500 MYR (~860 USD), mid 10,000 MYR (~2,450 USD), senior 17,000 MYR (~4,170 USD) | Basic salary for permanent software engineer roles, excluding bonuses. Agency and multinational placements |
| Department of Statistics Malaysia, Salaries and Wages Survey 2024 | Median 4,154 MYR (~1,020 USD) for the information and communication sector | All roles in the sector, household survey covering 10.24 million employees |
| PIKOM Economic and Digital Job Market Outlook 2025 | Average 4,422 MYR (~1,080 USD) across technical jobs | Association benchmark built on crowdsourced salary data with purchasing power adjustment |
Randstad’s mid-level figure sits roughly 2.3 times above the sector median. That is not an error in either source. Randstad reflects what agencies place into multinationals; the statistics office and PIKOM reflect the whole sector including non-technical and smaller-company roles. If you are hiring through a recruiter into a product engineering role, budget closer to the Randstad figures. If you are modeling a large back-office team, the sector median is more realistic. No single number is “the Malaysian developer salary”.
Philippines: Government Data, Cut by Industry
The Philippine Statistics Authority’s Occupational Wages Survey 2024 publishes average monthly wage rates by occupation and industry, which is more reliable than a vendor estimate but harder to map to seniority:
| Occupation and industry | Average monthly | Approximate USD |
|---|---|---|
| Applications programmers, insurance and pension funding | 96,360 PHP | ~1,535 |
| Web and multimedia developers, entertainment | 79,064 PHP | ~1,260 |
| Applications programmers, telecommunications and information systems | 73,804 PHP | ~1,176 |
| Software developers, publishing | 66,180 PHP | ~1,055 |
| All occupations, national average for full-time time-rated employees | 21,544 PHP | ~343 |
That last row is included deliberately, because it shows the premium developers command locally. A programmer in the insurance sector earns roughly four and a half times the national average wage, which is relevant to retention: you are not competing with the national average, you are competing with the banks.
Thailand: Ceilings Only
Adecco Thailand’s 2026 salary guide gives upper bounds rather than bands: software developers up to 70,000 THB a month (roughly 2,080 USD), with data scientists and data engineers up to 80,000 THB. The guide does not disclose its methodology for the salary table.
A figure of 100,000 THB for a senior software developer also circulates from a recruiter’s salary comparison tool, but that source does not state whether the figure is monthly or annual, so we have not used it. For the market in more depth see our guide to software developers in Thailand.
Indonesia: No Usable Published Data
As set out above, we found nothing publishable. This is the largest market in the region by population and the weakest in public salary transparency, which is itself a useful planning fact: budget for a benchmarking exercise rather than assuming you can look it up.
The Cost Nobody Models: Employer Statutory Load
This is the most useful section in this guide and it appears on no competing page. Gross salary is what you negotiate. Employer statutory contributions are what you also pay, on top, and they vary by more than twentyfold across these five countries once caps are applied.
| Country | Employer contributions | Cap | Effective load at a senior developer salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thailand | Social Security Fund 5% | Monthly wage ceiling of 17,500 THB from 1 January 2026, so a maximum of 875 THB a month | Around 1 to 1.3%. The cap dominates completely |
| Philippines | SSS employer 10% of the monthly salary credit, PhilHealth 2.5%, Pag-IBIG 2%, plus a small employer-only employees’ compensation charge | SSS salary credit ceiling 35,000 PHP, PhilHealth income ceiling 100,000 PHP, Pag-IBIG fund salary maximum 10,000 PHP | Around 6% at a 96,000 PHP salary, falling as salary rises |
| Indonesia | BPJS Kesehatan 4%, plus work accident 0.24 to 1.74% by industry risk, death 0.3%, old age 3.7%, pension 2% | Health cap 12,000,000 IDR a month, pension cap around 10,500,000 IDR | Around 10 to 12% before caps bite |
| Malaysia | EPF 13% at monthly wages of 5,000 MYR or below, 12% above, plus SOCSO and EIS separately. Non-citizens registered from August 1998 pay 2% | No general EPF cap at these salary levels | 12%, and notably only 2% for non-citizen staff |
| Vietnam | Social insurance 17.5%, health 3%, unemployment 1%, trade union fund 2% | Capped at 20 times the government reference level, which is 50,600,000 VND a month from 1 July 2026 | 23.5%, since the senior developer median sits below the cap |
The conclusion that follows is the single most commercially useful thing in this guide. Vietnam has the lowest gross developer salaries of the markets where we have reliable data, and the highest employer statutory load of the five. Thailand has higher gross salaries and an employer load of around one percent. On fully loaded cost those two markets are much closer than a salary comparison suggests, and in some role bands the ranking reverses.
Three practical consequences:
- Never compare countries on gross salary alone. Build the loaded cost, including the cap, or you will choose the wrong market.
- Check where the cap falls relative to your salary band. In Thailand and the Philippines the caps are low enough that the effective rate collapses at professional salaries. In Vietnam the cap sits above the senior developer median, so you pay the full rate.
- Ask about the 13th month separately. It is a legal requirement in the Philippines and Indonesia, and a near-universal expectation in Vietnam without being legally required. Budget 13 months in those three markets regardless of which it is.
Our country payroll guides cover the mechanics: payroll services in Vietnam and payroll services in Thailand.
English Proficiency: The Sharpest Difference Between These Markets
The live version of this article said English was “improving” in several markets. Here is what the measured data says, from the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, which covers 123 countries and regions and draws on 2.2 million test takers.
| Country | Rank of 123 | Score | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Malaysia | 24th | 581 | High |
| Philippines | 28th | 569 | High |
| Vietnam | 64th | 500 | Moderate |
| Indonesia | 80th | 471 | Moderate |
| Thailand | 116th | 402 | Very Low |
The global average score is 488, for context. Two things follow that the usual “English is improving” framing obscures:
- The gap between the top and bottom of this group is enormous. Malaysia and the Philippines are in the High band, ahead of many European countries. Thailand is in the Very Low band at 116th of 123. That is not a nuance to manage, it is a structural difference that should shape which roles you place where.
- A country-level score is not a candidate-level score. Vietnam at Moderate contains plenty of developers with strong written English, because the technology sector screens for it and reads documentation in English all day. The country index tells you about the general population, not about your shortlist. The right response is to screen for it explicitly rather than to assume it either way.
The practical rule: for roles that need sustained spoken client interaction, such as support, pre-sales engineering or technical account management, the Philippines and Malaysia have a genuine structural advantage. For roles where written English and code are the medium, the gap narrows considerably and cost and availability matter more.
One note for completeness: Singapore does not appear in the 2025 edition of the index, so we have not given it a band.
Talent Pool Size and Pipeline
Where verifiable figures exist, here they are. Where they do not, we say so rather than reaching for a vendor estimate.
Philippines: The Largest and Best Documented
The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines reported that the IT-BPM sector generated 38 billion US dollars in revenue in 2024, up about 7 percent on 2023, employing 1.82 million full-time equivalents, also up about 7 percent.
Worth knowing before you model its trajectory: the sector’s long-standing 2028 roadmap target of 59 billion dollars and 2.5 million FTEs was revised downward during 2026, to roughly 50 billion dollars, with industry reporting citing artificial intelligence and global competition. That is a material change to the growth story and most guides on this topic still quote the original target.
Malaysia: A Measured Pool and a Measured Gap
MDEC, the government digital economy agency, publishes a Digital Talent Snapshot. The Q3 2024 edition recorded 357,414 digital talents and 92,324 digital job vacancies in that quarter alone, up from 42,835 in Q1 and 80,719 in Q2.
Be precise about what that measures. The talent figure is derived from LinkedIn Talent Insights across 1,291 digital role titles, so it is a professional-network proxy rather than a census, and MDEC says so. The vacancy figure is tracked across several job boards. Both are useful directional indicators with a disclosed method, which is more than most figures in this space offer.
Vietnam: Large Pool, Structural Senior Shortage
Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology reported a digital technology industry generating roughly 198 billion US dollars in 2025 across 80,052 active firms, with close to 1.26 million people working in the broader ICT sector.
The constraint is seniority rather than volume. Vietnam produces around 50,000 IT graduates a year, but industry and ministry reporting puts the share immediately employable at roughly 30 percent, against demand of about 700,000 IT personnel versus roughly 500,000 trained domestically. That leaves a persistent shortfall near 200,000 people, concentrated at senior level. Plan for a longer search at senior level and for investing in onboarding at junior level.
Indonesia: Correcting a Figure Everyone Repeats
You will see Indonesia described as needing 9 million digital talents by 2030, frequently attributed to the World Bank. That framing is not accurate and it is worth correcting.
The figure originates with the Indonesian government, stated by its communications ministry in 2019 and restated by officials in 2024 and reframed as a target in 2025. The source documents cite no original methodology and give no annual breakdown, and we could not verify the World Bank attribution at all. So it is a government-stated goal, not a measured shortage, and using it as evidence of market depth is reading it backwards: a target that large describes a gap, not a supply.
Indonesia’s genuine strengths are its scale, with the largest population and labor market in the region, and a fast-growing domestic technology sector. Its weakness for a buyer is transparency: no verifiable salary data, no reliable graduate count, and no measured workforce figure.
Thailand: Small Specialist Pool
Thailand’s pool is the least well documented of the five and appears to be the smallest in advanced digital skills. Reporting citing IMD’s digital competitiveness work put around 580,000 Thai people at the expert level of digital skills, roughly 1 percent of the population, against about 3 percent in Malaysia and 8 percent in Singapore. Treat that as indicative rather than precise, since the underlying study is not directly accessible.
A widely repeated claim that Thailand produces fewer than 3,500 IT graduates a year appears to describe graduates entering the industry rather than total graduate output, and the source is unnamed, so we have not used it.
Time Zones and Working Overlap
| Country | Offset | Overlap with UK | Overlap with US East Coast | Overlap with Sydney |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vietnam, Thailand | UTC+7 | Three to four hours in their afternoon | None in normal hours | Most of the working day |
| Philippines, Malaysia | UTC+8 | Two to three hours in their afternoon | None in normal hours | Most of the working day |
| Indonesia | UTC+7 to UTC+9 | Varies by region | None in normal hours | Most of the working day |
None of these countries observes daylight saving, which means your overlap window shifts twice a year as your own clocks change rather than theirs. Two points usually missed:
- Indonesia is not one time zone. Jakarta and Java are UTC+7, central Indonesia is UTC+8 and eastern Indonesia is UTC+9. If you are hiring across the country rather than in Java, your own team may be coordinating across two internal zones.
- For US companies there is no natural overlap with any of them. That is a design decision rather than a problem: either disciplined asynchronous working with a documented handoff, or an agreed standing window that one side absorbs. Decide which before the offer, and say so in the job description. Candidates who agree to difficult hours during a process and disengage months later show up as attrition rather than as a conversation.
Our guide to building efficient global teams in APAC goes deeper on the operating rhythm.
The Five Countries in Detail
Ordered by how well the evidence supports the case, rather than alphabetically or by popularity.
Vietnam: A Rising Powerhouse for Tech Talent
Vietnam has become the region’s most talked-about engineering market, with a strong technical education pipeline, competitive costs and a fast-growing startup ecosystem.
The evidence behind that. 7th of 78 in Kearney’s 2023 index, ahead of the Philippines and Singapore. Roughly 1.26 million ICT workers and 80,052 active digital technology firms per the Ministry of Science and Technology. The lowest verified median developer salaries of the five markets where data exists. And the only one of the five with a current, named, sample-disclosed salary survey.
The honest trade-offs. English at 64th of 123, in the Moderate band, so screen spoken fluency rather than assuming it. The highest employer statutory load of the five at 23.5 percent, which erodes part of the salary advantage. And a structural senior shortage, so a senior search takes longer than the salary data might suggest.
Best suited to: product engineering, backend and full-stack development, mobile, QA automation, and data engineering, where written English and code are the working medium. See offshore hiring in Vietnam for the operating models, employer of record Vietnam for employing there without an entity, and outsourcing to Vietnam for the vendor route.
Philippines: A Leader in Communication and IT Services
The Philippines combines excellent English proficiency with the region’s most established outsourcing industry and strong cultural alignment with Western markets.
The evidence. 28th of 123 on English, in the High band, at 569 against a global average of 488. An IT-BPM sector employing 1.82 million people on 38 billion dollars of revenue in 2024. Government occupation-level wage data, which no other country in this group publishes at this granularity. An effective employer statutory load of around 6 percent once the contribution ceilings are applied, which is low.
The honest trade-offs. 12th of 78 in the Kearney index, the lowest of these five, and down three places in that edition. The sector’s own 2028 growth target was revised downward in 2026. Statutory 13th month pay under Presidential Decree 851, payable on or before 24 December, so budget 13 months. And strong local competition for senior engineers from banks and the large captive centers.
Best suited to: anything requiring sustained spoken client interaction, so technical support, customer success engineering, pre-sales, and service desk, alongside web and applications development. See outsourcing to the Philippines.
Malaysia: Quality Talent with Strong Infrastructure
Malaysia offers a strong education system, high English proficiency, advanced digital infrastructure and a stable regulatory environment. It is not the lowest-cost market in the region.
The evidence. 3rd of 78 in the Kearney index, the highest of these five and ahead of every other Southeast Asian country. 24th of 123 on English at 581, the best score in this group. A measured digital talent pool of around 357,414 with a disclosed methodology, and 92,324 vacancies in a single quarter, which tells you the market is tight. Employer EPF at 12 to 13 percent, and notably only 2 percent for non-citizen employees, which is unusual and relevant if you are staffing a regional hub with expatriates.
The honest trade-offs. Higher salaries than Vietnam, with recruiter-sourced mid-level figures around 10,000 MYR a month. Sources disagree sharply on what a developer costs, as set out above, so benchmark your specific role rather than relying on a single guide. And a tight market, which the vacancy numbers make explicit.
Best suited to: regional hub roles, cloud and DevOps, data analytics, cybersecurity, and engineering leadership where English and infrastructure matter more than unit cost.
Indonesia: A Large and Rapidly Growing Talent Market
Indonesia is the region’s largest labor market, with a population over 270 million, a fast-growing technology ecosystem and government investment in digital skills.
The evidence. 6th of 78 in the Kearney index, ahead of Vietnam and Thailand. Genuine scale, and a domestic technology sector that has produced several large consumer platforms, which means engineers with real experience of operating at volume.
The honest trade-offs, and they are significant. No publicly verifiable developer salary data at all, which makes budgeting a research exercise rather than a lookup. English at 80th of 123, in the Moderate band and the second lowest of this group. Three time zones. Statutory THR holiday allowance, so budget 13 months. Employer statutory load around 10 to 12 percent, itemized across health, work accident, death, old age and pension schemes. And an employment contract regime where Indonesian-language execution is expected, which is the most consequential language rule in the region and worth local advice.
Best suited to: scale hiring where volume matters, backend and mobile development, and companies with a commercial interest in the Indonesian market itself rather than purely a cost motive.
Thailand: Emerging Tech Talent with a Low Employer Cost
Thailand offers government support for tech growth, a balanced cost-to-quality ratio, a strategic location and good infrastructure.
The evidence, and it is a genuinely surprising one. 9th of 78 in the Kearney index. And by far the lowest employer statutory load of the five: the Social Security Fund takes 5 percent from the employer but is capped at a monthly wage ceiling of 17,500 THB from 1 January 2026, which means a maximum of 875 THB a month. At a developer salary that is an effective load of around 1 percent. The ceiling is scheduled to rise to 20,000 THB in 2029 and 23,000 THB in 2032, so the advantage narrows slowly rather than suddenly.
The honest trade-offs, and the first is serious. English at 116th of 123, in the Very Low band. That is the single biggest constraint in this group and it rules Thailand out for client-facing roles in most cases. The specialist talent pool appears to be the smallest of the five. And salary data is available only as ceilings rather than bands.
Best suited to: engineering roles inside an English-speaking team with strong written-communication norms, cloud and infrastructure work, fintech given the local sector strength, and situations where fully loaded cost matters more than headline salary. See employer of record Thailand.
Which Country for Which Role
The question most buyers actually have, answered as a table rather than as a recommendation to hire everywhere.
| If you are hiring | Strongest fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Backend, full-stack or mobile engineers | Vietnam, then Indonesia | Deepest pools at the lowest gross salaries, with written English sufficient for the work |
| Technical support, service desk, customer success engineering | Philippines | High-band English plus the most established service delivery industry in the region |
| Cloud, DevOps, cybersecurity, data | Malaysia | Highest Kearney rank and highest English score, with infrastructure to match |
| Engineering leadership or a regional hub | Malaysia, then Singapore if budget allows | English, stability, and a 2 percent employer rate for non-citizen staff in Malaysia |
| Large-volume delivery teams | Philippines or Indonesia | Scale, and in the Philippines a low effective employer load |
| Cost-sensitive engineering inside an English-speaking team | Thailand | Around 1 percent employer statutory load changes the fully loaded maths |
| Anything requiring sustained spoken client contact | Philippines or Malaysia | Both in the High English band. Avoid Thailand for these roles |
A note on the obvious question. If you want one country rather than several, the defensible answers are Vietnam for engineering cost and depth, the Philippines for communication-intensive roles, and Malaysia for seniority and infrastructure. Anyone naming a single best country for all roles is selling rather than advising. For the wider country-selection view see best countries for outsourcing software development, and for non-technical offshore roles see hiring offshore talent in Southeast Asia.
Key Considerations When Hiring Offshore in Southeast Asia
Beyond choosing the country, four things determine whether the arrangement works.
Legal and Compliance Requirements
You cannot employ someone in these countries without a local entity or an employer of record, because a company with no local presence generally cannot register as a contributing employer with the social security authority at all, and therefore has no lawful way to pay statutory contributions. Employment contract requirements also differ: written contracts are mandatory in Vietnam for engagements over one month and in Malaysia for terms over one month, while Thailand and the Philippines do not require writing at all, though statutory terms apply regardless. See what is an employer of record and how to hire international employees.
Cultural Fit and Communication
Workplace norms differ, and the differences are usually about how problems surface rather than about capability.
Deference to seniority is common across much of the region, which in practice means issues can be raised late or indirectly. The fixes are practical rather than cultural: ask direct questions instead of open ones, write decisions down, and make it visible when someone flags a problem early. A team that is praised for raising issues raises them sooner.
Scalability and Talent Availability
Availability differs sharply by seniority, not just by country. Junior and mid-level engineers are available in volume across the region. Senior engineers are scarce almost everywhere in it, which is what the Vietnamese shortfall figure and the Malaysian vacancy numbers both describe. Plan senior searches on a longer timeline and budget for onboarding at junior level, where the return on structured onboarding is highest.
Retention, Which Is the Real Cost
A cheap hire who leaves in nine months is not cheap. Three things that measurably help: give the team ownership of a product area rather than a ticket queue, be explicit about working hours before the offer rather than after, and invest in the onboarding, since structured onboarding pays for itself fastest in markets where a minority of graduates are immediately job-ready. See best practices for hiring offshore tech talent in Southeast Asia for the operational detail.
How TalentHero Helps You Build Offshore Teams with Confidence
TalentHero is an Asia Pacific specialist that both recruits and legally employs, with our own entities in the region. That matters for offshore tech hiring specifically, because the two halves of the problem, finding engineers in a market you do not know and employing them compliantly in a country you have no presence in, are usually sold by different companies.
- Recruitment on Demand. Our recruiters source and screen across all five of these markets, including passive candidates who are not on the job boards and senior engineers who are not applying to anything.
- Employer of Record. We employ your chosen hires through our own local entities, with local-law contracts, statutory registration, payroll and withholding handled, and intellectual property assignment drafted under local law rather than translated from a US template.
- Global Payroll. Payroll run against current statutory rates, contribution caps and filing calendars, which as the cost section above shows is not a trivial detail in this region.
- Contractor Management. Compliant engagement where the relationship is genuinely contractor rather than employment.
- Visa and Immigration, Equipment Procurement and Office Space. The practical pieces of standing up a team, in one relationship.
And one thing we will do that is unusual: tell you what the cost actually is in your chosen market, including where the contribution cap falls at your salary band, rather than quoting a flat percentage. If you would rather compare sourcing channels first, see our review of the best platforms for hiring offshore tech talent in Southeast Asia.
When a Different Answer Is Better
- Large-volume, process-driven work rather than engineering. A BPO provider will deliver it more cheaply than an EOR arrangement. See offshore BPO companies in Southeast Asia.
- A committed team of twenty or more in one country. Your own entity becomes cheaper, and the conversation to have is about transition rather than about EOR.
- A short, defined project with a clear deliverable. A vendor-supplied team or a properly structured contractor engagement is simpler. See hiring a remote development team.
- A footprint centered outside Asia Pacific. Our depth is regional. If most of your hiring is in Europe or Latin America, we will tell you that early.
Ready to Start Hiring Offshore Tech Talent in Southeast Asia?
The useful first conversation is not about services. It is about which of these five markets fits the specific roles you are hiring, what the fully loaded cost is there at your salary band, and what the realistic timeline is for the seniority you need.
Get in touch with TalentHero and we will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is a country or a model we would not place you in.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Which country in Southeast Asia is best for hiring offshore tech talent?
It depends on the role, and anyone naming one country for everything is selling. On the evidence: Vietnam for engineering cost and depth, with the lowest verified developer salaries of the five. The Philippines for anything communication-intensive, at 28th of 123 on English proficiency. Malaysia for seniority, cloud, security and regional leadership roles, ranking 3rd of 78 in Kearney’s index and 24th on English. Thailand where fully loaded cost matters most, because its employer statutory load is around 1 percent.
2. What do offshore developers cost in Southeast Asia?
Where verified data exists: in Vietnam, median monthly gross is about 30.1 million VND for a mid-level developer and 39.9 million for a senior, roughly 1,160 and 1,540 US dollars, per ITviec’s 2025-2026 survey of 1,839 respondents. In Malaysia, Randstad’s 2025 guide gives 10,000 MYR for mid-level and 17,000 for senior, though the national statistics office puts the sector median far lower at 4,154 MYR, because the two measure different populations. Philippine government data shows applications programmers averaging 66,000 to 96,000 PHP a month depending on industry. No verifiable Indonesian salary data exists publicly.
3. Why is the cheapest salary not the cheapest country?
Because employer statutory contributions vary enormously and most are capped. At a senior developer salary the effective employer load is roughly 1 percent in Thailand, where the contribution ceiling is only 17,500 THB a month, around 6 percent in the Philippines, 12 percent in Malaysia, 10 to 12 percent in Indonesia and the full 23.5 percent in Vietnam, where the cap sits above the senior developer median. Vietnam has the lowest gross salaries and the highest statutory load, so the fully loaded gap between it and higher-salary markets is narrower than it looks.
4. Which Southeast Asian country has the best English for tech roles?
Malaysia and the Philippines, both in the High band of the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, at 24th and 28th of 123 countries with scores of 581 and 569 against a global average of 488. Vietnam is 64th at 500 and Indonesia 80th at 471, both Moderate. Thailand is 116th at 402, in the Very Low band. Two caveats: a country score describes the general population rather than your shortlist, and developers in technology sectors typically read and write English well regardless of their country’s score, so screen spoken fluency specifically rather than inferring it.
5. How large is the tech talent pool in each country?
Where it is measured: the Philippines IT-BPM sector employed 1.82 million people in 2024 per IBPAP. Vietnam has close to 1.26 million ICT workers per its Ministry of Science and Technology. Malaysia’s MDEC recorded around 357,414 digital talents in Q3 2024, derived from LinkedIn data rather than a census. No verifiable workforce figure exists for Indonesia or Thailand, and the widely quoted Indonesian “9 million by 2030” number is a government target rather than a measured shortage.
6. Do I need a legal entity to hire tech talent in Southeast Asia?
Not if you use an employer of record, which employs the person through its own local entity. This matters more than it sounds: a company with no local presence generally cannot register as a contributing employer with the local social security authority, so it has no lawful route to pay statutory contributions even if it wants to. You do need your own entity if you intend to invoice local customers or if you are scaling past roughly twenty people in one country.
7. What roles can I hire offshore in Southeast Asia?
Across the region: backend, frontend, full-stack and mobile development, QA and test automation, DevOps and cloud engineering, data engineering and analytics, cybersecurity, UI and UX design, technical support and service desk, and engineering management. The country matters more than the role list. Place client-facing and spoken-communication roles in the Philippines or Malaysia, and code-centric roles wherever cost and depth suit you best. See also hiring remote developers.
8. How long does it take to hire an offshore developer in Southeast Asia?
Typically three to six weeks to find and select a mid-level engineer, and longer for senior or scarce specialisms such as machine learning, platform engineering or security. Once you have chosen someone, onboarding through an employer of record takes days. The constraint is almost always the search rather than the employment setup, and senior searches run longer across the whole region because seniority is scarce everywhere in it.
9. What is the time zone overlap with Southeast Asia?
Vietnam and Thailand are UTC+7, the Philippines and Malaysia UTC+8, and Indonesia spans UTC+7 to UTC+9. None observes daylight saving, so your overlap shifts when your own clocks change rather than theirs. You get most of the working day with Australia and Singapore, three to four hours in their afternoon with the UK and Europe, and no natural overlap with the United States. For US teams, choose deliberately between disciplined asynchronous working and an agreed standing window, and set the expectation in the job description.
10. Do I have to pay a 13th month salary?
It is a legal requirement in the Philippines, under Presidential Decree 851, at one twelfth of basic salary earned in the year and payable on or before 24 December. Indonesia requires a THR holiday allowance. In Vietnam it is customary rather than statutory, but so universally expected that candidates assume it, so budget 13 months there too and note that writing it into the contract converts a custom into an enforceable obligation. Malaysia and Thailand have no such requirement.
11. Why are companies hiring offshore tech talent in Southeast Asia?
Cost is the obvious reason but not the only one. All five of these countries sit in the top 12 of 78 in Kearney’s Global Services Location Index, which measures financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, business environment and digital resonance together. The region also offers a working-day overlap with Australia and Asia, large and growing engineering pools, and in the Philippines and Malaysia English proficiency in the High band. Note that the Kearney data is from its 2023 edition, the most recent published.
12. What are the main challenges of hiring offshore in Southeast Asia?
Four. Senior talent is scarce across the whole region, not just in one country. English varies enormously, from the High band in Malaysia and the Philippines to Very Low in Thailand. You cannot employ anyone without a local entity or an employer of record. And statutory employer costs differ by more than twentyfold once caps are applied, which makes country comparison on salary alone actively misleading.
13. Can I hire offshore developers as contractors instead of employees?
Only where the relationship is genuinely independent. Authorities across the region assess the substance of the working relationship rather than the label, so a developer working set hours under your direction with no other clients is likely to be treated as an employee, exposing you to back contributions and penalties. It also weakens your intellectual property position, because the statutory defaults that favour employers generally apply to employment relationships rather than contractor ones.
14. How does TalentHero help with hiring offshore tech talent in Southeast Asia?
We recruit, employ and pay across the region through our own entities, which means one provider for sourcing engineers, employing them compliantly and running payroll correctly, rather than three. We will also tell you the fully loaded cost in your chosen market at your actual salary band, including where the contribution cap falls, and say plainly when a different country or a different model fits your requirement better.
