Software developers in Vietnam have become one of the most discussed options in global engineering hiring, and for good reason. The country now has a large, fast growing technology workforce, salaries well below Western levels, and a government actively funding the training pipeline. What most articles will not tell you is where the real constraints sit: a genuine shortage of job ready graduates, an English proficiency score that has only just returned to the moderate band, and a market where rate estimates published by vendors disagree with each other by a factor of three.

This guide gives you the market picture first, with sourced figures, so you can decide whether Vietnam fits your plan. Then it covers what developers actually cost once statutory contributions are included, where to hire, the risks worth taking seriously, and a step by step process for making the hire compliantly.

Key Takeaways

• The market is large and growing fast. Vietnam’s digital technology industry reported revenue of roughly 198 billion US dollars in 2025, up about 26 percent year on year, across more than 80,000 active digital technology firms, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
• Demand outruns supply. Around 700,000 IT personnel were needed by the end of 2025 against roughly 500,000 trained domestically, leaving a shortfall near 200,000 people. Only about 30 percent of the roughly 50,000 annual IT graduates are considered immediately employable.
• Salaries are published and verifiable. ITviec’s Vietnam IT Salary and Recruitment Market Report 2025-2026 puts the median senior back end developer at about 39.9 million VND a month, with a CTO or VP of Engineering median above 100 million VND.
• Budget 23.5 percent on top of gross salary for statutory employer contributions: social insurance 17.5 percent, health insurance 3 percent, unemployment insurance 1 percent, and the trade union fund 2 percent.
• English is a real constraint, not a selling point. Vietnam ranked 64th of 123 countries in the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, with a score of 500, which is the bottom of the moderate band. Screen for it rather than assuming it.
• You do not need a local entity. An Employer of Record can employ developers in Vietnam on your behalf in days rather than the months an Investment Registration Certificate and Enterprise Registration Certificate take.

Vietnam’s Software Developer Market in 2026

Before you evaluate candidates, it helps to understand the system producing them. Vietnam’s technology sector is not a low cost labor pool that happens to write code. It is a deliberately built industry with national targets attached to it.

How Big Is the Talent Pool?

Be careful with headcount claims here, because this is where most articles go wrong. You will see figures from 430,000 to 600,000 developers quoted confidently across vendor websites, all attributed to different editions of the same gated industry report, and none of them independently checkable.

What can be verified comes from the government. The Ministry of Information and Communications reported close to 1.26 million people working in the ICT sector in 2024 across roughly 74,000 enterprises, though that figure covers hardware and electronics manufacturing as well as software. By 2025 the Ministry of Science and Technology counted 80,052 active digital technology firms, about 10 percent more than the year before, generating around 198 billion US dollars in revenue.

The honest summary: Vietnam’s software developer population is most likely in the mid hundreds of thousands and growing, sitting inside a broader ICT workforce of well over a million. That is more than enough depth for almost any hiring plan short of building a thousand person engineering organization, which is the practical question you actually care about.

The Graduate Pipeline and the Skills Gap

Vietnam produces roughly 50,000 IT graduates a year. The constraint is not volume, it is readiness: industry and ministry reporting puts the share who are immediately employable at around 30 percent. Set against demand of about 700,000 IT personnel by the end of 2025 versus roughly 500,000 trained domestically, that leaves a shortfall in the region of 200,000 people, and an annual gap of 150,000 to 200,000 developers and engineers that has persisted since 2023.

Three practical consequences follow for you as an employer:

• Senior talent is genuinely competitive. The shortage is concentrated at the experienced end. Juniors are plentiful; strong seniors are fought over, and your offer and process speed matter more than you might expect for the price point.
• Technical screening is not optional. With roughly seven in ten graduates needing further training before they are productive, a credential is not a signal. Skills based assessment is doing the real work.
• Counteroffers and competing processes are common. Move quickly between stages and do not let an offer sit for a week.

Where the Government Is Pushing

This matters because it tells you where the supply will be in three years, not just where it is now.

• Digital Technology Industry Development Programme 2026-2030. Approved in May 2026, it targets at least 300 billion US dollars in sector revenue by 2030, annual growth of at least 12 percent, more than 3 million people trained in the sector, and 100,000 digital technology enterprises.
• STEM enrolment. The Ministry of Education and Training reports more than 771,000 students in STEM programs, about 29 percent of all university students, with a target of 35 percent by 2030. In the 2026 admissions round, over 154,000 applications went to computer science and IT programs.
• Decree 179 scholarships. Effective July 2026, these provide annual scholarships of 37 to 55 million VND to the top 30 percent of students in basic sciences, key engineering and strategic technology programs, with roughly 22,250 recipients from September 2026.
• Semiconductor and AI workforce, Decision 1017/QD-TTg. Signed in September 2024, it targets at least 50,000 engineers across the semiconductor value chain by 2030, including at least 5,000 with intensive AI expertise.

Vietnam also placed 7th globally in Kearney’s 2023 Global Services Location Index, which remains the most recent edition of that ranking. If you are weighing Vietnam against neighboring markets, our comparison of the best countries for outsourcing software development sets it alongside the alternatives.

What Software Developers in Vietnam Actually Cost

Cost is usually the reason Vietnam enters the conversation, so it is worth getting past the vague “40 to 70 percent cheaper” claim that most pages stop at. There are three numbers you need: the salary, the statutory employer cost on top of it, and the rate if you go through a vendor instead of employing directly.

Salaries by Role and Seniority

The figures below are median monthly gross salaries from ITviec’s Vietnam IT Salary and Recruitment Market Report 2025-2026, based on 1,839 respondents surveyed during 2025. It is the best provenanced salary dataset publicly available for Vietnam, because it names its sample size and survey window. USD conversions are approximate at roughly 26,000 VND to the dollar and will drift with the exchange rate.

Role	Fresher	Junior	Mid-level	Senior	Lead / Manager
Back-end developer	12.4M VND (~$475)	25.4M (~$975)	30.1M (~$1,160)	39.9M (~$1,535)	54.9M (~$2,110)
Front-end developer	–	–	30.8M (~$1,185)	41.8M (~$1,610)	46.3M (~$1,780)
Full-stack developer	10.1M (~$390)	20.4M (~$785)	34.5M (~$1,325)	41.8M (~$1,610)	44.8M (~$1,725)
Mobile developer	14.2M (~$545)	28.8M (~$1,110)	29.1M (~$1,115)	37.4M (~$1,435)	45.7M (~$1,760)
Embedded engineer	21.4M (~$825)	23.9M (~$920)	28.4M (~$1,090)	39.4M (~$1,515)	60.7M (~$2,330)

Leadership and specialist medians from the same report: Tech Lead about 51.8 million VND, Project Leader or Manager about 50.1 million, and CTO, CIO or VP of Engineering about 101.3 million VND a month.

One number deserves singling out because no competing guide surfaces it. A data engineer with three to four years of experience has a median around 56.9 million VND a month, which is higher than a senior back end developer. If your roadmap includes data platform, machine learning or AI work, budget for it specifically rather than assuming your standard engineering band will stretch.

Two caveats worth stating plainly. These are self reported medians from a job platform audience, so they reflect the local employment market rather than what a foreign employer typically pays, which usually sits above the median for comparable seniority. And a median is not an offer. For a structured approach to setting the number, see our guide to global salary benchmarking.

Employer Costs on Top of Salary

Vietnam’s statutory employer contributions are straightforward and predictable, which is a genuine advantage over many markets. On top of gross salary you pay:

• Social insurance: 17.5 percent
• Health insurance: 3 percent
• Unemployment insurance: 1 percent
• Trade union fund: 2 percent

That totals 23.5 percent above gross. Worked through on a mid-level developer at 30 million VND a month:

Gross salary	30,000,000 VND
Social insurance (17.5%)	5,250,000 VND
Health insurance (3%)	900,000 VND
Unemployment insurance (1%)	300,000 VND
Trade union fund (2%)	600,000 VND
Total employer cost	37,050,000 VND (roughly $1,425)

Contribution bases are capped at multiples of the statutory reference salary, so for high earners the effective percentage is lower than 23.5 percent. If you are employing through an Employer of Record, add that provider’s monthly fee on top. Corporate income tax is 20 percent at the standard rate, with preferential treatment available for qualifying technology activity. Our guide to payroll services in Vietnam covers the filing mechanics, and how to pay international employees covers getting the money there.

Hourly Rates, and Why Published Figures Disagree

If you engage through an outsourcing vendor or a freelancer rather than employing directly, you will be quoted an hourly rate. Here you should be skeptical, because the published guides contradict each other badly:

• One Vietnamese vendor’s guide puts Vietnamese developers at 10 to 20 US dollars an hour.
• An offshore staffing firm’s 2026 comparison puts Vietnam at 20 to 50 dollars, the same band it gives India.
• A developer marketplace’s rate card puts mid-level Vietnamese developers at 28 to 68 dollars, rising to 40 to 95 for seniors.

These are not small discrepancies, and every one of those sources is selling something. The one checkable reference point is Clutch’s directory, where roughly 370 Vietnamese development firms self-report billing bands of under 25 dollars, 25 to 49 dollars, and 50 to 99 dollars an hour. The sensible planning assumption is that agency rates for Vietnamese developers typically run 25 to 50 dollars an hour, with specialist and senior work above that, and that any single figure quoted to you as the Vietnam rate should be treated as a negotiating position rather than a market fact.

This is also the clearest argument for employing directly through an EOR rather than buying hours: at a 30 million VND salary plus 23.5 percent, your fully loaded monthly cost is around 1,425 dollars before the EOR fee, which is well below what the equivalent capacity costs on an agency rate card.

Where to Hire: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Da Nang

Vietnam’s developer talent is concentrated in three cities, and they are not interchangeable. Choosing the right one affects cost, the kind of experience you can find, and how hard you have to compete.

• Ho Chi Minh City. The largest pool by a wide margin and the commercial center of the country. Deepest bench for product engineering, fintech and startup experience, home to Quang Trung Software City and the Saigon Hi-Tech Park. Also the most competitive and the most expensive of the three, and the city where counteroffers are most likely.
• Hanoi. The second major hub, with a stronger concentration of enterprise, telecoms, embedded and R&D work, partly because of the large multinational engineering centers in and around the city. Salaries run slightly below Ho Chi Minh City for comparable roles.
• Da Nang. Smaller but deliberately developed as a technology city, anchored by the Da Nang IT Park and the FPT Complex. Lower salary expectations and noticeably lower attrition than the two big hubs, with a trade off in how quickly you can hire at scale or find niche specialisms.

Emerging locations including Can Tho, Hai Phong, Quy Nhon and Nha Trang are developing technology clusters and are worth considering for cost sensitive, longer horizon team building, though the available pool in each is still thin.

The university pipeline sits mainly in the two big cities: Hanoi University of Science and Technology, VNU University of Engineering and Technology and the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology in Hanoi; Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and the VNU University of Information Technology in the south; plus FPT University and RMIT Vietnam across multiple campuses. If you are recruiting at graduate level, these names are worth knowing, because a degree from them is one of the few credential signals that carries weight in a market where only about 30 percent of graduates are job ready.

Key Roles and Tech Stacks You Can Hire in Vietnam

Vietnam’s talent pool covers the full range of modern software roles, not just general application development. The roles companies most commonly hire are:

• Frontend and backend developers
• Full-stack engineers
• Mobile app developers
• DevOps engineers
• QA and test engineers
• UI/UX designers
• Data engineers and AI specialists

In terms of depth by specialism, the market breaks down roughly like this:

• Deepest supply: Java, .NET, PHP, JavaScript and TypeScript, React, Node.js, and mobile development in both React Native and native Android or iOS. These are the stacks where you can realistically run a competitive shortlist within a couple of weeks.
• Strong and growing: Python, Go, cloud and DevOps work on AWS and Azure, and QA automation. Available, but you will be competing with the multinational engineering centers for the best people.
• Genuinely strong niche: embedded engineering, supported by the country’s electronics manufacturing base and now reinforced by the national semiconductor workforce program. Embedded leads command the highest medians of any engineering track in the ITviec data.
• Scarce and expensive: data engineering, machine learning and AI. Supply is thin relative to demand and salaries reflect it. Plan a longer search and a higher band.

If you are building a full engineering function rather than filling individual roles, our guides to hire a remote development team and international IT recruitment cover how to sequence the hires.

English, Time Zones and Working Style

This section is where most guides oversell, so here is the accurate version.

English Proficiency: Screen for It

In the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, Vietnam ranked 64th of 123 countries and territories with a score of 500, placing it 7th of 25 in Asia. A score of 500 sits at the very bottom of the moderate proficiency band, which Vietnam re-entered in 2025 after slipping into the low band the year before.

You will see competing pages claim that 90 percent of Vietnamese developers speak English, or cite a rank in the mid 60s from years ago. Treat both with caution. The realistic position is that written English among developers is usually solid, spoken fluency varies widely, and English is noticeably stronger among developers who have worked at outsourcing firms or multinational engineering centers because they have used it daily.

What to do about it: run at least one unscripted conversation in English as part of your process, ideally a technical discussion rather than a language test, and weight written communication if your team works asynchronously. Do not assume proficiency from a resume claim.

Time Zones

Vietnam runs on Indochina Time, UTC+7, with no daylight saving. In practice:

• Australia and Singapore: one to three hours apart. Effectively a shared working day.
• Europe: five to six hours ahead of the UK. A Vietnamese afternoon overlaps a European morning, which gives you a usable three to four hour window without anyone working unusual hours.
• US East Coast: 11 to 12 hours apart. There is no natural overlap. Either accept asynchronous working with a disciplined handoff, or agree a standing early-morning or late-evening window on one side.
• US West Coast: 14 to 15 hours apart, the hardest combination.

Be honest in the job description about which hours you expect. Vietnamese developers will often agree to difficult hours during a hiring process and then quietly disengage, which shows up months later as attrition rather than as a conversation.

The Risks Worth Taking Seriously

Almost every page on this topic is written by someone selling Vietnamese development services, which is why the risks are usually either absent or presented as minor. They are manageable, but they are real, and knowing them in advance is what separates a team that works from one that quietly underperforms.

Resume Inflation and Verification

In a market with a 200,000 person shortage and only around 30 percent of graduates immediately employable, resumes are optimistic. Inflated years of experience, team projects described as individual work, and listed technologies with only passing exposure are all common. None of this is unique to Vietnam, but the shortage makes it more prevalent.

The practical defense is a live technical exercise rather than a take home, a conversation that goes deep on one project the candidate claims to have built, and reference checks that are actually completed. Our guide to candidate screening covers the mechanics.

Intellectual Property and Data Protection

If your developers are writing your product, the chain of title to that code matters. Vietnam’s data protection regime has matured considerably, with Decree 13/2023/ND-CP establishing personal data protection obligations and further legislation following, but enforcement is still developing and the practical burden sits on your contracts.

What to put in place:

• A Vietnamese law employment contract containing explicit present assignment of work product and inventions, not a promise to assign later.
• Confidentiality obligations drafted under Vietnamese law rather than a translated template from your home jurisdiction.
• If you are using an outsourcing vendor or an EOR, a service agreement that assigns those rights onward to your company, so the chain is unbroken end to end.
• Practical controls: scoped repository access, no production data in development environments, and offboarding that actually revokes credentials.

This is also the strongest argument against engaging developers as freelancers for core product work. A contractor agreement signed across borders is far weaker protection than an employment contract governed by local law.

Attrition

You will see claims that Vietnamese developer turnover is under 5 percent. That figure circulates widely and is not credible in a market with a structural six figure talent shortage, and it contradicts every other published estimate.

There is no authoritative primary source for Vietnamese developer attrition. Vendor estimates cluster in the 15 to 24 percent range annually, running higher at outsourcing firms where staff are rotated between client projects. Treat the mid to high teens as a planning assumption, expect higher churn in Ho Chi Minh City than in Da Nang, and build retention into the plan from the start rather than reacting to your first resignation.

Equity and Stock Options

If equity is part of your compensation package, raise it with your advisors early. Granting options to someone employed in Vietnam, particularly through a third party employer such as an EOR, involves tax treatment and foreign exchange considerations that do not map cleanly onto a standard option plan. It is solvable, but it is not automatic, and discovering the problem after you have made the offer is an avoidable mistake. Our guide to building an employee compensation strategy covers how to structure the wider package.

Hiring Models to Consider

There are four realistic ways to engage software developers in Vietnam, and they differ in cost, control, speed and liability. Choosing between them is the decision that shapes everything downstream, so it is worth doing before you start sourcing.

Direct Hiring Through Your Own Entity

You establish a legal entity in Vietnam and employ developers yourself. This gives you maximum control over the team, the culture and the employment relationship, and it is the lowest cost per head at scale.

The trade off is setup. You need an Investment Registration Certificate followed by an Enterprise Registration Certificate from the provincial Department of Planning and Investment, a registered local address, and a resident legal representative. Realistically this is a months long process with ongoing accounting, tax filing and labor compliance obligations attached. It makes sense when Vietnam is a committed long term market and you are building a team of meaningful size, not for your first two hires.

Offshore Development Center (ODC)

An ODC is a dedicated team hosted by a local provider who handles the facilities, administration and employment, while the team works exclusively on your roadmap. It sits between outsourcing and building your own entity.

It suits companies that want a stable dedicated team of ten or more without the entity overhead, and that value the provider’s local recruiting reach. The considerations are that you are dependent on the provider for retention and replacement, your team’s employment relationship belongs to someone else, and exit terms matter a great deal. Ask what happens to the team if you leave.

Freelancers and Contractors

Freelancers work well for short, defined pieces of work: a prototype, a design sprint, a one off integration. They are fast to engage and carry no ongoing commitment.

The risk is misclassification. If a contractor works set hours, uses your systems, reports to your manager and has no other clients, Vietnamese labor authorities will look at the substance of the relationship rather than the contract label. That exposes you to back contributions and penalties, and as noted above it also weakens your IP position. Our comparison of hiring independent contractors vs employees covers where the line sits.

Employer of Record (EOR)

An EOR legally employs the developer in Vietnam on your behalf. It holds the employment contract, runs payroll, remits social insurance and taxes, and carries the compliance liability, while you direct the person’s day to day work. You get a properly employed team member without setting up an entity.

For most companies making their first few hires in Vietnam this is the right answer. It is fast, typically days rather than months, it removes misclassification risk entirely, and it gives you a Vietnamese law employment contract with enforceable IP assignment. Our guides to employer of record Vietnam and EOR services in Vietnam go into the mechanics, and what is an employer of record covers the model generally.

Choosing the Right Model

Your situation	Usually the right model
First one to five hires, testing the market	Employer of Record
Short, defined project with a clear end date	Freelancer or contractor
Dedicated team of 10+ without entity overhead	Offshore Development Center
Committed long term market, 20+ people	Your own entity
You need the people found as well as employed	EOR combined with recruitment support

Step-by-Step Guide to Hiring Software Developers in Vietnam

With the model chosen, the process itself is straightforward. Each step below builds on the one before it, so work through them in order.

Step 1: Define Your Requirements

Start by writing down what you actually need: the specific stack, the seniority level, whether the role is independent or needs close supervision, and the hours of overlap you require with your existing team. Be concrete about the stack rather than listing everything your company uses, because a long requirements list in a shortage market shrinks your candidate pool for no benefit.

Use the salary table above to set a band before you start, not after you meet someone you like. Remember to add 23.5 percent for employer contributions so the number you take to your budget holder is the real one.

Step 2: Choose the Right Hiring Channel

Having defined the role and the model, decide where to find people. The main channels in Vietnam are:

• Local job platforms: ITviec, TopDev and VietnamWorks are where Vietnamese developers actually look.
• LinkedIn, which works well for senior and English-confident candidates but has shallower reach into the mid market than the local platforms.
• Recruitment partners with local presence, who reach passive candidates the job boards do not.
• Referrals, which are unusually effective in Vietnam given how closely connected the developer community is in each city.

If you are posting in English only, expect a narrower and more senior applicant pool. That may be exactly what you want, but it is a choice worth making deliberately. For reaching candidates who are not actively looking, see our guide to passive candidate recruitment.

Step 3: Screen and Assess Candidates

Screening is where you close the gap between what a resume claims and what a candidate can do. Given the readiness gap discussed earlier, this step carries more weight in Vietnam than in markets where credentials are more reliable.

A practical sequence: a short structured call covering motivation, English and availability; a live technical exercise in your actual stack, kept to 60 to 90 minutes; and a deep conversation about one project the candidate names, pushing on the decisions they made rather than the technologies they used. Live exercises beat take homes here, because they tell you who did the work.

Step 4: Conduct Interviews

Interviews should test technical depth, problem solving and communication together rather than separately. Useful questions include asking a candidate to walk through a system they designed and explain what they would change now, describing a production incident they handled, or explaining a technical trade off to someone non-technical.

That last one does double duty: it tests both communication and English in a realistic setting, which is more informative than asking about language ability directly. Include at least one person from the team the candidate would join.

Step 5: Make a Competitive Offer

Move quickly here. In a shortage market a strong candidate is usually in two or three processes, and a week of internal deliberation is often the reason you lose them.

A competitive package in Vietnam normally includes base salary, the statutory 13th month salary, which is customary and effectively expected, health coverage above the statutory minimum, a learning or certification budget, and clarity on working hours and remote arrangements. Equity, where offered, should come with a plain explanation of what it is worth and how it works, because it is less familiar as a compensation component than in Western markets.

Step 6: Handle Legal and Compliance Requirements

Finally, make the employment real and compliant. This means a written Vietnamese law employment contract, correct registration for social, health and unemployment insurance, personal income tax withholding, and proper IP and confidentiality terms.

If you are using an EOR, your provider handles all of this and you review the contract. If you are hiring through your own entity, this is where local advice is not optional. Our guide to global payroll compliance covers the recurring obligations, and the international recruitment process covers the end to end flow.

Vietnam Employment Law Essentials

You do not need to become an expert, but you should know these before you write an offer. All of the following come from Vietnam’s Labour Code 2019, Law No. 45/2019/QH14, in force since January 2021.

• Written contracts are required for engagements longer than one month, in either fixed term or indefinite term form.
• Standard working hours are capped at 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week.
• Overtime is capped at 200 hours a year, extended to 300 hours in specified cases, and attracts premium pay rates.
• Probation is capped at 60 days for roles requiring a university degree and 180 days for executive and managerial roles, with shorter caps for other categories.
• Termination requires defined grounds and notice, and severance allowance obligations apply. Vietnam is not an at-will market and you should not plan as though it is.
• Misclassification is assessed on the substance of the working relationship, not the label on the agreement.

The 13th month salary deserves a note of its own. It is not a statutory requirement under the Labour Code, but it is so widely paid that candidates assume it, and leaving it out will make an otherwise competitive offer look low. Budget for it as 13 months of salary rather than 12.

Best Practices for Success

Hiring well is the start. These are the practices that determine whether a Vietnamese engineering team becomes a durable part of your company or a recurring recruitment problem.

Partner with Local Experts

Local knowledge covers the things you cannot research quickly: realistic salary bands for your specific stack, which candidate signals matter, and how compliance actually works in practice rather than in theory.

Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits

Pay to market, include the 13th month salary, and provide health coverage above the statutory minimum. Vietnamese developers also place high value on learning budgets and clear technical progression, which are cheaper to provide than salary and often more effective at retention.

Invest in Onboarding and Training

Given that a large share of the market needs some ramp up, structured onboarding pays for itself quickly. Assign a named buddy, document your architecture and conventions properly rather than relying on tribal knowledge, and set explicit 30, 60 and 90 day expectations.

Foster Strong Communication and Team Integration

Distance and hierarchy are the two things to manage. Vietnamese workplace culture tends toward deference to seniority, which can mean problems get reported late or disagreements go unvoiced in a group setting.

Counter it deliberately: ask direct questions rather than open ones, create channels where raising a concern is low cost, write decisions down so nothing depends on someone speaking up in a meeting, and make it visible when someone flags a problem early. Our guide to building efficient global teams in APAC goes deeper on this.

Build a Long-Term Retention Strategy

Retention is cheaper than replacement, particularly at senior level where the shortage bites hardest. Annual salary reviews that keep pace with a fast moving market, visible career paths, meaningful work rather than maintenance only, and genuine inclusion in the wider company all matter.

One specific point: offshore teams that only receive tickets disengage. Teams that own a product area stay. If you want the retention numbers to work, give the work enough substance to be worth staying for.

How TalentHero Can Help

TalentHero is an Asia Pacific specialist with people on the ground in Vietnam, which means we can both find your developers and employ them compliantly.

• Employer of Record. We employ your developers in Vietnam through our own entity, handling contracts, payroll, social insurance, tax and IP assignment, so you can hire without setting anything up.
• Recruitment on Demand. Our recruiters source and screen Vietnamese engineering talent, including the passive candidates who are not on the job boards.
• Global Payroll. Accurate, on time, compliant payroll across your whole international team, not just Vietnam.
• Contractor Management. Compliant engagement for genuine contractor relationships, with the classification question handled properly.
• Visa and Immigration, Equipment Procurement, and Office Space. The practical pieces of standing up a team in a new country, in one relationship.

The combination matters more than any single service. Most providers either find people or employ them. If you need both, you usually end up managing two vendors and sitting in the gap between them. Our recruitment services in Vietnam and EOR capability run as one process.

Ready to Hire Software Developers in Vietnam?

Vietnam offers genuine engineering depth at a cost that still makes sense, inside a market the government is actively investing in. The constraints are real: senior talent is competitive, English needs screening rather than assuming, and the legal and IP groundwork has to be done properly. None of them are reasons not to hire there. They are reasons to do it with a partner who has been through it before.

Get in touch with us today and we will walk you through what hiring your first Vietnamese developer would actually look like.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why should companies hire software developers in Vietnam?

Vietnam combines a large and growing technology workforce, costs well below Western markets, and strong government investment in the training pipeline. The digital technology sector reported around 198 billion US dollars in revenue in 2025 across more than 80,000 firms, and Vietnam placed 7th globally in Kearney’s 2023 Global Services Location Index. For engineering roles in particular, the depth in Java, .NET, JavaScript, mobile and embedded development is substantial.

2. How many software developers are there in Vietnam?

There is no reliable public figure for software developers specifically, and the numbers you see quoted vary from 430,000 to 600,000 without a checkable source. What is verifiable is that close to 1.26 million people worked in Vietnam’s ICT sector in 2024, a figure that includes hardware and electronics, and that around 80,000 digital technology firms were active in 2025.

3. What is the average cost of hiring software developers in Vietnam?

Using ITviec’s 2025-2026 salary report, a mid-level back end developer has a median around 30.1 million VND a month and a senior around 39.9 million VND, roughly 1,160 and 1,535 US dollars. Add 23.5 percent for statutory employer contributions, and an EOR fee if you use one. Agency hourly rates typically run 25 to 50 dollars an hour, though published estimates vary widely.

4. Do I need to set up a legal entity to hire in Vietnam?

No. An Employer of Record can legally employ developers in Vietnam on your behalf, usually within days. Setting up your own entity requires an Investment Registration Certificate and an Enterprise Registration Certificate and takes months, which makes sense once you have a committed long term team rather than for your first hires.

5. Do Vietnamese developers speak English well?

It varies more than most guides admit. Vietnam scored 500 in the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, ranking 64th of 123 countries, which is the bottom of the moderate band. Written English among developers is generally solid and spoken fluency is strongest among those who have worked at outsourcing firms or multinational engineering centers. Screen for it with an unscripted technical conversation rather than assuming it.

6. What are the employer costs on top of salary in Vietnam?

Social insurance at 17.5 percent, health insurance at 3 percent, unemployment insurance at 1 percent and the trade union fund at 2 percent, totalling 23.5 percent of gross salary. Contribution bases are capped, so the effective rate is lower for high earners. The 13th month salary, while not statutory, is customary and should be budgeted.

7. Which Vietnamese city should I hire in?

Ho Chi Minh City has the largest and deepest pool, particularly for product and fintech engineering, but is the most competitive and expensive. Hanoi is stronger for enterprise, embedded and R&D work at slightly lower cost. Da Nang offers lower salaries and lower attrition, with a smaller pool and slower hiring at scale.

8. Can I hire a Vietnamese developer as a contractor?

You can for genuinely independent, project based work. If the person works set hours under your direction with no other clients, Vietnamese authorities will likely treat them as an employee regardless of the contract, exposing you to back contributions and penalties. It also weakens your IP position, which matters if they are writing core product code.

9. What is the time zone difference with Vietnam?

Vietnam is UTC+7 with no daylight saving. That is one to three hours from Australia and Singapore, five to six hours from the UK with a workable afternoon overlap, and 11 to 15 hours from the United States with no natural overlap. Agree the expected hours explicitly before you make an offer.

10. What is developer attrition like in Vietnam?

There is no authoritative primary source. Vendor estimates cluster between 15 and 24 percent a year, running higher at outsourcing firms. The widely repeated claim that turnover is under 5 percent is not credible in a market with a shortage of roughly 200,000 IT personnel. Plan for mid to high teens and build retention in from the start.

11. Is my intellectual property safe in Vietnam?

It is, provided the contracts are right. You need a Vietnamese law employment contract with present assignment of work product and inventions, confidentiality terms drafted under local law, and, where a third party employs the developer, a service agreement assigning those rights onward to you. Vietnam’s data protection framework has developed considerably, including Decree 13/2023/ND-CP, though practical controls on repository and data access still matter.

12. How long does it take to hire a developer in Vietnam?

Sourcing and interviewing typically takes three to six weeks for a mid-level role and longer for scarce specialisms such as data engineering or machine learning. Once you have chosen someone, onboarding through an EOR is usually a matter of days. Notice periods in current employment are the most common cause of delay, so ask about them early.