Many U.S. corporations are exporting work to other countries to find competent engineers since the tech job market is so tight right now. When company founders, CTOs, and tech leaders are looking at outside development vendors, the Belitsoft custom software development company recommends to ask themselves: “Do their procedures, tools, and ways of communicating match ours?“ and “Can they truly collaborate “in real time“ despite being remote?“ In answering these, authoritative reports offer guidance. According to Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing Survey, competent workers and flexibility are now the most important reasons to outsource, in addition to saving money. That means finding providers whose engineers speak English well, work in the same time zones, and utilize the same tools and methods as U.S. teams.
Outsourced teams in nearshore areas (like Latin America or Canada) or mature offshore hubs (like Eastern Europe) can work together in “real time” to minimize the delays that come from handing off work over large time differences. When chosen and managed correctly, these kinds of partners can help companies focus on their main breakthroughs and speed up project timelines (TechCrunch said that the right global team could finish development 6 to 9 months faster).
Here are the typical traits of outsourced software companies that work well with U.S. engineering teams, as well as the benefits they offer. We use the latest research and industry surveys from companies like Deloitte, Gartner, McKinsey, Wired, Entrepreneur, and others to show the best techniques, tools, and cultural variables. We don’t mention individual vendors throughout; instead, we talk about what they can accomplish and how they do it. In general, look for partners who will treat your project as if it were their own. They should have clear processes, shared engineering standards, and be willing to talk to you.
Industry Trends and the Case for Global Teams
It’s important to understand why global outsourcing is growing before looking at corporate aspects. Because there aren’t enough workers and because of digital strategies, businesses are hiring more people. A Wired article suggests that American software corporations are increasingly recruiting engineers in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia to fill tasks US recruiters can’t.
Wired, for instance, says that offshoring software jobs will rise by 70% in the near future. TechCrunch also says that tech unemployment in the U.S. is at an all-time low (around 2-2.5% in 2024), so companies that “go borderless” have an advantage over their competitors. Gartner and other industry experts say that CIOs can no longer find the right skills locally. By 2027, companies will spend about 50% more on outside IT contractors than on their own staff. In short, the amount of outsourced development work is growing quickly because of digital transformation.
Research also shows that multicultural teams that work together in different places have their own strengths. According to Harvard Business Review, “multicultural teams are usually more creative and better at making decisions and solving problems.” Companies bring in outside engineers from different fields to get new ideas and specialized knowledge (for example, AI, cloud, or a specific field).
Outsourcing also spreads development work across time zones, which lets work go on almost all the time. As McKinsey points out, modern outsourcing is becoming more digital and collaborative. Contracts now usually include providers in clients’ processes to get the most innovation and effect. Digital outsourcing can have two to three times the effect of traditional outsourcing models when done correctly.
In short, digital transformation is making more and more work go to outside companies. Deloitte’s survey found that most executives stated that skilled digital talent, not just cheap labor, was a big reason to outsource. The best outsourcing companies now work like in-house teams: they speak the same language (both literally and technologically), use agile methods, and fit in with the client’s culture. The next sections go into more detail about those traits and benefits.
What Makes an Outsourcing Partner Seamlessly Integrated?
There is a lot of variety among outsourced development companies, whether they are nearshore or offshore. People who work well with U.S. teams tend to have some things in common. Below, you can investigate some important things that all of them have in common.
Compatibility of Language and Culture
If you hire people from other countries, they should be able to speak English (or the language of the client) well and know how business works in the U.S. Research backs this up. For example, Wired reporters found that international developers need to be fluent in English to get jobs in the U.S. Entrepreneur notes that companies should “ensure [outsourced developers] speak clear English” and understand the company’s values and work style. Many top outsourcing regions (e.g. Eastern Europe, Latin America, India, Philippines, Vietnam) invest heavily in English training. Clients in the U.S. often ask providers to hold cultural onboarding sessions. For instance, they might ask providers to train remote workers in how to communicate and work on American software development projects. Find a company that takes the initiative to deal with this. They might have programs to help their engineers learn U.S. industry terms and protocols.
Alignment of Time Zones and Locations
Working close together makes it much easier to work together. Ideally, the engineers that work for you from another country should have some hours that overlap with the U.S. team so they may meet and work together in real time. Colombia, Mexico, and Eastern Europe are examples of nearshore locations that are close to or share U.S. time zones. Deloitte says that nearshoring “lends itself to real-time collaboration” and gets rid of time-zone tiredness that can happen while working with people in Asia.
For example, a New York-based team and a Mexican or Costa Rican team may work 8-12 AM local concurrently, enabling combined standups or fast Slack calls. Even global providers try to make this better by using follow-the-sun rotations or flexible shifts. The goal is to avoid delays because hand-offs that happen at different times across 12 hours or more might slow down projects. Entrepreneur says to choose partners based on the “time-zone difference [that] helps you decide when to outsource… and who to put in charge.” In actuality, a lot of U.S. companies today choose to have core development teams in Canada or Eastern Europe. They may also break up work such that some offshore staff start their day while U.S. staff ends theirs.
Using Tools That Are Prevalent in Engineering
Successful integration means that people can use the same tools. The developers you hire should be able to use the same source control, communication, and workflow tools that your team does. If your company’s code is on GitHub and Jenkins CI/CD and your project board runs in Jira, for instance, the vendor’s engineers need to know how to use all of those systems. With contemporary tool platforms, it’s much easier to operate from different places.
In fact, StackOverflow’s 2024 Developer Survey confirms that teams overwhelmingly standardize on key collaboration platforms: “Jira and Confluence top the list for most used asynchronous tools” among developers. (Similarly, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are virtually ubiquitous for real-time chat and video.) When looking at a company, ask them what tools they use for code review, continuous integration, issue tracking, and documentation. Companies that already use Git, Docker/Kubernetes, and agile project trackers in the cloud (such as AWS and Azure) will work well with U.S. teams. If an outsourced team can just join your Slack channels, sprint planning, and pull-request workflows, it will be easier to get them up to speed.
Agile and Process Alignment
The best outsourcing teams use the same development methods as their clients. If your company uses Scrum or Kanban, for instance, the engineers you hire from outside should be familiar with those methods. They should go to daily standups, sprint retrospectives, and backlog grooming just like in-house engineers do. Many integrated teams use a core-satellite or feature-team model. In this model, remote engineers are part of the full-cycle teams that own features. Harvard Business Review states that treating all team members the same makes them work better. In fact, team members who work in the same place should use digital tools so that “remote” workers don’t feel less important. A culture that is friendly to remote workers doesn’t make them feel like they don’t belong.
When it comes to coding standards, code review policies, and on-call rotations, the best companies treat remote developers the same way they do everyone else. According to McKinsey, next-generation outsourcing contracts often link provider pay to results (like feature delivery and uptime), which means the provider has to work closely and openly with the client’s leadership. When an outsourced company organizes work this way, their engineers work together as if they are all part of the same engineering pipeline. They all use the same staging environments, check code into the same repositories, and run the same test suites.
Communication and Project Management
Communication needs to be clear and regular for things to go smoothly: daily standups, sprint demos, and video calls when necessary. They might assign new team members “onboarding buddies” or mentors from both the internal and remote teams to help them get used to their new jobs. The entrepreneur’s guide says that if you don’t “personalize communication,” you’ll run into technical problems later.
On the other hand, success stories stress how important it is to have structured onboarding and mentoring in all locations. Many successful businesses use wikis, Slack, Confluence, and other tools to write down and share everything so that no one person has all the information. In short, an integrated company will spend money on communication, just like an internal team would. They will figure out what you need, set clear goals, and keep you updated on how things are progressing.
Standards for Safety, Following the Rules, and Quality
Outsourcing companies that are trusted follow strict engineering rules. They should follow safe development practices, such as encrypting data while it’s being sent and conducting regular security audits. They should also follow any rules that apply to them, like GDPR for data privacy or HIPAA for health apps. While smaller shops may not list all certifications on their website, larger nearshore/offshore vendors often are ISO 9001/27001 or SOC 2 certified.
Even if your partner doesn’t have any formal certifications, they should be accustomed to signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), keeping code private, and utilizing role-based access control. Look for companies that have thorough quality assurance (QA) processes, such as automated testing pipelines for unit, integration, and regression testing, as well as teams that review items manually. “DevOps as a service” is a big deal for many of the best outsourcing companies. This means that they constantly deploy code under CI/CD and keep an eye on production. This combined DevOps method ensures that your systems don’t become fragmented based on their location.
Flexible Engagement and Scale
Having the right engagement model is also important for integration. A flexible partner will give you choices, such as staff augmentation (adding dedicated engineers to your team), project outsourcing (the firm takes care of everything from start to finish), or a hybrid/dedicated team model. It is most important that it can adapt to your management style. If the project gets bigger, they should be able to scale up, and if it finishes early, they should be able to scale down. For example, an agile startup might start with two remote developers and add eight more over the course of several sprints. A more established business might add more than 100 developers for a big program. A company that is well-organized plans for this kind of flexibility and lets clients know how quickly they can hire qualified people. This flexibility comes from having a large number of engineers on staff who already know the client’s field, either from working with them before or from training.
In short, companies with high integration have a lot in common: their cultures fit well, they are in the same time zone, they use the same tools, their processes are similar, they communicate well, they have strong security and quality, and they are flexible. These traits show a deeper truth: the company thinks of the client’s systems and goals as its own.
When you want to find a partner, ask them specific questions about these things. For example, “What tools do your developers use?” Is it possible to add them to our Jira project? How do you teach people how to speak your language or get used to your culture? Do your engineers use Zoom to attend client stand-ups? A good provider will give you a lot of information and often show you how they have worked with other teams in the U.S.
About the Author:
Dmitry Baraishuk is a partner and Chief Innovation Officer at a software development company Belitsoft (a Noventiq company). He has been leading a department specializing in custom software development for 20 years. The department has hundreds of successful projects in AI software development, healthcare and finance IT consulting, application modernization, cloud migration, data analytics implementation, and more for startups and enterprises in the US, UK, and Canada.
