“How much do Latin American developers get paid?” is a very common question that appears in Internet forums and Google searches typed by young people from these latitudes looking for motivation to move forward or to look beyond their borders, but it is also a question whose answer is kept alert by talent recruiters and technology companies, since knowing the rates allows “pricing” projects, salary contracts while maintaining a certain level of competitiveness in the market, i.e. proposing a good offer that helps to attract the top developers.

Let’s make in this post a brief approach to the salary of these tech talents, and let’s see how the subject is handled in Latin America. Let’s start!

How much do Latin American developers get paid?

How much do Latin American developers get paid / Latin men in a desk

Latin American developers are increasingly in demand due to their high level of technical training, soft skills such as commitment, attention to detail and assertive communication, schedule compatibility with regions where the demand for these positions is increasing (USA and Canada, mostly) and their good command of English. 

Despite being one of the main regions for attracting talent, if you wonder how much Latin American developers are paid in relation to the recruiting countries, imagine that they sometimes receive two or even three times less. But this has nothing to do with talent or training, it is more about external factors.

An Amazon, Meta or Microsoft developer living in Silicon Valley gets a salary of between $41,000 and $86,100 a year according to the Glassdoor portal, an amount that can be higher depending on the level of experience of the worker: if we are talking about a senior developer, his annual income exceeds $110,000.

Meanwhile, in Latin American countries, the salary as a developer varies significantly between countries taking into account factors such as the cost of living, the socio-political situation, the level of inflation, the dollarization of the local currency, the geographical location of each country, the level of technological development, the size of the employer company, among others.

Another factor to take into account before specifying how much do Latin American developers get paid is that within each country, salary rates vary markedly depending on factors such as levels of work experience (is it junior or senior?), their training and the city where the company is located.

This also has to do with the coding language that the developer handles (C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc.). In addition, the specialties within the world of developers also affect salaries, with Full Stack Developers (capable of developing a project in its entirety) being the best paid, with Front and Back End developers following in their footsteps and mobile application developers in 3rd place in terms of good salaries.

Developers in which countries receive the biggest salary jump?

The Latin American countries where devs earn the highest salaries are Panama, Chile and Brazil and Mexico.

According to a survey conducted by Stack Overflow, 69% of developers in Latin America have specialized as back-end, while another 30% are engaged in education or academic research, and a small percentage is distributed among mobile, data and system administrators.

List of developer salaries

Woman sitting at a Desk / How much do Latin American developers get paid

Let’s take a closer look at each of the salaries of the Latin American countries with more developers, in the following salary list.

How much do Latin American developers get paid? This is:

  • Panama: on average a senior developer earns $2250 per month according to the job portal Computrabajo.com and depending on the factors we mentioned above this salary could tread on the $3,500 monthly. Meanwhile, a junior developer earns in that nation around $1000 and $1800.
  • Chile: according to the Robert Half 2021 salary guide, the salary of a Full-Stack Developer (the highest specialization of this career) in this country is between $1,600 and $2,100 per month. 
  • Brazil: stands out for having a large number of developers, it is also the largest country in Latin America and has great technological development. The specialty of the developers’ universe in which it stands out the most is video game development. The lowest salary for a Senior Programmer in São Paulo is about $1,000, while the highest salary for a senior registered by the Glassdoor portal is about $1,800.
  • Peru: according to the portal computrabajo.com, the average salary for a junior developer in Peru is about $580, according to Glassdoor.
  • Uruguay: according to Glassdoor, the average salary for a Full Stack Developer is $1,500 per month. This country has a robust technology sector, being predominantly in the field of cybersecurity.
  • Mexico: according to Indeed, the average salary of a programmer in this country is $1,600. According to CodersLink, 60% of the salaries reported in their surveys are above this amount and only 15% below. 
  • Argentina: according to the portal bloomberglinea.com, the Adecco 2022-2023 salary guide indicates that programmers’ salaries in the capital city of Buenos Aires range between $450 and $2,300. 
  • Colombia: Colombian techies have an average salary of about $1,3oo per month, according to Indeed.co.
  • Venezuela: according to the web portal hispanogeeks, the average salary of a Venezuelan developer is $1,200 per month. 
  • Costa Rica: According to the Glassdoor portal, the average salary of a programmer in this Central American nation is $12,000 per year.
  • Ecuador: the average salary of a developer is $519 per month according to the Computrabajo portal. 

Conclusion

As you can see, there are significant variations in the salaries of technology professionals in different Latin American countries. 

Latin American developers continue to grow in number and their tendency is to be employed in remote jobs under foreign offers, looking for better salary options and stimulating professional experiences.

In order to find and hire excellent Latin American developers, it is important to be aware of this situation and it is always best to get advice from experts in the technology sector.

At Talently we have a database with more than 5 thousand curated technological talents, theoretical knowledge, English level and proven practical execution. 

In 72 hours maximum you will have the most pro developers in Latin America compatible with your project and with immediate availability.

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