The world was a very different place five years ago when CodersLink began creating its tech salaries report. Even in 2019, Latin America was already starting to flex its tech muscles, with several hubs sprouting out throughout the region. Since that first report, however, a lot has changed in the Mexico tech scene and throughout Latin America.
The fourth edition of our in-depth study of the Mexico tech ecosystem was released in March 2023. This year’s report was a result of thousands of data points from over 35,000 tech professionals working in Mexico, internal data, and survey responses.
So, what have we learned about this report and why is it important?
Among many things, we learned that:
- U.S. companies found exceptional talent in Mexico and Latin America during a time of accelerated growth.
- Mexico’s tech landscape has been infused by the country’s focus on educating and training tech professionals with the most in-demand technologies.
- Mexico’s talent has high levels of education, English fluency, and training in top technologies like JavaScript, Python, and more.
A Complex and Growing Tech Ecosystem
After covid, the landscape was radically transformed. People looked to technology to solve some of the immediate problems. The world of work had a cataclysmic shift and businesses across all industries found themselves scrambling to go digital, to take their operations online and build the necessary infrastructure to support that.
This sent the need for tech talent: software developers, engineers, designers, and other tech professionals through the roof. In the United States, it led to what would be referred to as the tech talent shortage.
The need for rapid innovation meant that companies needed to hire tech workers with very specific skills and the supply simply did not meet the demand. This period of rapid acceleration led many U.S. companies to look for tech professionals in other markets. One of those top markets included Mexico and Latin America.
A few years later Latin America has proven itself to be a top contender among other outsourcing regions. China and India are no longer the go-to destinations for outsourcing development as companies build more cohesive remote teams.
Although it is difficult to nail down a few highlights, here are the top points we think companies might find interesting about this year’s report.
Highlight #1: Average Salaries for Tech Professionals Based on Experience
Like in the United States, average salaries for tech professionals will vary by region, experience, and other factors. In this year’s survey, if we take the average technical professional with a high-level English level in Mexico these salaries are the following:
- A semi-senior developer (6-10 years of experience) will make $3,371.83.
- The average salary of a senior developer (11-15 years of experience) is $4,285.99.
Highlight #2: Average Salaries for Top Paying Positions in Mexico
Most of the higher earning positions in Mexico are those that require a little more specialization and a broader scope of responsibilities. This tends to be tech professionals that have spent some time as engineers and have migrated to management positions.
According to Mexico Tech Salaries 2023 Report, the top 5 paying positions by average salary include Mobile Developers, Project Managers, Development Operations, UX/UI Designer, and Solutions Architect.
Highlight #3 The Most Common Tech Roles in Mexico
Many of Mexico’s top universities and technical institutions are well-recognized and well-renowned. In recent decades they have placed a heavy focus on STEM fields and technology, graduating over 130,000 computer science students every year. Many of these universities have partnerships with U.S. institutions of higher learning. These partnerships have helped foment similar focuses and on-the-job training for many up-and-coming tech graduates.
The most common tech roles in Mexico are:
- Full stack developers
- Back end developers
- Front end developers
- Web developers
- Mobile developers
These are roles also highly in demand in the U.S. According to CompTIA’s report, suggests that the roles most highly sought after in the United States include:
- Software developer/engineer
- IT Support Specialist
- IT Project Manager
- Network Engineer
- Systems Engineer
Key Takeaways from This Year’s Study— Lessons Learned from the Data
It’s difficult to pin down just a few key lessons from this year’s report, but here goes nothing.
In the past few years, we have seen the Mexican market transform itself from a robust tech community to a highly sought-after nearshoring destination attracting hundreds of U.S. companies to hire within its borders. The year 2022 saw several fluctuations in the tech industry; from massive layoffs to massive increases in remote work, to economic uncertainty and the introduction of new technologies.
Yet, we did not see a slowdown in the demand for tech talent and the need for companies to find reliable people to join their development teams.
The reasons for why Mexico has succeeded in establishing itself as a country with promising potential in tech are many, and we have discussed them repeatedly throughout our many resources, articles, and reports.
Yet, this report highlights something very interesting: Mexico is benefitting from nearshoring trends and it stands to position itself on a trajectory of greater technological expansion thanks to investment, internet penetration, remote work, and diverse tech hubs encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit among startup founders.
There is considerable overlap between the technologies used in the U.S. market and those used in Mexico, showing that our Southern neighbors are interested in keeping apace with the ever-changing frontiers of tech and the new innovations.
At the same time, investor interest in the rest of the LATAM region has continued steadily—although it has leveled out from the huge spike that happened in 2021. Yet, as LATAM continues to increase its internet penetration and smartphone use, its potential as a market continues to grow. Mexico has become the gateway to the rest of the region thanks to its geography.
There is still much to explore in Mexico’s growing tech industry.
