Are Latin American engineers at the level of their U.S. counterparts? For many U.S. companies considering nearshore teams, it’s still the first question they ask.
For Argel Bejarano, the answer is yes.
“The skills, we have the skills,” he said.
Bejarano, a Senior Staff Software Engineer and a Flutter and Dart Google Developer Expert, spoke with Developers.Net at droidcon 2026 in Orlando. In his view, the talent question has already been settled. What matters now is how companies work with that talent.
The Skills Are Already There
Bejarano, who said he began speaking at conferences around 2018 or 2019, has given talks in Latin American countries like Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic. Along the way, he said, he met engineers who had been doing professional coding work since they were 17.
He also noticed a cultural pattern. Many young people in the region set aside time to learn a skill they can use in the future, and many choose software engineering. The result, he said, is that it isn’t unusual to meet an engineer who is 32 years old with 15 years of experience.
“The stack, the knowledge, the experience is in place,” Bejarano said.
He shared a story from a previous company that shows how the level question can go wrong. The team decided not to hire in Latin America because of concerns about English, even though the candidates’ technical skills were strong. When the company interviewed candidates in the United States instead, it ran into communication challenges there, too. Many of the candidates weren’t from the U.S. but were living there, Bejarano said, and “the accent was really different.” Their English often wasn’t any stronger, which left the team asking whether it was really hiring in the U.S. for better English.
“Like, it doesn’t make any sense,” Bejarano said.
His point was that location didn’t determine who could do the job or who could communicate well. The engineering ability in Latin America was never in doubt.
The Nearshore Advantage
For U.S. companies, geography is one of the strongest arguments for hiring in the region.
Bejarano said companies in California look for engineers in Mexico because “we are basically one hour difference, or sometimes even the same time.” Even at the far end of the region, in Argentina, Uruguay or Brazil, the gap with U.S. teams is about four hours. That still leaves a large overlap in the workday.
That overlap matters because, in Bejarano’s view, communication is harder than it looks. Talking a lot in the same room doesn’t guarantee that people understand each other. Getting someone to hear an idea the way it was meant, he said, can feel like you need to “cross a whole universe.”
Asynchronous work has its place, he said, but “being able to have this 15 minutes to sync,” share context and confirm that everyone understood is valuable. That’s much easier when teams share most of the workday.
In Bejarano’s words, it “adds a lot of value to have people so close.”
A Cultural Fit
Culture is less of a barrier than many companies assume, Bejarano said. There are differences, but the fit is good. The large Latin American community in the United States has also helped bring teams closer together.
“You can feel that relationship growing extensively,” he said.
Advice for Latin American Developers
Many Latin American developers already work in English every day and collaborate with U.S. teams without difficulty. For those still building that skill, Bejarano’s advice is practical.
When developers ask him how to earn a better salary, his answer is short.
“I work in one language,” he tells them. That language is English.
His own preferred programming language right now is Dart, but he said the stack a developer chooses matters less than this. Whatever language they pick, Bejarano said, “you need to focus also in the language of English, because it’s an international language.”
In his view, when some talented engineers miss out on opportunities, it isn’t because of their technical skills. Continuing to strengthen their English helps make sure those skills get noticed.
A Question Already Answered
For U.S. companies weighing nearshore teams, Bejarano’s message is that the level question has been answered. Latin America has experienced engineers, working in time zones that make real-time collaboration easy and in a culture that fits well with U.S. teams.
Developers.Net attends technology conferences across the country every month, connecting with the people scaling their businesses while building and implementing emerging technology. To connect with our team at an upcoming conference, email [email protected].
