The United States is a known hotbed of disruptive ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. But executing ideas in the US is expensive. For many companies hiring a developer is plainly cost prohibitive. On average, a software developer in San Francisco will earn over USD 100,000  — thousands of companies can’t afford to outsource to an agency here in America. What do smart leaders do? They outsource.

When you outsource to an agency or individual in a foreign country they call it offshoring. And outsourced work is 50-60% cheaper without and of quality that you would built back home. Outsource to countries with a low cost of living and you can afford employing top tier talent. Not hard to see why offshoring is so attractive.

But companies can’t afford to outsource based on cost alone: low quality, clashing cultures, and unresponsive partners can quickly kill even really bright ideas .

Yes, offshoring makes a lot of sense, but you need to know where to do it. 

Which country is in the best position to act as an offshore software development center? Ukraine as a premier software development center.

It is easy to argue that Ukraine punches above its weight when it comes to technology and software engineering, with a high number of software engineers per capita and a disproportionate number of international IT companies with large offices in Ukraine’s biggest cities including Kyiv and Lviv.

In fact, a 2019 report for UNIT.City innovation park in Kyiv found that it nationally has more than 180,000 engineers working for over 4,000 technology companies. More than a hundred Fortune 500’s chose Ukraine to deliver IT services and software.

Ukraine has an advantage compared to many countries. It has scale, talent and great network effects to take on a pioneering software project. Many bright engineers live for projects like that. 

Ukrainian Software Engineers have cutting edge skills

To stay in lock step with innovation, today’s leaders need software engineers who can work on big things with as much success as today’s technology giants. Engineering teams at Slack, Github and Transferwise outsourced parts of their MVPs to Ukraine, to Ukraine. 

It worked out.  

Other things Ukrainian developers are gifted in is artificial intelligence. AI and its brainchildren. Machine learning, natural language processing or neural network feed etc. Eastern Europe is a high context region and Ukrainian developers will pick up faster on what you need, than developers in countries where a high context culture will prevent them from asking you to clarify. If you’re having a hard time articulating what you need concretely, Ukrainians may interrupt or finish your sentence, bluntly but they’ll be sure to let you know if they didn’t understand you. As soon as they do “get it” the relief you feel knowing you clarified something that would otherwise be done in error is a valuable feeling. 

Epicenter of Talent

Kyiv, the capital is the innovation Center of Europe and agencies and developers are somehow skilled in any emerging tech or programming language sooner than the rest of the world.  

5G and IoT

• Experts in intelligent systems. Whether it’s in industry or in transport, Ukrainian software architects make up our forefront when it comes to applied communications like 5G, and the deployment of internet of things (IoT) tech. Low-code projects are increasingly popular, so prefer outsourcing to agencies and engineers with a light touch in architecting the code.
•  The dev community in Ukraine is large, enthusiastic and forward-looking. They're also passionate and play with earliest complex tech for fun. A very attractive offer for US-based startups, scale-ups and established companies looking to innovate.  

An Excellent Match

Skills and scale are not the only important factors when choosing an outsourcing destination. Your technology partner must be a close match too — and US companies consistently find that software developers in Ukraine are easy to get along with, productive and affordable. 

Cultural match

Ukraine is in Europe and US-based companies often find that their Ukrainian counterparts are easy to work with, with many cultural common points — even if there is the occasional difference. Software development teams in Ukraine easily gel with global management teams, with the same get-up-and-go spirit that ensures projects make fast progress.

Language

Russian and Cyrillic may feel a world apart from our Latin alphabet. Good news is Kyiv is so international that English is widely spoken. Which is why companies around the world like to work with these teams, it is much easier to communicate.

Time zone magic

While global management teams and lead developers are still asleep, software development teams in Ukraine can get 7 hours of work done, so by the time the East coast get to the office, they already have work to review. , the time difference is only 7 hours from the East coast US so from early morning to late afternoon communication is very feasible.

Finally, while skills, scale, and compatibility are all important factors, cost remains one of the most important reasons why companies outsource to Ukrainian software developers. The cost of living in Ukraine is comparatively low: Numbeo ranks the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, as 356th out of 444 cities in the world . 

Salaries paid to highly qualified Ukrainian employees are also lower. The costs of running a business are lower too. Benefits from all of it.

Set up to succeed  

Low cost does not mean a race to the bottom for expertise. Software developers in Ukraine have been behind numerous leading technology ventures, including:

Popular add-in Grammarly.

Created by two Ukrainian entrepreneurs. Grammarly is used by millions to automatically check writing for spelling and grammatical errors. The app is powered by AI technology NLP. Grammarly now has offices in both Kyiv and San Francisco.

Expense management Taryff

Nearly $1m in funding, this top expense management app was created in Ukrainfilling to fulfill business needs worldwide. The developers in Ukraine have a finger on the pulse of today’s cutting edge SaaS apps.

Paytech company Paymentwall

Underlining Ukraine’s long-standing power as a startup and software development center is Paymentwall, founded back in 2010. 

The company now has more than 30,000 clients across 200 countries who all use the service to enable payments for online services.Business or individual - outsourcing your software development to Ukraine means meeting and joining many fellow entrepreneurs.

Outsourcing software development to Ukraine makes sense

Yes, it's firstly about reducing costs — maximizing the return on software investments. Big returns mean a more quality product with a greater competitive advantage.

Returns on software development investment depend on more than just low costs — comfortable working relationships, top skills, and entrepreneurial vision all contribute. 

Software companies in Ukraine offer all of these factors — and add enormous value too. 

Congrats for reading this entire article, your attention span is as great as your software will be.