Complete LATAM Salary Guide
Get comprehensive salary data for software engineers and data professionals across Latin America.
What LATAM tech talent actually costs
Compensation benchmarks for software, data, cloud and AI professionals across Latin America — built from real placements, not scraped job boards.
Every figure in this guide is based on actual searches DevEngine conducted for its clients and positions we filled in the past 12 months. All rates are all-inclusive: compensation, our services and operational overhead, with no additional fees on top.
The table below shows the junior-to-senior range for the most requested roles. The full guide covers 25+ roles across four categories, with exact rates per seniority level and annual all-inclusive costs, in USD and CAD.
How we define seniority
Junior
2+ years of experience
Engineers with 2+ years of industry experience — eager to code, learn, and contribute from day one.
Intermediate
5+ years of experience
Up-and-coming engineers with 5+ years of development experience, ready to build new features and improve the product.
Senior
7+ years of experience
Professionals with 7+ years of industry experience, strong communication skills and a proven track record on international distributed teams.
Ready to put these numbers to work? DevEngine builds time-zone-aligned engineering teams across Latin America for US and Canadian companies — explore nearshore staff augmentation, permanent IT recruitment in LATAM or all of our services in Latin America. If you are comparing against a domestic hire, our Canadian salary guide covers the same roles in Canada — note it reports annual base salary, so employer costs still need to be added on top. For more on what drives these numbers, see our articles on the costs of hiring tech talent.
Snapshot of all-inclusive hourly rates in Latin America
USD, junior (2+ years) to senior (7+ years). Source: DevEngine placements, past 12 months.
| Role | Category | Hourly rate (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Full-Stack Developer | Web & Software Development | $30 – $67 |
| Front-End Engineer (React/Angular/Vue/JS) | Web & Software Development | $29 – $64 |
| Backend Engineer (Go/Node/Python/Ruby) | Web & Software Development | $33 – $66 |
| QA Engineer (Automation) | Web & Software Development | $26 – $49 |
| Data Engineer | Data & AI Engineering | $37 – $64 |
| AI/ML Engineer | Data & AI Engineering | $38 – $77 |
| Data Scientist | Data & AI Engineering | $43 – $71 |
| Cloud Architect (AWS/Azure/GCP) | Cloud & Infrastructure | $49 – $70 |
| DevOps Engineer | Cloud & Infrastructure | $27 – $61 |
Ranges span junior to senior profiles. The downloadable guide breaks each role down by seniority and adds annual all-inclusive cost figures for the remaining roles, including architects, MLOps, SRE, security and engineering leadership.
LATAM salary questions, answered
How much does it cost to hire a software developer in LATAM?
Based on DevEngine's placements over the past 12 months, all-inclusive hourly rates for South American tech professionals range from roughly $26/hr for a junior QA engineer to $77/hr for a senior AI/ML engineer. A full-stack developer ranges from $30/hr (junior) to $67/hr (senior), and a data engineer from $37/hr to $64/hr. The full guide breaks every role down by seniority and includes annual all-inclusive costs.
Are these rates all-inclusive?
Yes. Every range in the guide is inclusive of all costs — compensation, DevEngine's services, and operational overhead. There are no additional fees on top of these figures.
Where does this salary data come from?
All data is based on actual searches DevEngine conducted for its clients and positions we filled in the past 12 months — not on scraped job boards or third-party surveys. That makes it a first-hand benchmark of what companies actually pay for LATAM talent.
What does the full guide include that this page doesn't?
The downloadable guide covers 25+ roles across four categories (Web & Software Development, Data & AI Engineering, Cloud & Infrastructure, Architecture & Leadership), with exact rates per seniority level (junior, intermediate, senior), annual all-inclusive cost figures, and editions in both USD and CAD.