Hiring software developers in Eastern Europe gives companies access to talent, cost savings, scalability, and a competitive edge in today’s dynamic business landscape.

How to find top software developers in Eastern Europe? How to hire them? And how to establish successful cooperation with a reliable tech partner?

Let’s find out in the ultimate guide!

The digital infrastructure and dynamic tech community are significant advantages for companies considering outsourcing software development in Eastern Europe.

Market analysis from Statista forecasts that by 2024, the IT and Business Process outsourcing sector will generate revenues of $10.92 billion, with a projected annual growth rate of 8.44% CAGR. This indicates a strong and consistent expansion in the IT services market, suggesting a rising demand and abundant opportunities for businesses within this industry.

Clutch reports that over 3,500 software development firms in Eastern Europe offer outsourcing services, highlighting the region’s substantial capacity for supporting global software development requirements.

A sustainable talent pool

Eastern Europe boasts a large pool of highly skilled software developers. Their strong educational backgrounds and passion for continuous learning make them valuable assets for any remote development team. The following countries offer diverse talent pools, strong tech expertise, and vibrant tech hubs, making them attractive destinations for outsourcing software development and tech collaborations.

Here’s a breakdown of the talent pool size, tech expertise, and tech hubs for the top Eastern Europe software development outsourcing destinations:

Significant cost-efficiency

Eastern European developers offer competitive rates without compromising quality Businesses can achieve substantial cost savings while benefiting from top-notch engineering work. The favorable cost-to-quality ratio is a compelling reason to consider hiring from this region.

Here’s a comparison of average annual salaries for Senior positions in different countries:

The right cultural fit

Cultural alignment plays a crucial role in successful collaboration. IT developers in Eastern Europe often share similar work ethics, communication styles, and problem-solving approaches with their Western counterparts. This compatibility fosters seamless teamwork, efficient project management, and better outcomes.

Overall, Eastern European culture fosters great team players and hard workers. For instance, Ukrainian developers prefer visibility into task prioritization and decision-making processes. They embrace challenges and learn along the way. Polish developers value self-organization, which encourages open communication and shared responsibility. Romanian developers possess excellent language skills, making communication seamless.

Time zone alignment

The EET (Eastern European Time) zone presents numerous benefits for companies seeking developers in Eastern Europe. The time zones in Western Europe and other countries can work together synchronously, reducing communication delays and helping teams work well together.

For North American companies, the time zone offers longer working periods and the potential for continuous project advancement during downtime. This arrangement can accelerate development timelines and provide swift issue resolutions.

For Western European businesses, proximity in time zones allows for expedited and effective solutions. Teams can tackle problems swiftly within their standard work hours, avoiding undue postponements.

Driving digital transformation for a leading retail company in Europe

In 2021, a European manufacturer and retailer started its Digital transformation. The company decided to develop a scalable integration hub based on Event-Driven Architecture and Kafka to solve the following issues and build a solid foundation for digital transformation:

• Reduce latency and increase data accuracy
• Increase scalability
• Eliminate data duplication
• Reduce the amount of memory and processing power used
• Reduce maintenance expenses and complexity
• Make the efficiency and correctness of data exchange more trackable
• Eliminate operational and analytical data discrepancies

ZoolaTech approach

With a precise focus on the client’s business needs, we helped our client choose the most suitable tech stack and architecture for the platform to reduce maintenance expenses, withstand high load, and mitigate risks.

We provided a strong engineering team that built a PoC and MVP and proceeded with further product development. The ZoolaTech team prepared a set of clear engineering standards to drive operational excellence and optimize costs.

We helped our client streamline, unify, and standardize all DevOps processes and apply the best DevOps practices. We also helped streamline their ERP, transportation management, and warehouse management systems, making the data exchange between these diverse systems fast, efficient, and consistent. It helps to provide real-time or near real-time visibility into all inventory levels and optimize logistics and transportation management.

Value delivered by ZoolaTech

The product created a digital foundation for integrating all business processes and operating digitally end-to-end. It helps our partner to:

• Ensure seamless integration, facilitating fast, efficient, and accurate data exchange between the client’s multiple systems.
• Significantly reduce latency from 36 hours to milliseconds, enhancing data accuracy.
• Unlock the value of real-time data analytics, offering visibility into all business processes.
• Build a robust foundation for implementing Advanced Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.
• Provide an omnichannel user experience.
• Increase fault tolerance to enhance system reliability.
• Enable more efficient management of logistics and transportation.
• Ensure future-proof scalability to accommodate growing business needs.
• Reduce maintenance expenses and complexity for improved operational efficiency.

Building an offshore delivery center for a  Fortune 500 FashionTech company

Our client is a Fortune 500 company and a significant player in the US FashionTech sector. They needed to rapidly expand development capabilities to boost flexibility and accelerate modernization, adoption of innovations, and delivery of new apps. So, the company required a reliable software development partner to help with this goal.

ZoolaTech approach

For the company, we facilitated the establishment of an Offshore Delivery Center (ODC) comprising 185 people and 40 teams. This ODC provided the flexibility to scale the team as needed and granted access to a diverse talent pool, fostering innovation and swift problem-solving.

ZoolaTech has evolved into a strategic software development partner for our client. Our teams at ZoolaTech and in the United States share equal rights and responsibilities. This collaborative effort ensures proactive leveraging of technical expertise, implementation of standardized processes, and proactive proposal of innovative solutions to optimize costs and mitigate potential risks.

Value delivered by ZoolaTech

ZoolaTech played a pivotal role in helping our client achieve a two-fold increase in development velocity and time-to-market. We helped to improve scalability, prevent downtime during peak periods, and significantly enhance user experience and engagement time.

ZoolaTech’s solution architects and principal engineers consistently provide tech solutions aligned with our clients’ functional needs and overarching business goals.

As the work landscape evolves, remote hiring has become a strategic advantage for businesses seeking to build high-performing, diverse, and resilient teams. Here are some practical tips for hiring remote software developers in Eastern Europe:

Technical and cultural fit

Say you’re looking for an Eastern European web development company. Learn about their technical expertise and what frameworks they use to determine whether they align with your project objectives. Some firms can source individuals tailored to fulfill your requirements.

Evaluate communication skills, teamwork, and adaptability. Consider shared values and work ethics. This information can be found during an interview and on the company’s About Us page.

Legal aspects and compliance

Familiarize yourself with employment laws and regulations in the specific Eastern European country where you plan to hire. Each has legal requirements regarding contracts, taxes, and employment rights.

Draft comprehensive employment contracts outlining roles, responsibilities, working hours, payment terms, and termination clauses. Consult legal experts to ensure compliance.

Effective onboarding

Develop a well-defined onboarding process. Provide remote developers with access to necessary tools, documentation, and resources. Here are a few recommendations for smooth onboarding for extended teams:

• Tell your in-house team about the reasoning and objectives behind outsourcing team extension.
• Clearly define the boundaries of task ownership and maintain open lines of communication between team members.
• Share team-specific terms, jokes, memes, and rules to provide context and help newcomers feel part of the team culture.
• Acknowledge cultural differences in standard practices among new developers from different countries, such as voicing an opinion, turning on the camera, raising issues or delays early on, etc.
• Establish agreed-upon collaboration windows accommodating different time zones.

Successful collaboration with a team of remote developers requires establishing clear roles and responsibilities and ensuring everyone understands their tasks, expectations, and reporting lines to avoid confusion.

• ZoolaTech is a global software development company, headquartered in the USA, with offices in Mexico, Ukraine, Poland, and Turkey.
• We recruit globally and can provide you with a team from Ukraine, Poland, and Romania.
• We provide flexible cooperation models: ODC, Team Extension, Managed Delivery, or mixed.
• When starting cooperation, we provide a team of experts with 5+ years of experience.
• ZoolaTech values every teammate regardless of age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, physical abilities, cultural background, or nationality.
• 96% – client retention rate
• 60% – senior software engineers
• 50% – women in leadership
• 10+ languages and 20+ nations
• Trusted by Fortune 500 companies