Hiring offshore developers in the Philippines

Hiring offshore developers in the Philippines gives an Australian business a full-time engineer who works your hours, inside your codebase, for about $2,300 a month on Tarino’s typical salary. Tarino’s typical figure for a comparable Australian developer is $145,000 a year plus super. The hire works when you’re clear about the stack, test with real work, put IP ownership in writing and keep code access under your own accounts.

This guide covers why businesses hire developers in the Philippines, what to hire for, how to assess candidates, how to protect your code, and what it costs. For the tasks a developer typically takes on day to day, see the software developer role page.

Why hire offshore developers: Philippines advantages and challenges

The Philippines suits Australian companies that want a full-time software engineer working inside their own team, rather than a project handed to an outside software development company. The main advantages are practical.

Time zone

The Philippines runs on Philippine Standard Time, UTC+8, all year with no daylight saving. That’s 2 hours behind Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane under standard time, 3 hours behind Sydney and Melbourne during daylight saving, and the same time as Perth. Your developer works a normal Australian business day, without night shifts, and joins your stand-ups live. Easy communication in real time is the main reason a Philippine hire can work as part of your team rather than as a separate supplier.

English fluency

English is one of the official languages under Article XIV, Section 7 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution. On the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, the Philippines ranks 28th, with a score of 569 against a global average of 488. Because English is an official language, you can run tickets, technical documentation and code comments in English, as you would with a local hire. Spoken English and written English both matter, so test each candidate rather than relying on a national average.

Talent pool

The industry body IBPAP reports a 1.9 million talent workforce and US$40 billion in revenue in 2025 for the Philippine IT and business process sector, which serves companies worldwide. In July 2026, IBPAP projected 2028 revenue of between US$43.3 billion and US$50.5 billion, with 1.85 million to 2.14 million workers, so the industry is still expected to grow. The Philippine Star reported in January 2026 that the sector’s export revenues passed US$40 billion in 2025, up from US$38 billion in 2024, as headcount rose from 1.82 million to 1.9 million. That depth means there’s a real market of people with experience working for overseas clients. Whatever your stack, whether JavaScript, Java, Python or PHP, Tarino builds a pool of 1,000+ candidates for each role it recruits.

Speed of hiring

Tarino typically sends 3 to 4 finalists within about 2 weeks of starting a search. Allow for the candidate’s notice period too: under the Philippine Labor Code, an employee who resigns without just cause must give at least one month’s written notice.

Cost

On Tarino’s typical figures, a direct hire costs about $32,600 in year one against about $162,400 for a local hire, roughly 80% less. The cost section below breaks this down. The saving can pay for development capacity you couldn’t otherwise afford, alongside your in-house team rather than instead of it.

Challenges

The challenges are just as real, and most are about management rather than location:

• You need someone to review the work. Code quality slips fastest when nobody on your side reads pull requests.
• Onboarding takes resources. Someone on your side has to own setup, support and day-to-day operations for the first few months.
• Remote communication takes effort. Written specs, recorded decisions and a daily check-in replace the conversations an in-house team has at the desk.
• Strong developers have options. In a competitive job market, good candidates often have more than one offer, so move quickly and pay a fair salary.
• Plan for connectivity. The Philippines’ median fixed internet download speed was 105.17 Mbps at the end of 2025, according to Ookla data in DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report, but home connections vary. Ask candidates about their internet connection and a backup option. Because the role is remote, your developer can be in Metro Manila, Cebu City or anywhere else with reliable internet.

How do the Philippines compare with other countries for software development?

Common alternatives to compare are India, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Time zone is the clearest difference.

Region	Typical time difference to Sydney (standard time)	EF EPI 2025
Philippines (UTC+8)	2 hours behind	Rank 28, score 569
India (UTC+5:30)	4.5 hours behind	Rank 74, score 484
Eastern Europe (for example, Poland)	8 to 9 hours behind	Varies by country
Latin America (for example, Argentina)	13 hours behind	Varies by country

A developer in Eastern Europe or Latin America overlaps with your business day for a few hours at most, which works for self-contained projects but not for a developer who pairs with your team every day. That overlap, plus English, makes the Philippines a practical starting point for an Australian business.

Offshore software development models compared

There are four common ways to get offshore software development done. They differ in who manages the work, who owns the relationship and how you pay.

Model	Who manages the developer	How you pay	Best for
Direct hire (recruited by Tarino)	You	Salary to your developer, plus a one-off recruitment fee	A long-term team member inside your own processes
Employer of record (EOR)	You manage the work, the EOR handles employment and payroll	Salary plus a monthly EOR fee	A direct hire without running Philippine payroll yourself
Managed offshore agency	You manage the work, the agency provides staff and support	Salary plus a monthly fee per person	Businesses that want an intermediary to handle HR and payroll
Software development company (project outsourcing)	The company’s own project manager	Fixed price or time and materials per project	A defined project with a clear end, such as a new app

If you want a developer who learns your product, uses your tools and stays for years, direct hire or EOR usually fits best. Project-based software development services suit one-off builds, such as developing a new product when you have no technical lead yet, but the knowledge of your code leaves with the supplier when the project ends. You can also combine them: a project company for the first build, then a direct hire to maintain it.

What kinds of software developers can you hire offshore?

Hire for the work you actually have, not a generic “full stack” title. Developer roles fall into a few broad groups:

• Web developer and full stack roles who build features and fix bugs in an existing product, for example in a JavaScript or TypeScript framework on the front end and a server language on the back end.
• Back-end developers for APIs and Java-based applications, for example on Java with Spring Boot, or on Node.js, PHP, Python or .NET.
• CMS and e-commerce developers who maintain WordPress, Shopify or similar sites, plugins and themes.
• Integration and automation developers who connect your CRM, accounting software and internal tools through APIs, and automate reporting.
• Mobile developers for mobile app development on iOS, Android or cross-platform frameworks, including customer facing apps.
• Quality assurance (QA) and test engineers with a keen eye for edge cases, who write automated tests and keep releases stable.
• Data and machine learning engineers, if your product genuinely needs them. Scope these roles tightly, because the title covers very different technical skills.

Before you start, write down the exact languages, frameworks, databases and hosting you use, plus the one or two things the person must be able to do in their first month. A brief such as “ship small features in our Laravel and Vue app, write tests, and take over bug triage” will get you a far better shortlist than “senior developer”. Tarino can tell you on a call how deep the candidate pool is for your particular stack.

Junior, mid-level or senior software engineer?

If nobody on your side can review code, hire someone senior enough to work without close technical supervision, and set goals in product terms. If you have a technical lead in Australia, a mid-level developer who takes tickets from that lead is often the better value. A first offshore developer with no technical reviewer at all is the setup most likely to go wrong.

Building a development team: one developer or a dedicated team?

Start with one software developer who joins your existing development team, or reports to your technical lead, and add people once that hire is working. A dedicated team of several offshore developers needs its own lead, a clear focus such as one product area, and someone on your side who owns priorities. If testing becomes the bottleneck once your developer is shipping regularly, a QA engineer is a sensible second hire.

How do you assess an offshore developer?

CVs and interviews tell you little about how someone codes. Use a short sequence that tests real work.

1. Screen the CV against your stack. Check technical skills first. Look for production experience in your languages and frameworks, and for products they worked on rather than lists of technologies.

2. Run a short practical task. Keep it to a few hours and make it look like your work: fix a bug in a small sample repo, add one feature with tests, or review a pull request with deliberate problems in it. Avoid algorithm puzzles unless your work involves them.

3. Do a live code review. Ask the candidate to walk you through their solution, what they’d change with more time, and how they’d test it. You’ll learn how they think, how clearly they explain technical trade-offs in English, and how they take feedback. This is also where you test cultural alignment: whether they ask questions, raise concerns and push back politely when something doesn’t make sense. Outsourcing providers often market Filipino developers as collaborative and adaptable, with a strong work ethic and good communication skills. Treat that as a claim to test in this step, not an assumption, because it varies by person like anywhere else.

4. Check how they work in a team. Ask about their Git workflow, code reviews, how they estimate tickets, and a time something they shipped broke. You want someone who raises problems early.

5. Check references. Speak to a previous technical lead if you can.

Practical assessment is one of the standard stages in Tarino’s screening. We build a pool of 1,000+ candidates per role and narrow it through CV and quality screening, video screening, a practical assessment and a structured interview, then send you 3 to 4 finalists, typically within about 2 weeks. You can add your own technical interview at the end.

Who owns the code, and how do you protect it?

This is the part people skip, and it’s the part that matters most if you ever sell the business or raise money.

IP ownership depends on how the person is engaged

Under the Philippines’ Intellectual Property Code (RA 8293), computer programs are protected as literary works (section 172.1). Section 178 then sets out who owns copyright:

• Work an employee creates as part of their regularly assigned duties belongs to the employer, unless there’s an agreement to the contrary (section 178.3).
• Commissioned work, done by someone who isn’t the commissioning party’s employee, is owned by the person who commissioned it, but the copyright stays with the creator unless there’s a written stipulation to the contrary (section 178.4).

The practical point is that the default rule changes with the structure, so IP protection starts with the contract. If your developer is engaged as a contractor, or through a third party, you shouldn’t rely on the default. Put an explicit, written assignment of IP in every contract, covering code, documentation and anything created for your business, plus confidentiality and a moral rights consent where relevant. Have an Australian or Philippine lawyer review it. This is general information, not legal advice.

Keep code security under your control

• Own every account. Your organisation owns the GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket workspace, the cloud accounts and the domain. The developer gets a named user, never your admin login.
• Use pull requests and reviews. Protect your main branch so code is reviewed before merging.
• Separate environments. Start with staging and test data. Add production access only when the role needs it.
• Store secrets properly. Use a secrets manager or your platform’s environment variables, not chat messages or code.
• Use multi-factor authentication on everything, and a password manager for shared credentials.
• Offboard on the day. Remove access the day someone leaves.

If your systems hold customers’ personal information, the Privacy Act applies. The OAIC’s APP 8 guidelines explain that an APP entity disclosing personal information overseas generally needs to take reasonable steps to make sure it’s handled in line with the APPs, and remains accountable for it. Giving your developer test data instead of real customer data removes much of that risk. Our offshore staff security checklist covers devices, access and data handling in more detail.

What does an offshore developer in the Philippines cost?

The table compares year-one costs for one full-time developer. Figures are typical, not quotes.

Option	Salary	Fees in year one	Year-one total
Local hire (Tarino’s typical figure)	$145,000 plus 12% super ($17,400)	Recruiter fees vary	About $162,400 plus on-costs
Managed offshore agency (one published rate)	$27,600	$14,388 (A$1,099 x 12 plus A$1,200 per hire)	About $41,988
Direct hire through Tarino	$27,600 ($2,300 a month, Tarino’s typical figure)	$5,000 excl. GST, once	About $32,600

Super is at the 12% guarantee rate the ATO lists from 1 July 2025. For offshore hires, budget on top for a laptop, software licences and the Philippine side of the arrangement, including mandatory employee benefits such as 13th month pay and statutory social security, health insurance and housing fund contributions (see our 13th month pay guide). Philippine wages must be paid at least once every two weeks or twice a month, at intervals of no more than 16 days, under Article 103 of the Labor Code, so plan for a twice-monthly pay cycle. From year two, the agency fees continue at $13,188 a year, while the direct hire has no further fees. Use the cost calculator to try different salaries.

Don’t hire on price alone. A developer who costs a little more and needs less rework is usually cheaper over a year.

How do you get the first three months right?

Week one: environment and a small win. Repository access, a working local setup, and one small bug fixed and merged. It proves the tooling works.

Weeks two to four: real tickets with review. Small features from your backlog, with every pull request reviewed by your lead or a senior contractor.

Months two and three: ownership. Give them an area of the product to own, such as integrations or the admin dashboard, and measure output in shipped tickets and bug rates, not hours.

After that: a bigger role. A software engineer who has been in your codebase for six months or more has the knowledge and ability to contribute to architecture decisions, technical debt priorities and product innovation. Invite that input. It’s one of the main advantages of a long-term hire over project-based software development.

Bring them into your stand-ups and planning from day one. Developers who only receive tickets by email rarely do their best work. Our guide to managing offshore staff covers communication and check-ins.

How does Tarino help you hire developers in the Philippines?

Tarino is a recruitment service: we find and screen the candidates, and you hire and pay your developer directly. Our fee is $250 upfront plus $4,750 when you hire, $5,000 excl. GST in total, with the $250 credited back when you hire. There are no monthly fees or markups. Each placement includes 6-month replacement cover for the same role, and more than 95% of our placements are still in the role at 6 months.

If you don’t want to run Philippine payroll and contracts yourself, Tarino EOR handles the employment contract and payroll for $387 per employee per month. See pricing for the detail, or book a 30-minute call to talk through your stack and what a good first hire looks like.