Front-end development outsourcing: How to find the right partner In 2021

Since the end of November 2020, LinkedIn has listed more than 80,000 front-end development job vacancies in the United States and around 30,000 job vacancies in the European continent. The local labor market is highly competitive and in need of the best front-end developers. Companies are spending a lot of time and effort finding, hiring, and retaining the professionals they need. 

There is a high demand for front-end developers worldwide at the moment. By comparing the interests in front-end developers, back-end developers, and full-stack developers in the United States, we can see the significant increase in the number of searches for these professionals since 2007. But front-end developers are still among the most significant demand.

The battle for finding talents in the US and Europe has forced companies to explore different software outsourcing destinations. But finding the right outsourcing location and choosing the right vendor to hire the best professionals can be a challenge.

Understanding the concern, we have put up this article to provide you with the information related to the three main outsourcing destinations: Europe, Asia, and South America;

- The outsourcing cost of front-end developers;
- The best collaboration model for outsourcing front-end developers; and
- The necessary skill set a qualified front-end developer should possess.

Where to outsource front-end development?

Asia

When talking about offshore software development centers, can we NOT not mention Asia? 

Proof: Among Kearney GSLI’s ten best IT outsourcing countries in 2020, seven of which are from Asia. These countries/regions have a solid technical education background and professional knowledge in many fields, and abundant human resources. There are around 114,000 experts within India solely, and more than 30,000 experts in China. Clutch lists nearly 6000 companies that provide front-end development services. Most of these companies are small and medium-sized vendors.

Why would you want to outsource to Asia?

• Lower cost: This is a fact; labor cost in Asian countries is relatively lower than that of European countries; therefore, by reaching out to them, you can save up to 50 percent (or even more) of the expenditures’ cost. 
• Skilled employees: When reaching out to these countries, not only can you save cost but also get access to the talent from overseas, so why not? Taking the Vietnam software outsourcing market for an example, it is listed in a survey by Tholons, a Global Services Group, as one of the ten most ideal countries for outsourcing any IT services, not solely front-end. Moreover, despite the economic crisis and the current COVID-19 situation, Vietnam software companies are still growing strong to help their customers overcome the difficulty in the present time. Asia is also the outsourcing destination for many tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
• Time-zone difference: Some people view this as an opportunity, some view it as a challenge, we’d like to view it as an opportunity. Because of the significant time-zone differences, you can get your project done even when you’re sleeping. They usually will have two teams working, one in the daytime and another in the nighttime, making sure that your development project is running 24/7.

Eastern Europe

Eastern European countries like Poland and Ukraine are well-known for their tech talent pool. Both countries have more than 50,000 front-end developers. Although when compared with the US and the UK, this talent pool is relatively small, in Eastern Europe, there are fewer tech giants and large companies that have more resources to attract engineers. Hence, the competition among front-end developers is not as intense as in other regions around the world. 

Besides, most Eastern European IT companies offer outsourcing services. Therefore, developers in this field have practical experience in different business areas, leading to more flexible experience. Plus, it is easier to find front-end development engineers with the required skills in the European continent. 

Why would you want to outsource to Eastern Europe?

• Convenient geographical location and time zones: If time differences are among your top concerns regarding outsourcing, the time difference gap between Eastern and Western Europe and the US is not that big, which can be negligible for efficient communication. Plus, traveling is more convenient as you can visit most European tech hubs within a couple of hours. 
• Communication: Most European countries have moderate to high-level English skills. Although the language proficiency is not low in Asia, the English skills among IT professionals in Europe are comparatively higher than in Asia.

• Similar cultures and mentality: Similar cultures and mentality play a critical role when it comes to collaboration.

South America

Mexico and other South American countries are known for their nearshore development services quality, including front-end development. More than 2000 companies are providing outsourced front-end development services. Even though most of them are small companies with less than 250 employees, these companies still ensure to give you the best experience. 

Why would you want to outsource to South America?

• Similar time zones: If Europe has a slight time zone difference to the USA, South America shares almost the same time with the US. This significantly minimized time difference can reduce the response time between teams and achieve highly synchronized communications, thereby problems can be solved quickly. Communication is one of the factors that are easily affected due to the time zone differences, and outsourcing to Latin American countries can eliminate this problem.
• Fast-growing outsourcing market: With the expansion of the global outsourcing service, Latin America is growing faster than ever. Following the footsteps of Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, many other Latin American countries have gradually entered the field of outsourcing. 

• Free trade is encouraged: Well, if companies seek cost savings and efficiency when outsourcing, Latin American countries do offer this benefit. Most economic success stories in Latin America are those that used the power of free trade. Although Latin America is forecasted to have more economic volatility compared to most other markets due to the lack of central banks to coordinate the monetary policy of the entire continent, thanks to the signing of a series of free trade agreements in the past decade, companies investing in the region have more options and confidence.

The front-end development outsourcing costs

The final cost when outsourcing a vendor depends on the tech stack, the team size, skills, and the project’s length. 

Averagely, the USA pays the average compensation of $119,224 (as per salary.com) for front-end developers, respectively, making it among the highest-paid front-end developers.

In Canada, UK, Australia, and other Western-European countries, the rate is lower, around $45,000 to $65.000 annually. In Eastern-Europe, the price varies from $15,000 to $17,000 per year. 

Additionally, the price can also be affected by the experience level of the front-end developer team. They are paid somewhere around $70,000 in the USA market for junior developers and around $82,000 per year in Switzerland. For the Australian IT market, junior developers are offered approximately $42,000 per year for front-end development projects. For mid-level front-end development specialists, with more in-depth technology skills and knowledge, and the ability to work on complex tasks without supervision while performing routine bug-fixing, the salary is around $82,000 per year in the USA. In Switzerland, such specialists are offered approximately $103,000 annually. 

The salary goes up higher for senior developers from $88,000 and $108,000 in the USA and Switzerland, respectively. 

You should also be aware of overhead expenses, like money spent on recruitment, licenses, hardware, other facilities, etc. 

If you need more information, we have an article specifically written to answer all of your questions about software development rates by country. This article can act as a map for you to navigate and to be able to choose the best outsourcing vendor according to your project requirements.

What is the best cooperation model for front-end development? 

The three most common ways to work with front-end developers:

• Establishing the internal development team;
• Outsourcing by projects;
• Hiring a dedicated development team.

What are each model’s advantages and disadvantages, and which one should you choose, you might ask? Let’s get into each model now!

Internal front-end development

Many companies believe that by hiring an in-house team, one can build lasting relationships and loyalty. The benefits of building an internal team include complete control over the development process, better control over product knowledge and confidential information, no difference in time zone or geographic distance. 

However, there are some disadvantages like a more extended staffing period because of the lack of technical experts in some specific locations, leading to companies have to wait quite a long time to gather a skillful team; and taking responsibility for all risks. Because when outsourcing, you can share the burden of risk with your front-end development team. 

Why should you hire an in-house team? 

In general, the front-end team should work with your existing technical staff. Suppose there are no dedicated departments within your company that can handle the recruitment process. In that case, you should rely on Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, or any popular recruitment platforms in your country to find those talents. These services allow you to initiate the conversation with the experts as well as seeing their employment history and projects they have worked on.

If you want to outsource, you can consider the following two partnership models. 

Project-based outsourcing

This popular option allows you to outsource the entire project, choosing your preferred destination and conditions. Some advantages of this approach include:

• Solving existing business problems;
• Paying more attention to business processes than technical issues;
• Vendors cover all risks;
• Any team composition is required for the project and the scalability of those groups.

However, you should also consider  the disadvantages of this model as well:

• Additional costs will incur if the requirements change;
• The project management fee will be included in your project costs;
• Due to the different time zones (if you choose to go with offshore outsourcing), setting up an effective remote collaboration with the team can be challenging.

Choosing an IT service provider is complicated because you have to pay attention to their service reputation, expertise in the field, hiring time, and many other factors. You can have references on sites like clutch.co, or goodfirms.co.

Dedicated Development Team (DDT)

A dedicated development team is a group of experts devoted to your task. A dedicated development team’s cost includes the fixed monthly salary of each team member and the vendor’s services fee. Such partnership allows you to:

• Hire developers as a part of your workforce and integrate them with internal teams;
• Pay attention to other essential business tasks and products because your technology partners already take care of recruiting, on-boarding, etc.

For long-term projects, this collaboration model is usually chosen. It allows the company to have full control over the process, remain a product owner of the project, and have its team expansion.

Which skills a great front-end developer should have?

Each project is unique because it has a specific combination of required technologies. If you want to know which developer is suitable for one particular team, the first thing to do is to define the scope of knowledge. Junior and middle front-end developers have similar skill sets but different depths of knowledge and ability to independently solve complicated problems.

Junior and Middle front-end developers:

Entry-level front-end developers usually understand the technology or framework, so their abilities are limited. These developers typically have one to three years of experience and require supervision to complete tasks. On the other hand, mid-level developers usually have a wider choice of languages and frameworks they can work with, and they usually have three to five years of experience.

Here are some languages and framework that a promising junior and mid-level developer should be familiar with:

• CSS and HTML (including CSS libraries like Bootstrap)
• CSS preprocessors (SASS and LESS)
• JavaScript and JQuery
• ReactJS, Angular, and Vue
• Version Control Systems like Git
• Task runner and builder tools and process automation tools;
• Testing, cross-browser development, and web components.

Senior front-end developers:

Knowledge requirements can be different in different companies, projects, and the technology stack. However, being a senior developer means s/he should have a solid knowledge of the above technologies and also LAMP and/or MEAN tech stacks.

Besides, an excellent senior developer needs to:

• Have extensive knowledge of SDLC (Read this blog article to know the eight basic SDLC models and methodologies);
• Be a strong problem solver.
• Understand the business logic behind technical decisions

Senior front-end developers usually have 5+ years of experience and often a leader of one team.

How to know which vendor you should outsource to?

If you’re thinking of hiring a team of developers, first, you need to choose a proper form of models. Once you have decided which approach is the best in your case, you can start researching for your service provider. Before rushing into any decision, considering these aspects of selecting an outsourcing partner:

1. The size of the company since you can’t expect a company that has 5 to 10 employees to fill the spot of a team with 20 people.
2. Business reputation. This you can ask for a reference from any company who previously worked with them, or you can easily find reviews online. But stay alert since many companies were given bad reviews by their competitors.
3. Experience in the field. We are not telling you to go with companies with ten experience and neglect startups. Sometimes, a startup company with only two years of experience can deliver great results while helping you save costs. Asking for case studies and resume of each team member and their experience in front-end development
4. Time zone and working culture. The team should share the same culture so that you are comfortable to work with; the time zone difference issues can be solved by setting a fixed communication schedule once a week, or twice if you can.

Why should you outsource front-end development to Vietnam?

If you have been following our blog, you already know why we recommend choosing Asia, especially Vietnam, to be your outsourcing destination. If you have not, here are the summarized point of why you should choose Vietnam to be your software outsourcing partner in 2021:

1. Controlled COVID-19 situation: The fact that Vietnam is capable of control reassures the workforce’s adaptive capability. 
2. Convenient geographical location and language efficiency: Because the country is located in the center of Southeast Asia, it’s a potential strategic location for foreign companies to invest in. English is the most favorite foreign language to learn in this country; half of the Vietnamese population can speak English, eliminating the language gap between countries.
3. Economic strength: This is a fast-growing economic country with steady GDP growth over the past decades. It is predicted that Vietnam’s economy could be compared to what China’s economy experienced 10 years ago, giving it to be the next hub for producing services. Vietnam is a developing country; therefore, if you want to invest in it, this is the right time.
4. The advanced talent pool: The median rate in Vietnam is 6.5 years younger than in China (according to Worldmeters). Not only is the workforce young and dynamic but the country also actively promotes education and development pertaining to IT.
5. A trusted software development partner: According to Gartner, among many Asian countries with advantages in technology, Vietnam is an emerging country with a skillful workforce, world-class projects, high-quality services, location advantages, competitive prices, and is an outsourcing destination for many tech giants.  

Why choose TP&P Technology as your front-end development partner?

TP&P technology is among the top software development companies in Vietnam. We are well-known for our custom software development services, our reliability, and our long-lasting partnership with our clients. Mobile app development, web development, and front-end development are our key areas of expertise. At TP&P Technology, we can help you set up an experienced development team.

Reasons to choose us:

1. Our engagement model: Depending on each requirement and nature of each project, there are several different cooperation models you can choose, such as fixed cost projects, offshore development center, build-operate-transfer, and investment and partnership program.

2. Project management: We can help to put pieces of your project together, supporting you to focus on other essential business tasks. Using Agile project management methodologies, we ensure transparency, on-time and quick delivery of products, flexibility for changes, etc. 

3. Industry Experience: We have experience building software that can help improve the customer experience in different business disciplines like finance, healthcare, network and IoT, banking and insurance, etc.

Contact us now because we firmly believe that we can be the IT partner you are looking for, whether you need to hire several front-end developers or need a large dedicated team. Drop us a line to find the best front-end developers in the Vietnam IT market.