Companies globally are increasingly outsourcing their skills and moving jobs to developing economies as working remotely becomes the new norm. And in South Africa, software engineers are in demand.
OfferZen, a local developer job marketplace, said that companies in South Africa looking for local software engineers might find they have lost them to Europe – without them having to leave the country. It said that while South African developers’ skills are increasingly in demand across Europe, they no longer need to emigrate to land these jobs.
For the more than 120,000 developers in South Africa, access to reliable, high-speed internet, close alignment of time zones and familiarity with remote work means that they’re ideally positioned to take advantage of opportunities in Europe. “Local companies may have to compete with Europe today but recruiting skills from the rest of the continent presents a real opportunity,” said van der Heijden. “And like South Africans working for European companies, these developers don’t need to be physically in South Africa to meet the needs of their employers.”“The shift to remote has changed the way almost every company thinks about how they operate and South African companies need to keep up with the trend.