Why AI engineers are hard to hire, and what helps
When an AI engineering search runs five months, the instinct is to fix the process. Usually the problem is the profile, and it calls for a different approach.
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Hiring software developers in Costa Rica means adding an engineer who lives and works in Costa Rica to a team based elsewhere, usually in North America, on the same working day and under that team's direction. The engineer is employed in Costa Rica; the work happens in your repository, your standups and your priorities. It is the answer to a specific problem: a role that has stayed open too long because the profile is scarce where you are.
Costa Rica earns its place on that shortlist for reasons that have little to do with price. Multinationals have been building engineering, analytics and AI operations there for years, the clock matches US Central time in winter and sits one hour behind it in summer, and English proficiency is above the global average. Those advantages only pay off if the hire is planned around skills, total cost and who employs the person. This guide covers the market, the skills to look for, what a position really costs and the steps to fill one.
Companies hire software developers in Costa Rica to reach experienced engineers who share their working day and are used to international teams. The case rests on overlap, depth and communication, not on paying less.
Costa Rica runs on UTC-6 all year and does not observe daylight saving time. In winter it shares the clock with US Central time; in summer it sits one hour behind Central and two behind Eastern. Either way, code reviews, standups and incident calls happen inside the same business day, without the overnight lag that slows teams spread across continents.
A large share of Costa Rica's tech talent has worked inside multinational operations, with their processes, review standards and security requirements. An engineer who has shipped in that environment needs less time to adapt to yours.
Business practices, meeting habits and expectations around ownership are familiar to North American teams. That does not replace a good onboarding, but it shortens the period in which a new hire is still learning how your team works.
Costa Rica's software development sector grew on the back of foreign investment, and most of it is concentrated in the Greater Metropolitan Area around San José, Heredia and Cartago. Free trade zones host the operations of global companies such as Intel and HP, and that presence has given many local engineers experience in large-scale, process-heavy work.
That investment keeps coming, and it has moved up the value chain. According to CINDE, the country's investment promotion agency, Costa Rica attracted 19 new foreign investment projects and 48 reinvestments in 2025, and the service companies that expanded set up advanced digital operations in analytics and applied artificial intelligence, among other areas. The same report counts 196,310 people employed by the multinational sector.
The economy around it is stable. The World Bank reports that Costa Rica's growth accelerated to 4.6 percent in 2025, driven by exports, particularly medical devices and services. For a hiring company, the practical consequence is a market where experienced engineers have options, so the offer and the speed of the process matter.
The tech community is active beyond the multinationals: meetups, university events and hackathons keep developers in contact with new tools, and many experienced engineers who are not actively looking can be reached there.
Costa Rica's public universities anchor its tech talent. The Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC), the University of Costa Rica (UCR) and the Distance State University (UNED) all run computer science and engineering programs, and private universities and technical institutes add to the pool. Many programs include internships with companies already operating in the country, so graduates often arrive with production experience.
The country also has a public plan for artificial intelligence. In October 2024 the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT) presented the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy for 2024-2027, which made Costa Rica the first country in Central America with a public policy to guide the use and development of AI. For hiring purposes, it signals where training and infrastructure investment is heading.
English proficiency in Costa Rica is moderate at the national level and high among engineers who work with international teams. In the latest EF English Proficiency Index, Costa Rica ranks 55th globally with a score of 516, above the global average of 488.
National averages hide a wide range. Engineers employed by multinationals often use English every day in code, documentation and meetings, while others are less fluent. Confirm the level in the interview, with a technical conversation rather than a language test.
Costa Rican developers cover the stacks most teams run on: JavaScript and TypeScript for web work, Python for data and back-end services, and Java for large enterprise systems, alongside languages such as Go and Kotlin. The more relevant question in 2026 is how deep the market goes in AI, data and security, the three profiles that are hardest to find almost everywhere.
The region's own benchmark helps answer it. The Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index, prepared by Chile's National Center for Artificial Intelligence with ECLAC, classifies Costa Rica as an adopter and notes that it is among the countries "rapidly advancing in connectivity, talent, and AI strategies". It also places Costa Rica among the leaders in the use of generative AI.
What that means for a search depends on the profile:
For any of the three, check the delivery skills around them as well: cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure, containers and CI/CD pipelines, and the habit of reviewing AI-generated code with the same care as any other. An engineer who can deploy, monitor and explain their own work takes load off the rest of your team instead of adding to it.
Anyone can list these specialties on a page. The page on AI, security and data profiles lists four questions worth asking any partner before signing, starting with "Where have they placed this exact profile, and when?".
The salary is the starting point, not the total cost of a position. A full picture adds employment costs in Costa Rica, the time your team spends interviewing and onboarding, the tools the engineer needs and, if the team works with AI, the cost of those tools and their tokens. It also adds the cost of the search itself: every week the role stays open, roadmap items slip and two people cover the work of three.
Comparing countries or channels by hourly rate hides most of these lines. A rate that looks low can come with a long search, weak screening or an employment setup your company has to solve on its own. Compare the total cost of having the right person working in your team, and the time it takes to get there.
To hire a software developer in Costa Rica, define the role, choose the channel that matches how scarce the profile is, assess the person on real work, and settle who employs them before the start date. The steps below follow that order.
Write down what the role has to do, what it integrates with, who it reports to and what success looks like in six months. That brief makes every channel work better and every interview shorter.
Coding tests measure something real, but not what usually fails. Ask candidates to walk through something they built: the constraint, what they chose, what they would do differently. Use the first calls to judge responsiveness and how clearly they explain technical trade-offs in English, and ask for references from teams that worked with them remotely.
DevLatam offers three ways in, and in its own words "the engineers and the employment model are the same in all three. What changes is how you buy, and how the risk is shared".
The employment question has a one-line answer: "We are their legal employer. Payroll, compliance and employment obligations sit with us, in the country where they live." The page on who legally employs them explains what transfers and what stays with your company.
You interview whoever you want, and nobody joins your team without your yes. Keep the panel responsive: a week without an answer is the most common reason a good candidate takes another offer.
Three problems come up often enough in a Costa Rica search that it is worth planning for them before the first interview. None of them is specific to the country, but the density of multinationals competing for the same engineers makes all three more likely.
A strong engineer accepts your offer, hands in their notice, and their current employer improves the package. In a market where global companies keep expanding, it happens most with exactly the profiles you want. Keep a second candidate warm until the start date, and move fast between the final interview and the offer.
Four weeks in, the roadmap shifts and so does the job description. That is normal, but it resets part of the search. Say so openly and agree on the new profile before anyone keeps interviewing against the old one.
The most common reason a good candidate is lost is a week without an answer. Engineers with several options in San José or Heredia will not wait for a panel that can't meet. If your team cannot interview for two weeks, start the search when it can.
Global tech companies such as Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, HP and Dell have operations in Costa Rica. CINDE, the country's investment promotion agency, lists all of them in its digital technologies sector. Their presence is one reason many Costa Rican engineers already know the review, testing and security standards of large companies.
Pay for software engineers in Costa Rica depends on seniority, stack and employer, so no single figure describes the market well. Senior AI, data and security profiles cost the most, because multinationals compete for them. Benchmark against the offers in your own process, and compare the total cost of the position, not the salary alone.
Yes. A company outside Costa Rica can set up its own local entity, use an employer of record, or work with a staffing partner that finds the engineer and employs them in Costa Rica. Your own entity makes sense for several people over several years; for one or two engineers, the other two routes carry less overhead.
Costa Rica gives you engineers who share your working day, know how global teams operate and increasingly work in AI, data and security. The hiring works when it starts from the role and the total cost, not from the rate.
DevLatam is part of ACL and DataArt, and its engineers arrive with the group's engineering frameworks and playbooks: how code gets reviewed, how access is granted, how data is handled. The page on what being backed by ACL and DataArt changes, and what it doesn't, explains the difference. For the wider picture across the region, read the guide on hiring developers in Latin America. If the hard part is finding the person, start with the role you need to fill a position.
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