Hiring across borders has never moved faster. But knowing where to hire, and for which roles, is a tough decision to navigate.

We analysed more than 35,000 anonymized remote work contracts across 143 countries on the RemotePass platform. Here's what the numbers show about where hiring volume is concentrated, what companies are paying, and which roles are seeing the biggest shifts.

Key takeaways from our remote hiring data

• In 2025, UAE hiring volume grew 39% year-over-year. Saudi Arabia grew 26%. Median salaries rose 18% and 17% respectively.
• Egypt ranks #1 for Software Engineers, Backend Engineers, Data Scientists, Frontend Engineers, and QA Engineers.
• Hiring volume in Indonesia grew 266% year-over-year, Poland 183%, and Brazil 164%.
• Data Analyst hiring grew 458%. SDR hiring grew 451%. Tech Lead hiring grew 404%.
• Data Scientist roles grew 43%. AI Product Manager roles grew 37%. ML Engineer roles grew 35%.
• The UAE led AI-specific hiring growth at 48%.

1. Top countries and roles for remote hiring

The UAE, Philippines, and Saudi Arabia lead hiring volume, followed by Egypt, India, and Pakistan.

Top 10 countries by volume of remote hires

Top 5 fastest-growing markets

Indonesia led the fastest-growing markets, up 266% year-over-year. Poland, Brazil, Tunisia, and South Africa all grew over 150%. Triple-digit growth across all five signals that companies are actively diversifying beyond established hubs.

Top 10 fastest-growing roles

Data Analysts grew 458% year-over-year and Sales Development Representatives 451%. Tech Leads, DevOps Engineers, and Scrum Masters all grew over 200%, suggesting companies are scaling their engineering infrastructure while expanding their commercial reach into new markets.

Most popular countries for key tech roles

Egypt's dominance across every major tech role in our data is striking. It ranks first for Software Engineers, Backend Engineers, Data Scientists, Frontend Engineers, and QA Engineers. Pakistan consistently places second, with India, Armenia, and Jordan rounding out the tables depending on the role.

2. Salary trends across markets and roles

Gulf salaries are pulling away from the rest of the table. The UAE had the highest median salary at $59,300, up 18% year-over-year, and Saudi Arabia $45,700, up 17%. Several other markets fell in USD terms, though in volatile currency environments, dollar-denominated figures don't always reflect what's happening to local purchasing power.

Median salary by country

Median salary for key tech roles

The role-level data shows a clear split between AI-adjacent positions and everything else. Data Scientists earned a median of $37,600, up 18%, and Product Managers $41,300, up 15%. Software Engineers fell 7% to $34,200 and QA Engineers 6% to $24,100. The pattern holds across markets: compensation is rising for roles that sit close to AI product development, and softening for roles that AI tooling is beginning to absorb.

3. AI hiring trends

For this section, we included only roles where the job title or description explicitly referenced AI, machine learning, or data science work focused on AI applications.

AI role growth by volume

AI hiring grew across every role we tracked, but not at the same pace. Data Scientists grew 43% year-over-year, AI Product Managers 37%, and ML Engineers 35%. The growth in evaluation and strategy roles suggests companies have moved past the initial "build something with AI" phase and are now investing in the people who can assess whether what they built works, and whether they're building the right things at all.

Where AI hiring is concentrated

Geographically, AI hiring isn't evenly distributed. The UAE leads at 48% growth year-over-year, well ahead of India at 35% and Egypt at 28%. Turkey and Pakistan both grew 19%, notable given their broader dominance in general tech hiring and potentially an area to watch as AI work distributes across more markets.

4. How companies can act on this data

The markets are there. The talent is there. The harder question is execution: how do you hire across 10+ countries without building an entity in each one, managing currency risk in volatile markets, or exposing yourself to misclassification? Here's what we see working across our customer base.

Test new markets before you commit

The default assumption when hiring in a new market is that you need a local entity first. You don't. Employer of Record (EOR) lets you hire compliantly, with contracts, benefits, and local payroll, without the upfront cost or timeline of entity setup.

That's the model Lean Technologies used to enter Saudi Arabia. They became fully operational via RemotePass EOR in a fraction of the time and cost of entity setup, building a local team while preserving capital for the business itself. When they eventually established their own entity, they transitioned without disruption.

The fastest-growing markets in our data (Indonesia up 266%, Brazil up 164%) are where this approach makes most sense. Companies aren't filing for legal entities on the back of early-stage hiring interest. They're moving first and committing later.

Solve the currency problem before it becomes a retention problem

In markets with volatile currencies, how you pay matters as much as what you pay. Egypt's median salary grew 8% in USD terms last year, but Egyptian employees paid in local currency faced sustained devaluation eating into real wages. The gap between what companies are paying and what employees receive after conversion is often where retention breaks down.

Money Fellows discovered this directly: almost all developer turnover came from engineers moving to companies that paid in USD. Switching 75 contractors to USD payments via RemotePass brought turnover to zero.

"We've had zero contractor turnover since we started with RemotePass. The turnover was so high before because of the USD payment issue. RemotePass was a gateway to fix this pain point."
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— Hany Radwan, Director of People & Culture

Payment speed and transparency compound the same problem. Hidden fees and delayed payroll erode trust just as much as the wrong currency. Moniepoint addressed this across 13 countries, using RemotePass to introduce same-day payments and real-time exchange rate visibility for their team.

"With RemotePass, we can process payments on the same day if needed. Our employees in 13 countries now have access to transparent exchange rates and more withdrawal options. We've eliminated the frustrations of hidden fees and long payment delays."
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— Omobolanle Winnifred Ola, HR Business Partner

Don't let compliance admin become a growth blocker

The fastest-growing roles in our data (Tech Leads, DevOps Engineers, Scrum Masters) are the people companies need to hire urgently, and often the talent is in the markets where compliance is most complex. Compliance requirements don't scale evenly. They're heaviest where growth is strongest, which means the admin burden tends to peak at the moment you most need to move quickly.

In practice, this means chasing legal residence certificates from contractors across multiple markets, some requiring renewal every quarter. For a lean People team managing hires across Brazil, India, and Europe simultaneously, that admin adds up fast. Alts Digital was caught in that loop before switching to RemotePass Contractor of Record, which eliminated the certificate process entirely.

Know when contractors aren't enough

The contractor model works well for many roles, but it has limits. The fastest-growing positions in our data (Tech Leads, senior engineers, specialist AI roles) reflect demand for people who expect employment-level benefits, stability, and legal protections. Treating those hires as contractors isn't always viable, and in some markets it creates misclassification risk.

The answer isn't entity setup in every market. EOR lets you hire full-time employees compliantly without a local entity, giving people the benefits they expect while keeping your structure lean.

Chaos needed full-time employees in Vietnam, India, and Mexico: integrated team members, not contractors. RemotePass EOR gave them employment in each market without the entity overhead, including health insurance, social security, and standard benefits.

"It was not possible to have our workers as contractors. That's where RemotePass comes in super handy. For us, it makes more sense than establishing an entity. For the employees, it makes sense because they have their health insurance, social security and all the standard benefits."
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— Mincho Donev, Director of People and Culture

Enter new markets without the infrastructure headache

The data makes the case for remote hiring clearly: deep talent pools in markets like Egypt and Pakistan, fast-growing hubs in Indonesia and Brazil, and salaries that are a fraction of what the same roles cost in Western markets. But every new market brings its own compliance requirements, currency risks, and employment rules. Getting that wrong costs more than the savings you were hiring for.

RemotePass handles the infrastructure so you don't have to: EOR where you need full employment, Contractor of Record where contractors fit, same-day payments in local currency or USD, and compliance managed across every market. Book a demo to see how it works.

Methodology

This analysis covers more than 35,000 anonymised remote work contracts across 143 countries on the RemotePass platform. We excluded milestone-based, pay-as-you-go, and short-term engagements to focus on full-time and long-term contractor relationships.

All compensation figures are converted to USD using spot exchange rates as of October 31, 2025, and aren't adjusted for inflation. Year-over-year changes in USD may partly reflect currency movements in volatile FX markets. Only roles and countries with statistically robust sample sizes are included. Job titles were standardised to account for global naming variations. Seniority levels weren't factored into salary calculations. All percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number; dollar amounts to the nearest hundred.