Insights · 11 min read
What it costs, how the 12-hour time gap actually works, the IP and data questions to ask, and how to pick an offshore partner you can keep.
By GGP Editorial
If you run a software team in the United States, you have probably sat through this conversation once or twice. The roadmap needs eight engineers and the budget covers four. Or you need three people who know Java, Go, and React this quarter, and the local market sends you one resume a week. Eventually someone says the word "offshore," and the room divides into people who have been burned and people who have heard stories about people who have been burned.
This guide is for that moment. It explains what offshore software development actually looks like from the US side: what it costs, how the time zones work in practice, what to check on intellectual property and data, and how to pick a partner you can keep for years.
I am writing this from the vendor side of the table. GlobeSoft is a China-based software company with 40-plus engineers and more than 300 delivered projects for clients in the US, Brazil, South Africa, and Singapore. I have watched offshore relationships run well for years and watched a few quietly fall apart. I will be direct about both.
Three reasons drive most decisions, and they usually arrive together.
Cost is the one everyone knows. A senior engineer in a major US market costs several times what an equally senior engineer costs through a China-based team. We get to the numbers below.
Talent is the one people discover second. When you need five backend engineers who know Spring Boot or Go this quarter, a tight local labor market may simply not have them. A partner with a deep bench does.
Scale is the operational reason. You add three engineers next month and drop back to one when a phase ends, with no six-month hiring loop and no severance.
The companies that do this well are not replacing their US team. They keep product, customers, and roadmap at home and send defined engineering work to the offshore team. That split is the whole trick, and most of this guide is about keeping it from collapsing.
There is no single offshore rate and no single US rate. The honest comparison is between a US salary and the monthly rate of a dedicated engineer through an offshore company.
The China figures below come from our own published pricing, which is what we quote international clients. The US figures are approximate base-salary ranges across major markets and exclude benefits, employer taxes, and equity.
| Level | China-based dedicated dev (monthly) | Typical US base salary (yearly) |
|---|---|---|
| Junior (1 to 3 years) | $2,000 to $3,500 | $80,000 to $110,000 |
| Mid (3 to 6 years) | $3,000 to $5,500 | $110,000 to $150,000 |
| Senior (6+ years) | $5,000 to $8,000 | $140,000 to $200,000 |
| Architect / tech lead | $7,000 to $10,000 | $180,000 to $250,000 |
A senior engineer in the US commonly runs $12,000 to $16,000 a month in base salary before you add benefits, taxes, and stock. The same seniority through a China-based partner runs $5,000 to $8,000 a month, and that rate already includes the vendor's project management, QA, and overhead.
The gap is real, and it is mostly not about skill. It is about the cost of living where the engineer sits, which is exactly what you are buying when you go offshore.
Two cautions. First, the cheapest offshore rate usually means a junior or a resold freelancer, not a senior on your product. Second, savings disappear fast when the work is badly specified. A team that rebuilds the same screen three times because the requirements were vague costs more than an expensive local team that got it right once. Budget for specification before you count the savings.
For a fuller explanation of how Chinese rates are built and what moves them, see our guide to software development cost in China.
China runs on a single time zone, UTC+8, with no daylight saving. That puts China 12 to 13 hours ahead of US Eastern Time and 15 to 16 hours ahead of Pacific Time, depending on the time of year.
People read those numbers and assume a simple question takes a day to answer. It does not have to.
You schedule overlap on purpose. A team on Eastern Time can hold a daily call at 8:00 or 9:00 AM that lands in the China team's evening. A team on Pacific Time can catch the China team's morning, which is late evening the previous day on the West Coast. Pick one or two overlapping windows, protect them, and put the whole team in the same chat channel.
Outside the overlap, work moves asynchronously. That works if you build for it: write down decisions, record short videos instead of calling a meeting for every clarification, and keep requirements in one document both sides edit. A twelve-hour gap is bad for real-time brainstorming and fine for well-defined build work. Most engineering is the second kind.
I am not your lawyer, so none of this is legal advice. These are the items US companies actually check before signing, and they are worth checking every time.
The contract should say in plain words that you own the code, the designs, and the domain knowledge produced for your project. Do not accept joint-ownership language you never asked for. Make sure the vendor assigns IP to you in writing, and get the same commitment from anyone who touches the code, including subcontractors.
A mutual NDA is standard, and a vendor that hesitates on one is a reason to walk. Then ask where your data is stored, who can see it, and what happens to it when the project ends. If you handle personal data from US residents, understand which state laws apply, with California's CCPA the one most teams hit first. If health data is involved, the vendor has to work under HIPAA-style controls. If the product processes card payments, the work must follow PCI DSS rules.
Ask about access controls, how engineers are onboarded and offboarded, and whether the vendor holds any certification you care about. SOC 2 is the common one. A serious vendor answers these without blinking. A vague one cannot.
Export controls matter for a small set of companies. If your product touches encryption or certain regulated technologies, check whether any export rules apply to sharing your code with an overseas team. Most business software is fine. Do not assume; ask.
You are not choosing a country. You are choosing a company. That reframe saves you from comparing China, India, and Eastern Europe as if they were interchangeable.
Start with the people who will build your product. Ask for the senior engineer who will lead the work, not just a salesperson, and talk to them. A vendor that will not put an engineer on the intro call is telling you something.
Look for a track record with US or other English-speaking clients, and ask for references you can actually call. Ask how they handled a project that went off plan, because every project does.
Then check the mechanics: how they run standups, what tools they use, how they handle QA and deployment, and who owns the source code repository. If they cannot describe their process clearly in English, that process will not survive a twelve-hour gap.
We have a longer checklist in our guide on how to choose an offshore software development partner. The short version: senior people, English communication, a real process, and references. Cheap is a nice-to-have, not a filter.
The setup matters more than the vendor's talent, and most of it sits on your side.
Write the requirements before you start. Not a ten-page spec, but a clear list of what ships first, what done means, and what is explicitly out of scope. Vague requirements are the number one reason offshore projects get expensive.
Name one person on each side. You have a product owner; they have an engineering lead. Those two talk daily and make small decisions without escalating everything.
Use one channel for everything. Teams that scatter decisions across email, Slack, WhatsApp, and a wiki lose them. Pick one, keep it, and write decisions into the ticket or the doc rather than the chat.
Review work in small pieces, weekly at most. A Friday demo catches drift before it becomes a rewrite. Do not wait a month to see progress.
Treat the offshore team like a team, not a vendor you are auditing. The best offshore relationships feel like one engineering org with an awkward time zone. The worst feel like two companies passing tickets.
The first is going with the cheapest bid. Offshore pricing that looks too good usually is: junior staff, no QA, or a resold freelancer with no oversight. The savings show up later as rework.
The second is skipping the spec to save time. You will spend that time three times over in clarification calls.
The third is handing over the whole product instead of defined work. An offshore team that owns your roadmap and your customers is a different relationship than one that ships defined modules. Decide which you want before you start.
The fourth is no overlap window. If you and the vendor never share a live hour, small questions pile up and the project crawls. Schedule the overlap in the first week, not after things go quiet.
Yes. Thousands of US companies work with offshore teams. What matters is the contract: IP assignment, NDA, and the data and security commitments covered above.
A senior engineer through a China-based partner typically costs $5,000 to $8,000 a month, against roughly $12,000 to $16,000 a month in US base salary for the same level. Real savings land in the 40 to 60 percent range after overhead, and less when the work is poorly specified.
They schedule one or two overlapping windows, a US morning or early evening, protect them for live calls, and run the rest of the work asynchronously through one shared channel and written requirements.
You should, and it should be in writing. A serious vendor assigns IP to you in the contract and gives you full access to the repository from day one.
Then data residency, state laws like CCPA, HIPAA if health data is involved, and PCI DSS if payments are involved all apply. Confirm the vendor can meet them before you sign.
Yes, and you should. Start with a two-to-four-week paid pilot on a defined piece of work. It tells you more about the partner than any sales call.
GlobeSoft is a China-based software development company founded in 2018. We have 40-plus engineers and have delivered more than 300 projects for over 100 clients across the US, Brazil, South Africa, and Singapore. We build custom software, mobile apps, SaaS platforms, FinTech systems, ERP and CRM, and AI products on a stack that includes Java, Spring Boot, Go, Python, React, Vue, and Node.
Cross-timezone delivery is our default: scheduled overlap, one shared channel, and written requirements. Our team works in English and Portuguese. A few of the systems we have shipped are in our case studies, including a multi-market brokerage trading system and a financial management system.
If you are weighing an offshore team for a US-based product, talk to us about your project. Tell us what you are building and where you are today. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
Tell us what you are building and where you are today. We typically reply within 24 hours.
