APAC is cheapest region to hire senior AI engineers, Second Talent finds

Second Talent compared hiring costs for senior AI engineers across 12 markets in APAC, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America, and found APAC had the lowest fully loaded annual cost at $48,600. The analysis also showed that time-zone overlap favors Latin America with a U.S.-based team, while CEE leads on English proficiency and research-oriented talent signals.

Why it matters: - Companies hiring AI engineers are weighing salary, employer burden, time-zone overlap and talent depth at the same time. - Second Talent’s comparison shows the cheapest region on salary is not always the cheapest once statutory employer costs are included. - The report suggests hiring decisions shift depending on whether a team needs U.S. overlap, EU overlap or async-first execution.

What happened: - Second Talent published a comparison of 12 markets across APAC, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. - The analysis priced the same role across all markets: a senior AI engineer with five to eight years of experience, focused on production LLMs, agent systems, retrieval, evaluation or MLOps. - APAC came out cheapest overall at $48,600 a year fully loaded. - Central and Eastern Europe totaled $77,100 a year fully loaded. - Latin America totaled $87,500 a year fully loaded.

The details: - APAC’s average salary was $43,500, and employer burden added $5,100. - CEE’s average salary was $70,400, and employer burden added $6,700. - LATAM’s average salary was $60,400, and employer burden added $27,200. - On salary alone, LATAM was about 14% cheaper than CEE. - After employer contributions, LATAM became roughly 14% more expensive than CEE. - Measured against the U.S. baseline of $218,000, APAC was 78% lower, CEE was 65% lower and LATAM was 60% lower. - At the market level, Brazil came in at $100,800 fully loaded and Czechia at $97,200, both above Poland’s $83,000 despite Poland’s higher headline salary band. - In APAC, the Philippines was $42,200, Vietnam $47,900, Indonesia $47,100 and India $57,200. - Brazil’s CLT structure adds close to 60% once the 13th salary and vacation provisions are annualized. - Colombia’s parafiscales also push up employer costs. - Poland stands out because roughly 65% of Polish developers invoice as B2B sole traders, making the statutory employer rate on the dominant engagement type zero. - Romania shifted its social burden to the employee in 2025. - Ukraine’s Diia City regime caps the employer contribution at 22% of the minimum wage, which the report describes as a few hundred dollars a year instead of a percentage of a senior salary. - The report says APAC’s cost edge comes with a large talent pool and lower loaded cost, but often requires async-friendly operating models.

Between the lines: - The report argues that comparing salary bands without employer costs can distort hiring decisions. - The gap between headline pay and fully loaded cost is especially wide in Brazil and much narrower in Poland on common contractor arrangements. - CEE’s higher loaded cost is partly offset by stronger English scores and better overlap for teams anchored in Europe. - India appears both highly supply-rich and highly competitive on AI learning signals, which the report frames as a screening challenge rather than a talent shortage. - Second Talent is positioning APAC as the best-value region for teams that can work with less real-time overlap.

What's next: - The report points to a tradeoff: U.S.-aligned teams may still prefer LATAM for overlap, EU-centered teams may absorb CEE’s premium, and async-first teams may lean toward APAC. - Second Talent says shifted schedules are common in APAC hiring and are typically negotiated into offers, adding back three to five hours of overlap. - The full report is available as LATAM vs CEE vs APAC for Hiring AI Engineers. - Second Talent says it connects startups and enterprises with AI-native tech talent across Asia and manages contracts, payroll and compliance behind each hire.