The Complete Guide to Building Your Filipino Offshore Team (With Real Salaries and Examples)

Key Takeaways

• An Integrated Team, Not Just Outsourced Tasks: A successful Filipino offshore staff is not a group of freelancers or a third-party vendor. They are a dedicated and integrated team that becomes part of your company culture, uses your systems, and works towards your strategic objectives.
• Driven by Talent Access, Fueled by Cost Savings: While the 40-70% cost savings are a powerful motivator, the primary strategic driver for building an offshore team is to overcome slow and difficult local hiring by gaining access to the large, skilled, and English-proficient talent pool in the Philippines.
• Systematic Management is Key to Success: Building a high-performing offshore team requires a deliberate strategy. This includes setting clear goals and OKRs (including for cultural fit), implementing robust project management and collaboration tools, and establishing a fair performance management system from day one.
• Investing in People Drives Long-Term Value: The most successful offshore initiatives focus on more than just task execution. They invest in personnel development and training, which boosts employee skills and loyalty, turning the offshore team into a high-value, long-term asset.

At the onset of the pandemic, the idea of building an offshore team to outsource certain business functions seemed a little odd. Imagine the challenges of collaborating remotely with different people from across the globe. 

However, the workplace changes brought about by the pandemic have made most industries look at offshoring differently. 

Offshoring has opened a lot of opportunities both for companies and talents. Now, businesses get access to top-tier professionals from all over the world, while talents get to showcase their skills and work with international companies without leaving their home country. 

Nine out of 10, or 92% of G2000 companies already had offshoring contracts for IT services, according to ISG research findings. Additionally, a Deloitte study found that businesses worldwide spent over $700 billion on outsourcing in 2022 alone, a 22% increase from 2019 or a year before the pandemic.

Offshoring has become a viable solution for talent challenges, with companies seeking ways to ensure the continuity of their operations through hiring offshore talent. 

Planning to hire remote workers in the Philippines? We will walk you through the things you need to put in place before building your Filipino offshore team and what sets Filipino remote workers apart from the rest of the world.

What is an offshore staff?

Offshore staff are employees who work for your company from a different country than where your business is headquartered. But that definition misses what actually matters.

The core difference between offshore staff and other remote workers is intentionality. When you build offshore staff in the Philippines, you’re not just hiring individuals who happen to live far away—you’re accessing an entirely different economic and talent ecosystem.

Here’s what I mean: A software developer in San Francisco costs $120,000 annually. That same skill level in Manila costs $36,000. But the value isn’t just cost arbitrage. The Philippines produces over 1.6 million college graduates annually, with strong English proficiency and cultural alignment with Western business practices.

What makes offshore staff different from freelancers:

Offshore staff integrate into your company culture, use your systems, and work your hours (or overlapping hours). They’re employees, not vendors. You’re building a distributed team, not outsourcing tasks.

The Philippines’ advantage specifically:

The country has invested decades in English education and customer service training. This isn’t accidental; it’s strategic economic development. The result is a workforce that understands Western business communication, has technical skills comparable to developed markets, and operates at costs that make scaling possible.

Yes, managing across time zones requires adjustment. But companies that get offshore staff in the Philippines right often find their distributed teams outperform their local ones in productivity, loyalty, and results.

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives

Know first where your company stands in terms of growth. Defining which direction you want your company to go is the first step, followed by what areas of your business need attention the most. By identifying these, you can decide on which type of offshoring service you need. 

This is the most vital step in building your remote team: acknowledge what you need and have a clear vision of how you want your remote team to be. 

Related article: Hiring and Working With Offshore Teams: Know the Real Deal

What is the average salary of an offshore worker?

The salary question drives every offshore decision, so let’s get specific.

Based on current market data, offshore staff in the Philippines’ salaries vary dramatically by role and experience level. Here’s what companies actually pay in 2025:

Technology roles: Software developers: $1,700-$3,800 monthly for mid-level talent. Senior developers with specialized skills can command $3,000-$4,000. Compare that to $8,500-$12,000 for equivalent US roles.

Administrative and support: Customer service representatives: $800-$1,000 monthly. Executive assistants: $1,200-$1,700. These roles offer 70-80% cost savings versus US equivalents.

Finance and accounting: Staff accountants: $1,500-$1,900 monthly. Financial analysts: $1,300-$1,900. The Philippines produces exceptional accounting talent due to rigorous CPA education standards.

Marketing and creative: Digital marketing specialists: $1,000-$1,600. Content writers: $1,000-$1,600. Social media managers: $1,600-$2,100.

The hidden costs reality:

These base salaries don’t include the full cost of employment, such as benefits, equipment, and overhead. However, even when building a fully supported offshore team, the guide indicates that companies can achieve an average savings of 70% on salaries compared to hiring in the U.S.

What drives salary variations:

Experience level matters enormously. A junior developer at $1,700 monthly versus a senior architect at $3,800 represents genuine skill differences, not just title inflation.

Location within the Philippines affects salaries marginally. Manila commands slight premiums, but the differences are much smaller than US coastal versus inland variations.

The companies getting the best value focus on the total cost of outcomes, not just hourly rates. A $2,500 monthly developer who delivers clean code and meets deadlines creates more value than a $1,500 monthly developer who requires constant oversight.

Having a Fair Performance Management System in Place

Set your new employees’ expectations the moment you welcome them to your company. Lay all your cards through a fair performance management system. 

Yes, it may be challenging to create and implement such a performance management system when you only meet your remote team members virtually. However having this system in place ensures that your team will work efficiently and effectively.

Establishing objectives and key results (OKRs) sets the direction of what you want to achieve with your remote team. These OKRs guide them in accomplishing their daily tasks and focus them on meeting the company’s goals.

Remember though that these OKRs should extend beyond work performance. They should also include behavioral metrics that ensure your remote team members are a good culture fit.

Remember though that these OKRs should extend beyond work performance. They should also include behavioral metrics that ensure your remote team members are a good culture fit.

What is an example of an offshore job?

Let me walk you through what offshore staff in the Philippines actually looks like in practice.

Customer Support Team Lead – Manila

One of our clients, a SaaS company with 50,000 users, hired Maria as their customer support team lead. Her role includes managing a 12-person support team, handling escalated technical issues, and reporting weekly performance metrics to the US-based head of customer success.

Maria works Philippine daytime hours (US nighttime), ensuring 24/7 coverage. She uses the same helpdesk software, CRM, and reporting tools as the US team. Her KPIs are identical: first response time under 4 hours, customer satisfaction above 4.2/5, and issue resolution rate above 85%.

Monthly compensation: $1,100 – $1,200. Equivalent US role: $6,500-$8,000.

Full-Stack Developer – Cebu

James works as a full-stack developer for a logistics startup. He develops new features, maintains the existing codebase, and participates in daily standups with the US development team at 9 PM his time (6 AM Pacific).

His technical stack: React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, AWS. He commits code to the same repositories, follows the same code review process, and deploys to the same production environments as onshore developers.

The twist: James often identifies issues and implements fixes while the US team sleeps, effectively creating 16-hour development cycles.

Monthly compensation: $3,200. Equivalent US role: $9,000 – $12,000.

The integration reality:

These aren’t outsourced tasks—they’re integrated team members. They know the company’s strategic priorities, understand customer pain points, and contribute to product direction. The time zone difference becomes an advantage when managed properly.

What makes these examples work is intentional integration, not just cost savings. Both Maria and James receive the same training, use the same tools, and are measured by the same standards as their US counterparts.

Using Project Management and Collaboration Tools

When you hire a remote team, consider how you’ll collaborate seamlessly and effectively, given that you’re far away from each other. 

Good thing that the tech industry has somehow foreseen that there would be a great demand for cloud-based software and other essential tools even before the pandemic broke out, hence, the vast availability of such tools. 

Here are some of them that might suit your company’s needs and remote work requirements.

• Forums – Forums help create a thread of ideas for a certain project or task. Platforms with such a format allow questions to be posted, which team members can answer or respond to on their own time within the set date. Software programs like Stack Overflow or Threads offer this kind of setup.
• Digital Whiteboards – Brainstorming is and will always be part of a team dynamic. This is why it’s useful to have a tool that replicates the boardroom whiteboard where all the teams’ ideas are written down. A notable tool for this purpose is Miro’s Black Canvas. It allows teams to create a board suitable to their needs and projects’ demands. Team members can also post their comments, add their insights, and remove post-its at their own pace and time.
• Project Management Software – This digital tool helps keep track of the team members’ daily to-do’s and progress of different projects, providing a clear record of actions done. Trello, Asana, Basecamp, and Wrike, among many others, help the team to work efficiently and be mindful of their deliverables and deadlines.
• Meeting Management Tools – Tools that help teams schedule collaboration sessions, meetings, brainstorming sessions, and more. Some of these tools also allow teams to exchange meeting notes. Good examples of such tools are Docket and Fellow, among many others.

Pick a tool that best addresses your needs to keep your remote team efficient. Give time to let your new employees learn these tools thoroughly.

Investing in Personnel Development and Team Training

A good company allows its employees to grow and hone their skills continuously. 

With employees learning and developing their skills, the company also gains from all the best practices, innovations, and other employee contributions to the business’ growth and success. 

Employees who are open to learning about new things related to their role will always bring value to an organization.

Training and development of the employees will contribute to their ability to hit targets and metrics one after the other. That is why their personal development is beneficial to them and their employers.

Training and development of the employees will contribute to their ability to hit targets and metrics one after the other.

Working With the Right Offshoring Partner

Offshore staffing partners help you focus on your core business while they recruit, hire, and manage your offshore team.

Partnerships with offshore teams must be built upon trust, accountability, and transparency for them to work harmoniously. These are all possible when you choose to work with a high-performing Filipino offshore team, as they get the job done and deliver results at a fraction of the cost of onshoring.

See also: Employee Cost Calculator: Compute How Much You’ll Save Through Offshore Staffing!

Final Thoughts

Building an offshore team all on your own can be tedious. But working with the right offshore staffing partner will make the talent acquisition and management process faster, more efficient, and less costly for your business.

Still unsure about hiring remote talents in the Philippines? Learn more about how a Filipino offshore team can help you scale your business.

Frequently Asked Questions