Portuguese 
English 
Spanish 
4 min of reading 
0 comments 
Brazil Experiences Unprecedented Shortage in Technology Sector: Lack of Programmers and AI Specialists Leads Companies to Import Talent from India and Eastern Europe.
Brazil faces a silent crisis in the information technology sector. The accelerated digitalization of companies, the advancement of artificial intelligence, and the explosion of e-commerce have created such a great demand for IT professionals that the country simply does not have enough people to meet the market. According to the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies (Brasscom), the deficit of professionals may exceed 530 thousand by the end of 2025, the largest ever recorded in the sector’s history.
With the lack of qualified labor and rising domestic wages, national companies are seeking an unexpected solution: importing foreign talent, primarily from India, Ukraine, and Poland, countries that produce thousands of developers each year and offer costs up to 40% lower.
Demand Exceeds Formation in the IT Sector
A recent report from Brasscom indicates that Brazil trains about 56 thousand technology professionals per year, but the market needs 159 thousand new specialists annually to meet the sector’s expansion.
-
How the terraforming of Mars can transform the planet: artificial aerosols can increase the temperature by up to 35°C in 15 years, creating conditions for liquid water.
-
Scientists drilled nearly 8,000 meters into the ocean floor above the fault that caused the 2011 tsunami in Japan and discovered that a layer of clay 130 million years old was responsible for making the wave much worse than any model had predicted.
-
Thousands of years after causing the largest eruption of the Holocene, one of the world’s largest supervolcanoes is rebuilding itself beneath the sea south of Japan, receiving new magma and alarming scientists with its transformation.
-
China has activated a magnet 700,000 times more powerful than the Earth’s magnetic field that operates for over 200 consecutive hours while consuming little energy, and now the world wants to know what Beijing plans to do with this technology in 2026.
The gap between supply and demand has been growing since 2020, driven by post-pandemic digitalization, the explosion of remote work, and the integration of generative AI and automation in companies across all segments.
From startups to giants like Itaú, Magazine Luiza, Ambev Tech, Embraer, and Petrobras, all are facing the same difficulty: finding software developers, data analysts, cloud engineers, and specialists in cybersecurity.
“Today, technology professionals have the power to choose whom they want to work for — and, in most cases, they choose foreign companies that pay in dollars,” explains Sergio Paulo Gallindo, president of Brasscom.
With the rise of the dollar and the globalization of remote work, multinationals have been recruiting Brazilians to work from home for companies in Europe and the United States, exacerbating the draining of talent from the national market.
Salaries Surge and Battle for Talent Intensifies
The scarcity has turned the IT market into a real auction for talent. A junior data scientist, who earned R$ 6 thousand three years ago, can today exceed R$ 12 thousand in a medium-sized company. Senior software engineers can earn as much as R$ 25 thousand per month, not including bonuses and full remote work.
Smaller startups and regional companies simply cannot compete with the salaries offered by multinationals and financial technology companies. The result is a scenario of talent concentration, where only a few companies absorb most of the available professionals.
According to Indeed Brazil, the number of open positions in technology grew 38% in 2024, but the average time to fill these positions increased from 30 to 78 days, a historical record.
India and Eastern Europe Become New Sources of Talent
With the national scarcity, Brazilian companies have started to import knowledge. Remote recruitment platforms like Turing, Deel, and Andela have seen a 180% increase in international hires by companies in Latin America, with a focus on professionals coming from India, Ukraine, and Poland.
These countries offer highly skilled labor, with solid technical training and experience in cutting-edge languages such as Python, Rust, Go, Java, and C++, as well as specialization in AI, blockchain, and data security.
In São Paulo and Florianópolis, innovation hubs have been hiring Indian and Polish engineers full-time, under remote arrangements. According to Brasscom, more than 8 thousand foreigners already work in Brazil in IT roles, a number expected to double by 2026.
Cybersecurity and AI: The Biggest Gaps
Among all areas of technology, two stand out for their critical shortage: cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The increase in cyberattacks and digital fraud has raised the demand for information security specialists by over 350% in the last four years, according to a survey by consulting firm Gartner.
Artificial intelligence — especially deep learning models and industrial automation — requires professionals with advanced mathematical and statistical training, a profile still rare in the country.
“The problem is that we are training generalists, while the market needs specialists,” explains researcher Luiz Gonzaga Bertelli, from FGV-SP.
The gap is so significant that the federal government is considering creating a national program for training in AI and cybersecurity, similar to Pronatec, aimed at training technicians and mid-level analysts.
The Future of Technology and the Urgency of Training
Brasscom projects that the technology sector will represent 10% of Brazil’s GDP by 2030, driven by automation, digitalization of services, and integration of generative AI across all production chains. However, this growth could be hindered by a lack of workforce.
Experts assert that Brazil needs to invest R$ 8 billion annually in technical training to address the deficit by the end of the decade. Initiatives like the Future Talent Program by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, and Tech for Good by Microsoft, aim to bridge the gap between education and the market.
However, the challenge is urgent. Without professionals, the country runs the risk of becoming technologically dependent on nations that currently export knowledge — such as India, China, and the United States.
The Brazilian digital blackout is the new “electric blackout” of the modern economy. This time, however, what is lacking is not energy, but people capable of programming the future.
-
Uma pessoa reagiu a isso.