Nearshore software development means having your software built by engineers in a nearby country, in the same or a close time zone, rather than at home (onshore) or far away (offshore). For companies in the UK and northern Europe, and for US companies that want working hours on the East Coast morning, Spain is a nearshore location. There are three ways to do it: build your own team of employees in Spain, outsource to a vendor that provides a dedicated team, or add contractors through staff augmentation. If you only need one or two people, a fourth route is to contract the engineers directly, fully remote. Your own team costs more to set up and wins over the medium term for a core product; outsourcing wins for closed projects or when there is no technical lead in-house.
What is nearshore software development?
Nearshore software development is the practice of hiring or contracting software engineers in a country close to your own in time zone and working culture, so that teams share most of the working day. The term sits between onshore, which means engineers in your own country, and offshore, which means engineers in a distant country with little or no overlap in working hours.
Nearshore describes where the engineers are, not how they are engaged. A nearshore team in Spain can be made up of your own employees, of a vendor's employees working only for you, or of individual contractors. That choice of model decides cost, control and who owns the work, and it matters more than the choice of country.
Nearshore vs offshore vs onshore
The difference between nearshore, offshore and onshore is distance in working hours. Onshore teams work your hours in your country and cost the most per engineer. Offshore teams are the furthest away and typically cost the least, but leave little time for live collaboration. Nearshore teams trade part of the cost saving for a shared working day.
| Model | Where the engineers are | Overlap in working hours | Typical reason to choose it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onshore | Your own country | Full | Regulated work, on-site presence |
| Nearshore | A nearby country | Full or most of the day | Daily collaboration at a lower cost than home |
| Offshore | A distant country | Little or none | Lowest cost for well-specified work |
Choosing between Spain and other nearshore countries is a separate question. Kulturo's comparison of hiring developers in Spain, Portugal, Poland and Latin America covers it.
Spain as a nearshore location for the UK, Europe and the US
Mainland Spain keeps Central European Time, as the Spanish government's order setting the summer-time calendar (Orden PCM/186/2022, published in the BOE) confirms. That puts Spain on the same clock as most of continental Europe and one hour ahead of the UK, which runs on Greenwich Mean Time in winter, according to GOV.UK.
For US companies, Spain is nearshore to the East Coast rather than to the whole country. US Eastern time is Coordinated Universal Time minus 5 hours under 15 U.S.C. § 261, against UTC plus 1 for mainland Spain in winter, so New York is six hours behind for most of the year. A Spanish team's afternoon overlaps the New York morning; with the West Coast the overlap is close to zero.
Nearshore development models compared (2026)
The three nearshore models differ most in who employs the engineers. With your own team they are your employees; with outsourcing they are the vendor's employees; with staff augmentation they are contractors or a provider's staff working under your direction. The table compares the three team models on the same attributes; contracting one or two engineers directly, with no vendor in the middle, is a separate route with its own section.
| Attribute | Your own team in Spain | Outsourcing (dedicated team) | Staff augmentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per engineer | Gross salary plus employer social security; EOR fee if you have no entity; one-off recruitment fee | Vendor's monthly rate per engineer, which includes its margin | Provider's day or monthly rate per person |
| Who owns the code | You, by law, for employees (Article 97.4 of Spain's Intellectual Property Law) | You only if the contract assigns the rights | You only if the contract assigns the rights |
| Who keeps the knowledge | Your team | The vendor's team | The individual contractors |
| Time to start | Recruitment plus the candidate's notice period | As soon as the vendor has people available | As soon as the provider has people available |
| Technical control | Full | Shared, set by the contract | Day-to-day, within the legal limits |
| Scaling up and down | Hiring and dismissal under Spanish employment law | Change the contract | Change the contract |
| Cost of exit | Severance under fixed legal rules | Handover of code, documentation and knowledge | Replacing each person |
Published rates for outsourcing and staff augmentation vary by vendor and are not comparable without a quote. When you compare quotes, ask for the monthly rate per named engineer, the seniority behind it, the notice period to reduce the team, and what the handover at the end includes.
Building your own nearshore team in Spain
Building your own nearshore team in Spain means employing the engineers directly, through a Spanish entity or an employer of record (EOR), and recruiting them yourself or with a recruitment agency. It has the highest set-up effort of the three models and the lowest cost per engineer over time, because no vendor margin sits on top of the salary.
The pool is deep enough for most teams. In a September 2026 search, Kulturo's own candidate database returned 3,951 matching senior profiles in Madrid and 3,006 in Barcelona for four roles. Those are not market statistics but the profiles Kulturo finds in its own database; Kulturo's guide on where to hire software engineers in Spain has the full breakdown by city.
A team does not need to sit in one office. EvCharge, an electric-vehicle charging software platform with its head office in Reus, needed senior engineers that were hard to find near its headquarters. Kulturo ran a remote search across Spain; to date it has presented 35 candidates and five became hires, according to the EvCharge case study.
What an in-house engineer costs in Spain in 2026
An in-house software engineer in Spain costs the gross salary plus the employer's social security contributions. In the product and startup segment, a mid-level engineer (3–5 years) earns €42,000–55,000 gross a year and a senior engineer (6+ years) €58,000–72,000, according to Kulturo's analysis of developer salaries in Spain.
Location moves the figure by 15–20%, according to the same analysis, with Madrid and Barcelona at the top. Employer social security is added on top of the gross salary; Kulturo's guide to the cost of employing a software engineer in Spain breaks it down line by line and gives the total employer cost by seniority.
Hiring in Spain with or without an entity
A company without a Spanish entity can still employ engineers in Spain through an employer of record, which becomes the legal employer and runs payroll. Published 2026 EOR prices start at $599 per employee per month at Deel and at Remote, and at $699 at Oyster, according to each provider's pricing page.
An entity becomes cheaper than an EOR as the team grows, and a genuine freelance contract is a third route. Kulturo's guide on hiring in Spain without an entity compares entity, EOR and contractor. When the client has no entity, Kulturo hires through its EOR partner Deel, which is the formal employer.
How long it takes to hire engineers in Spain
Hiring an engineer in Spain takes the search plus the candidate's notice period. Kulturo's published target is a first batch of validated candidates in under 7 days and 30 days from kick-off to signed offer, before the candidate's notice period. Those are targets, not averages: they set the plan for the first hires of a nearshore team.
Kulturo, a Barcelona tech recruitment agency with clients in more than 8 countries, charges on a success-fee basis only, so the recruitment cost of an in-house team is paid once per hire and only when the hire happens.
Hiring one or two remote contractors instead of a team
If you need one or two engineers rather than a whole nearshore team, you can contract them directly: the engineer invoices your company as an independent professional, there is no Spanish entity to open and no vendor in the middle. It is the quickest route to start and the one that suits a long-term core team least.
This is fully remote hiring. The person works from where they live, with no office and no relocation, so the search goes after the skills you need rather than a city. The contract is a services contract with a genuinely independent professional, and it stops being one when the role is in practice a full-time job inside your organisation: Kulturo's guide on hiring in Spain without an entity covers where that line sits, and how an employer of record employs the person, with no entity, when the role is a job.
Kulturo runs the same search whichever way the engineer ends up engaged: on your payroll, employed through its EOR partner Deel, or invoicing you as a contractor. Several US companies hire engineers this way today through Kulturo, fully remote from Spain, according to the agency.