PYPL index states that Python was the most popular programming language as of February 2021. According to SlashData, there are now over 8M Python developers in the world.
However, in some countries, the demand for Python experts is surpassing the supply. For instance, according to LinkedIn, there are over 145,000 open Python jobs in the USA, and employers struggle to find the right specialists to meet the job requirements. Thus, many companies opt for offshore Python development.
But where to look for trusted offshore Python developers, and what skills should they possess? Let’s find out together.
Where to look for offshore Python developers: Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is home to a combined talent pool of around 164,000 offshore Python developers. Ukraine and Poland are the countries with the most impressive number of offshore Python developers. So, we will view these locations in more detail.
Why look for offshore Python developers in Ukraine?
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Talent pool
As of April 2021, LinkedIn lists 35,000 offshore Python developers in Ukraine. According to the DOU (Ukrainian media for developers) survey, Python has made it to the top five most used programming languages in Ukraine. What’s more, out of 60% of Ukrainian developers that plan to learn a new language, 20% want to learn Python. Thus, the Python community experiences a regular talent inflow.
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Skills
According to the DOU survey, Python has become the second most popular programming language Ukrainian developers use as an additional language.
Ukrainian offshore Python developers are experienced working with Python frameworks, libraries, extensions, and APIs. Django and Flask are the most popular frameworks among local offshore Python developers for web development. NumPy and SciPy libraries are most used for data science.
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Education
To top it off, Ukraine boasts a strong computer science education. In universities, Python is on the curriculum from the first year on. Master’s programs also include training students in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. For example, there is a Computer Science program specializing in Data Science program at Ukrainian Catholic University.
What’s more, there are specialized courses for developers who want to improve their Python skills. Many IT vendors offer traineeship programs to prepare new hirees.
Also, Ukraine boasts a strong Python community that helps share knowledge. For instance, Ukrainian companies organize many Python-related conferences, such as PyCon, Level Up! Week: Python Day, PyMeet, and many others.
Why look for offshore Python developers in Poland?
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Talent pool
As of April 2021, LinkedIn lists 70,000 offshore Python developers in Poland. 32% of offshore Python programmers in Poland claim to know Python, according to the Bulldogjob survey. What’s more, Python has made it to the top three most popular programming languages for those entering the market.
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Skills
Different rankings recognize Polish developers' coding skills. For instance, software engineers from Poland have made it to the 5th place in TopCoder Rating and to the 3rd place in SkillValue ranking.
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Education
Polish professionals strive for professional growth: 48% of surveyed experts attend online courses to gain new knowledge, and 34% take part in professional conferences for this purpose.
Read more about top Python development companies in Poland
Where to look for offshore Python developers: Asia
Asia is home to a large talent pool. India and China house the most significant number of offshore Python programmers in the region. So, now we will view these countries in more detail.
Why look for offshore Python developers in India?
India is home to over 1M offshore Python programmers. Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi house the lion’s share of these professionals.
Indian developers have made it to the top 10 most skilled software developers worldwide, according to the ranking by TopCoder. SkillValue ranks them 35th among 100 countries across the globe that house the best developers.
In terms of computer science education, India houses 58 trusted institutions that ensure regular talent inflow in the tech industry, according to the Times Higher Education World University Ranking.
What’s more, Indian students are interested in getting a university degree, as those who possess a master’s degree can get a 68% higher salary than those with a course certificate.
Why look for offshore Python developers in China?
China houses over 146,000 offshore Python developers.
Chinese developers have made it to the fourth place among the most skilled software engineers across the globe, according to the ranking by TopCoder.
According to the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, China is home to 80 top computer science universities.
Like in India, in China, salaries depend heavily on a degree. A candidate with a master’s degree can expect a 68% higher salary than one with a certificate.
Eastern Europe and Asia are the most alluring spots to look for offshore Python programmers. Now, let's take a look at what skills Python developers should have.
Skills experienced offshore Python developers must have
Your business success depends heavily on the professional skills of your developers. But what skills do your offshore Python developers need? We have compiled a list of skills that are critical in terms of offshore Python development.
An experienced Python developer should:
- know Python syntax and semantics, Python built-in container data types and libraries, threading limitations and ways to overcome them, etc.;
- have experience with Python libraries and frameworks: Django, Flask, Requests for web development; NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, TensorFlow for ML and data science, etc.;
- know the Python ecosystem as well as Python development tools such as debuggers, editors and IDEs, etc.;
- have general knowledge of front-end technologies (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc.);
- understand how to integrate different data sources into a single system.
- have knowledge of databases;
- have experience in working with version control systems;
- know fundamental software testing principles.
Now, let’s view businesses that have already opted for offshore Python development and benefited from it.
Businesses that benefited from hiring offshore Python developers
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Discovery Limited
Discovery Limited is a South Africa-based financial services group. The company offers a range of financial solutions to both individuals and businesses. We work with Discovery Invest, a part of Discovery Limited, which offers Investment and Pension fund products.
The client needed a partner with robust big data and cloud expertise. We are responsible for building the functionality that calculates additional benefits for certain products in the investment segment.
Discovery Invest encourages and rewards clients for investing longer, living well, and withdrawing wisely. They wanted to find a way to consider the customers’ state of health on an ongoing basis and to inspire people to adopt better lifestyle behaviors.
Adhering to adopting better lifestyle behaviors, our client works on new products to encourage its customers. The client engaged the N-iX team to develop a new solution. Our task is to develop REST APIs and design a pipeline for running, processing, and returning data to the source databases.
Also, as the data was stored on-premise, which is more expensive than the cloud, the client needed a cloud migration plan. Thus, the N-iX team has developed a clear cloud migration roadmap and started its implementation.
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American Fortune 500 industrial supply company (under NDA)
This company has 3.2 million customers in categories such as safety, material handling, and metalworking, along with services like inventory management and technical support. This client needed a partner with experience in big data to boost their engineering capabilities. Also, they needed to cut operational costs with the help of cloud migration.
The client requested developing a major big data platform that would contain data from all the company's departments.
Thus, our engineers have created a platform to store all the client's data in one place. Thanks to this solution, the data management is improved, and the whole process has sped up. What’s more, N-iX has fully automated the data extraction process from different sources and covered all the following issues:
- hardware maintenance;
- problems with free memory space on Hadoop and local file system;
- frequent Data nodes outages which cause poor performance for our ETL scripts.
Currently, our team manages all of the processes for processing a large amount of data. The use of Snowflake and Airflow allows us to automate the data extraction process.
The N-iX team has helped the client reduce the production cost because the client replaced half of the contractors (that received approx. $150 per hour).
Switching to the cloud allowed the client to save the cost, as keeping the Hadoop cluster is more expensive than a properly organized cloud.
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Vable
Vable is a UK information management company set up in 2004, aiming to develop the first newsletter solution for law firms.
Vable needed a dedicated development team to build a new solution from scratch, using technologies, including Python, Angular 8, Java, Node.js, AWS, RabbitMQ, to name a few.
N-iX development team is engaged in full-cycle software development of the new, cloud-based version of the product, which enables further data analysis and aggregation.
At the initial stage, our team worked on the new software architecture. We helped the client migrate from the monolith to microservices to make the solution more scalable and flexible.
Now, there are over 50 microservices: a part of them are written in Python because some of the tasks like crawling RSS feeds are better to manage in Python.
As of today, N-iX has helped the client to:
- develop a DevOps framework on Ansible and Swarm, thanks to which there is no downtime;
- expand the customer's business domain. The old platform was designed specifically for law firms. Thanks to our solution, the customer now also works in the financial sector and healthcare.
The partnership is ongoing.
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Origin Enterprises
Origin Enterprises plc is a leading agri-services group providing integrated agronomy services. The company is based in Ireland.
The client needed a technology partner to build a set of solutions, using such technologies as Python, Java, Ionic, and Angular.
The applications serve as digital platforms for farmers, agronomists, and product and credit providers. They offer comprehensive functionality, from optimizing cooperation between parties to efficient estimation and recommendations in agriculture.
Our developers have created a mobile app and several web applications for Origin Enterprises. For example, the N-iX team has developed a progressive web app that integrates modern web capabilities and the benefits of the mobile experience.
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AlientVault
AlienVault is a crowd-sourced threat intelligence network delivering a solution for threat detection, incident response, and compliance management.
N-iX started its partnership with AlienVault in October 2015, when the client was planning to develop a new product and needed a partner to address multiple technical tasks with existing products.
While working on this project, we used and configured such tools as Suricata (for NIDS), OSSEC agent (for HIDS), OpenVAS (vulnerability scanning), Nmap (asset discovery and scanning). We performed correlation engine improvements. It was written mainly in C/C++, whereas Sensors code was mostly in Python; web UI was written in PHP. MySQL was used as a database, with a current snapshot of OTX Threat DB being stored in Redis.
The N-iX team helped stabilize the product by releasing dozens of minor and major system patches and providing timely fixes. Our team grewew from 4 engineers to 14 in about a year. To accelerate time-to-market, we launched automated tests by extending the AlienVault Robot Framework and writing new automated test cases.
Why hire offshore Python developers from N-iX?
- N-iX builds long-lasting partnerships with businesses from North America, Western Europe, the UK, and more;
- Our Python experts can help you with building B2B portals, cloud-based solutions, e-commerce projects, APIs, web applications, high-load web services, data science and big data analytics solutions, etc.;
- N-iX Python developers build efficient data science and machine learning models by using data analysis and scientific computing libraries like scikit-learn, NLTK, Keras, TensorFlow, and others;
- We have a strong portfolio of successful Python projects in a wide range of industries, including telecom, agriculture, information management, and others;
- N-iX has over 1,400 skilled professionals on board that can help you build your solutions.
