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What Roles Should You Offshore First? A Practical Guide for Growing Companies
“You can use the right offshore model, but still fail when you start with the wrong role”
Key takeaways
- Why the first offshore role matters more than its job title suggests
- The roles growing companies typically offshore first, and why
- How to match a role to your actual internal bottleneck
- What to prepare before you make the hire
- Common mistakes to avoid
Local hiring is slow and specialized talent is expensive, so the decision to offshore makes sense on paper. The harder question comes next: which role should you offshore first?
This guide shows you what roles are best to start with, how to prepare and what mistakes to prevent.
Why Your First Offshore Hire Sets the Tone
The first offshore hire rarely stays a private decision. Internally, it becomes a reference point.
If it goes well: leadership starts to see offshore staffing as a normal way to scale, not a risky experiment. Expanding the team later becomes an easier conversation.
If it goes poorly: the real cause is often a vague role brief, missing onboarding or an unclear reporting line. But internally, the offshore model tends to get the blame instead.
A good starting role should have:
- A clear, defined scope
- Measurable output
- Low risk to core strategic decisions
Get this right, and the company builds trust in the process before offshoring roles with more ambiguity or higher business impact.
Remote Resources helps companies structure this first hire correctly from day one, from role scope to onboarding, so the result reflects the model, not a preventable setup mistake.
Which Roles Do Companies Typically Offshore First?
Some roles have clear deliverables and established workflows, which makes performance easy to evaluate. Others depend on deep institutional knowledge or daily strategic judgment, which makes them harder to hand off early.
UI/UX designers
Design work is visual and reviewable, so feedback and quality checks are easy even across time zones. This works best when you already have brand guidelines, a design system or reference materials for the offshore designer to work from. Best fit when: your design backlog is growing faster than you can hire locally.
QA and QC testers
Testing has clear inputs, clear outputs and objective pass or fail criteria. It also scales well: as products grow more complex, testing capacity needs to grow with them. A Vietnam-based QA team working in a different time zone can extend testing coverage across more of the day. Best fit when: you need more testing capacity than your current team can absorb.
Developers
Software development is one of the most common offshore hires, but outcomes vary more here than in other roles. Success depends on how well-defined your codebase, sprint process and technical documentation already are. Best fit when: your engineering practices and documentation are already solid.
Digital content creators
Copywriting, video editing and digital asset production tend to offshore well because deliverables are concrete and revisions are easy to structure. This works best with existing brand voice guidelines and a content calendar. Best fit when: content volume is outpacing your in-house team's capacity.
Product and technical designers
These roles fit well when you have an existing product roadmap and need more design or documentation capacity, not someone to define product direction from scratch. Best fit when: your product strategy is settled and you need execution support.
Project coordinators
A coordinator based in Vietnam, working close to the time zones of your offshore team, can track tasks, manage documentation and flag blockers earlier in the day than a coordinator working only in your home time zone. Best fit when: you are managing multiple workstreams or a growing offshore team.
Sourcing and admin support
Often underrated as a starting point. These roles carry low strategic risk, free up time for higher-value work, and let you test onboarding and communication processes before offshoring more specialized functions. Best fit when: your team is spending too much time on routine, non-strategic work.
Accounting and Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping and accounting follow structured, rule-based processes, which makes them a strong fit for offshore support once compliance requirements are clear. This is particularly relevant for companies based in Australia. CPA Australia maintains an active representative office in Ho Chi Minh City, and Vietnam-based accounting and bookkeeping providers commonly train staff on Australian-standard software such as Xero and MYOB, along with local tax and reporting requirements. Best fit when: your finance function needs support with routine bookkeeping, reconciliation or reporting, not high-level financial strategy.
Match the Role to Your Internal Bottleneck
Common starting roles are not automatically the right role for your company. The better question is not "which role usually goes first," but "which role fixes our actual bottleneck?"
Ask these questions internally before you decide:
- What is actually slowing the business down right now? If releases are delayed because testing cannot keep pace, QA is a stronger starting point than design.
- Where is the team spending time on work that does not need senior judgment? Sourcing, admin support and routine content production often absorb hours a manager or specialist could spend elsewhere.
- Which function has the clearest documentation already? A role is easier to offshore successfully when you can hand over a defined process, not just a job description.
- Which role, if delayed by three more months of local hiring, would cost the business the most? This reframes the decision around urgency and impact, not just role type.
How to use this: List every role under consideration. Rank each one by bottleneck severity and documentation readiness. The role that scores highest on both is usually the right place to start, regardless of what other companies offshore first.
What to Prepare Before You Offshore a Role
Preparation determines whether the hire succeeds, whether the first role is a QA tester or a technical designer.
- Define the role scope: Day-to-day responsibilities, what the role is not responsible for, and how success will be measured in the first 90 days.
- Set a reporting structure: A clear point of contact, whether that is a manager, a team lead or a project coordinator.
- Prepare documentation upfront: Style guides, brand assets, codebases, design systems or process documents, ready before onboarding starts.
- Agree on communication expectations: Which tools to use, how often to check in, and how to use overlapping hours given the time difference.
- Budget for more than salary: Recruitment support, onboarding, management time and ongoing HR or admin support all factor into the real cost.
Remote Resources handles the documentation, onboarding and HR side of this process for you, so your first hire starts productive instead of starting confused.
Common Mistakes When Choosing a First Offshore Role
- Unclear scope: If you cannot describe the role's responsibilities in specific terms, the hire will struggle to know what success looks like, regardless of skill level.
- Offshoring strategic decision-making too early: Roles that need deep, evolving company context are harder to offshore successfully as a first hire. They tend to work better once the offshore team has some history with the company.
- No internal owner: Every offshore role needs someone locally responsible for onboarding, feedback and daily direction. Without this, even a strong hire can drift.
- Treating the first hire as a trial, not a team member: Under-investing in onboarding because it is "just a test" usually produces a result that reflects that lower investment, not the offshore model itself.
- Ignoring retention from day one: A strong first hire who leaves within months because of weak onboarding can set the whole initiative back. People-first onboarding and local HR support matter from the very first hire.
This is where local HR support matters most. Remote Resources' Vietnam-based HR team manages onboarding and day-to-day employee support so retention is built in from the first hire, not fixed after someone leaves."
Where to Start
There is no single correct first role to offshore. The right starting point depends on where your real bottleneck sits today, and how ready that function is to hand off.
Next step: map your current bottlenecks against the roles above, then draft a clear role brief for the top candidate. If you want a second opinion, Remote Resources can help you think through your specific situation and identify the right starting role for building a dedicated offshore team in Vietnam. Let’s get in touch!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the easiest role to offshore first?
There is no universally easiest role. QA/QC testing, UI/UX design and admin or sourcing support tend to offshore smoothly because they have clear deliverables and lower strategic risk. The right choice still depends on your documentation readiness and current bottleneck.
Should we offshore development or design first?
It depends on which function has clearer existing documentation. Companies with an established design system often see faster results offshoring UI/UX first, while those with mature engineering practices may offshore development successfully as a first step.
How do we know if a role is ready to be offshored?
A role is generally ready when you can describe its scope clearly, provide reference documentation, and assign a local point of contact for feedback. If it still depends on undocumented, in-person context, it may not be the best first choice.
Can we offshore a strategic or leadership-level role first?
It is possible, but riskier as a starting point. Strategic roles usually depend on deep, evolving company context that takes time to build. Most companies get better early results offshoring roles with clearer scope, then expanding into senior functions once the relationship is established.
How long does it typically take to offshore a first role successfully?
Timelines vary by role complexity, seniority and how prepared the company is with documentation and onboarding materials. Companies that invest in a clear role brief and onboarding plan upfront generally see a smoother, faster path to productivity.
Once the brief is aligned, it will take up to 8 weeks to land a candidate, since they’d have to respect their notice period, unless they’re available immediately.
References & Data Sources:
- CPA Australia, Ho Chi Minh City Representative Office (official member listing, confirms CPA Australia's active presence in Vietnam)
- IFAC (International Federation of Accountants), Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants (VACPA) member profile
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