Serbia is a talent goldmine. We got there first.
Highly educated, globally trained, fluent in English, and available at a fraction of Western cost. This is the case for hiring your next specialist from Serbia and the Balkans, and the numbers make it for us.
Active countries
Serbia
Croatia
North Macedonia
Montenegro
Bosnia & Herzegovina
115,000+
ICT specialists in Serbia alone
Statistical Office of Serbia, 2024
#24 / 116
Country ranking for English (“High” band)
EF English Proficiency Index, 2024
€4.13B
ICT exports in 2024, up ~20% YoY
Serbian Ministry of Information & Telecommunications, 2024
#35 / 139
Global ranking for knowledge and technology outputs
Global Innovation Index, 2025
Reasons to hire
Educated. Proven. And an investment that returns.
Three reasons companies keep hiring from Serbia, once they look past the map.
Educated
A deep STEM tradition, strong universities, and a pipeline that keeps growing. The number of ICT graduates rose about 31% between 2020 and 2024.
Proven
They already build for companies abroad. This is an export industry, and the United States is its single largest client. You are hiring people doing global work today, not a gamble.
An investment, not a cost
Same seniority, a fraction of the price. The gap between what you would pay locally and what you pay here lands straight in your margin. Investment in, profit out.
The math
Same hire. Two price tags.
Investment in, profit out. Here is the year one math for a senior performance marketer, run honestly.
Senior hire, New York
Hired directly, year one
Base salary
$120,000
Employer taxes and benefits
+ $36,000
Recruiter fee
+ $25,000
3 months of an empty seat
+ $30,000
True year one cost
~$211,000
Same seniority, via The Friends
One invoice, everything included
Specialist salary, fair and local
included
Employment, taxes, equipment
included
Recruiter fee
none
Time to start
~3 weeks
True year one cost
~$85,000
You keep roughly $126,000. That is the profit.
Illustrative example. Your exact number is scoped to the role and shared before any commitment.
The education
Educated is an understatement.
Serbia runs on an engineering-first school system. Math is rigorous, technical faculties are selective, and English starts in primary school.
Engineering-first universities
Belgrade and Novi Sad turn out engineers with heavy math cores, and Serbia regularly produces international olympiad medalists.
English from childhood
Taught from primary school onward. Serbia ranks in the high band worldwide, ahead of Spain, France and Italy.
A pipeline that compounds
ICT graduates grew about 31% between 2020 and 2024. The pool is not peaking, it is compounding.
Beyond the numbers
Numbers open the door. People do the work.
Data explains why Serbia is worth a look. Here is why our specific people are worth hiring.
01
Ambitious by default
They compete for global roles and know it. The bar they hold themselves to was set by the international market, not the local one.
02
Trained on world-class work
Most have shipped for companies abroad already. They have seen how good looks, and they build to that standard.
03
In it for the long run
Job-hopping is not the culture here. Treat people well and they stay for years, which is exactly what a serious hire should do.
How it feels
In-house, minus the overhead.
Not an agency, not a freelancer juggling five clients. One dedicated specialist who works your hours, in your tools, on your team.
Your hours
CET overlaps the full EU day and every US morning. Standups, reviews and Slack in real time.
Your tools
Slack, Linear, Figma, HubSpot, GA4. They already live in the stack you use.
Your team only
Full-time and dedicated to you. Not a freelancer splitting focus across five clients.
Your standards
Years of shipping for US and EU teams. Direct communication, no hand-holding.
What we place
Some of the specialists we place.
A sample, not the list. From developers to assistants, the pool covers the whole org chart, so if your role is not here, ask. It probably is.
Performance marketers
Meta, Google, TikTok, CRO
Full-stack and backend developers
React, Node, Python, cloud
Brand and product designers
UI and UX, brand, motion, Webflow
Customer support and success
Email, chat, onboarding, retention
Executive assistants
C-level support, scheduling, travel, prep
Finance and accounting
Bookkeeping, reporting, FP&A, invoicing
How we find them
We don't wait for applications.
Direct outreach
Targeted sourcing on LinkedIn and beyond, role by role.
Communities
The developer, marketing and design communities we live in.
Our marketplace
A growing bench of specialists who came to us directly.
Referrals
The strongest signal: people we trust vouching for people they trust.
Then it all funnels into one place. Every specialist clears the same three-gate vetting before a client ever meets them, no matter how we found them.
The vetting
"Vetted" means something here.
Everyone in the pool clears three gates before a client ever sees them.
Gate 01
Skills & portfolio
A real portfolio review and a practical task in their actual specialty. Titles don't pass. Work does.
Gate 02
Expert interview
A live interview led by an experienced practitioner in the same field: the questions only someone who does the work knows to ask.
Gate 03
References & compliance
References, background checks and full employment paperwork, completed before day one.
The bar is simple: only specialists we'd trust with a business-critical role make it into the pool.
How we compare
Same talent pool. Completely different deal.
Benefits
The Friends
Hire direct
Upwork
Vetted by practitioners
The Friends
Hire direct
You do it
Upwork
No
Employed, not gig
The Friends
Hire direct
Upwork
No
Legal / tax / payroll
The Friends
Us
Hire direct
You
Upwork
You
Single invoice
The Friends
Hire direct
No
Upwork
No
Replacement guarantee
The Friends
14 days
Hire direct
No
Upwork
No
Time to start
The Friends
~3 weeks
Hire direct
Months
Upwork
Days
Why we started this
We knew the talent. The world didn't.
“The best people we knew were right here, underpaid and overlooked. Proving that to companies abroad is the whole job.”
Tomislav Živković
Co-founder, The Friends
The Friends started with a simple frustration. We watched brilliant developers, marketers and designers around us do world-class work for a fraction of what the same work earned a few borders away. Not because they were worth less, but because nobody had built the bridge.
So we built it. We vet hard, we stand behind every placement, and we treat our specialists like the professionals they are. When a company hires a Friend, they are not taking a chance on Serbia. They are hiring a person we would stake our name on.
The receipts
This isn't a hunch. It's a market.
Every claim on this page is backed by public data. Here is the evidence, with sources.
They can actually work with your team
Serbia sits in the “High” proficiency band on the EF English Proficiency Index, 24th of 116 countries and regions. Ahead of Italy, France and Spain.
Source: EF English Proficiency Index, 2024
Senior work, without the senior price
Average gross ICT pay in Serbia was about €2,665 per month in 2024. A comparable senior hire in the US often costs three to four times that, before benefits.
Source: Emerging Europe (avg. gross ICT salary), 2024. US figure illustrative.
A sector the world already trusts
ICT exports grew from €375M in 2012 to €4.13B in 2024, roughly a tenfold rise, and now sit around 7 to 8% of GDP. This talent is not theoretical. It is already one of Europe's fastest growing export engines.
€0.4B
2012
€1.1B
2016
€2.1B
2020
€3.4B
2023
€4.1B
2024
Source: Serbian Ministry of Information & Telecommunications; The Region, 2024. Interim years approximate.
115,000+
A pool, not a lucky find
Over 115,000 ICT professionals work across 4,000+ companies, and sector employment is up about 39% since 2020. Depth in every specialty, from engineering to growth.
Source: Statistical Office of Serbia; Emerging Europe, 2024
+31%
And it keeps growing
ICT graduates rose about 31% and enrolled students about 11% between 2020 and 2024. The supply is not peaking. It is compounding.
Source: Emerging Europe, 2024
Ready to hire a friend?
Tell us the role. We'll bring you three vetted specialists from Serbia and the Balkans, on a private page, within a week.
