Your First Offshore Hire Does Not Need to be a Level 1 Engineer

One of the biggest misconceptions about building an offshore team is the idea that your first hire must always be a Level 1 Engineer. Many MSPs and IT service providers are told they should “start small” with an entry-level support role before considering more advanced capability offshore.

The reality is that there is no reason your first offshore team member cannot be the exact skillset your business genuinely needs.

If your business needs an automation engineer to improve operational efficiency, then that should be your first hire. If project delivery is your biggest challenge, an experienced L3 Project Engineer may create significantly more value than another Level 1 technician. If your leadership team is overwhelmed with quoting, onboarding, procurement, or customer coordination tasks, then a Sales Admin or Service Coordinator could be the role that delivers the greatest impact.

The right offshore hiring strategy should never be based on arbitrary rules or outdated assumptions. It should be based on solving business problems and creating capability that helps your organisation grow.

For many years, offshoring was viewed primarily as a way to reduce costs by moving basic support functions offshore. As a result, many businesses still associate offshore teams with entry-level helpdesk work and repetitive administrative tasks. However, the offshore market has evolved dramatically. Countries like Sri Lanka now offer access to highly skilled professionals across a broad range of technical and business disciplines. Experienced cloud engineers, automation specialists, cybersecurity professionals, software developers, project engineers, finance administrators, procurement specialists, and customer success resources are all readily available when you partner with the right provider.

The problem is that not every offshore provider has the ability to confidently recruit these more advanced roles.

In many cases, when an offshore provider recommends starting with an L1 Engineer, it is less about what is best for the customer and more about the types of roles they are comfortable hiring. Some providers have built their entire recruitment and delivery model around junior service desk talent. Their hiring networks, technical screening processes, and operational structures are heavily weighted towards entry-level support positions. Recruiting experienced automation engineers, senior project resources, or specialised business support professionals requires a much broader talent strategy and significantly more mature recruitment capability.

Rather than admitting that they may not have access to those skillsets, the conversation often becomes, "You should start with an L1 first."

Unfortunately, this can lead businesses down the wrong path. Instead of hiring the role that will create the greatest operational or commercial impact, they hire the role that is easiest for the provider to fill.

At Dijital Team, we take a very different approach. We do not believe there is a standard blueprint for what an offshore journey should look like. We believe the best first hire is the one that addresses the biggest challenge in your business and helps unlock growth.

For some customers, that absolutely is an L1 engineer. For others, it could be an Automation Engineer helping streamline service delivery, an L3 engineer accelerating project execution, a Microsoft Power Platform specialist driving internal efficiency, or a Sales Admin helping improve customer responsiveness and sales velocity.

Our focus has never been simply about helping customers reduce labour costs. Our focus is on helping MSPs and IT Service Providers improve both margins and maturity by accessing the right capability at the right price.

That is why we continue to invest heavily in attracting and retaining highly skilled professionals across a wide range of disciplines in Sri Lanka. It is also why culture and employee experience are such an important part of our business. Creating an environment where talented professionals want to build long-term careers allows us to provide customers with access to deeper capability and stronger long-term outcomes. This commitment to culture and people is one of the reasons Dijital Team has been recognised as one of the best workplaces in Asia and one of the leading technology workplaces in Sri Lanka.

The most successful MSPs and IT Service Providers no longer think about offshoring as simply a way to outsource low-level tasks. They view it as a strategic growth lever that enables them to increase capability, improve operational maturity, and build a more scalable business.

The question should never be, “What is the safest role to offshore first?"

The real question is, “What capability does our business need most right now? ”.

When businesses start thinking this way, offshoring stops being a compromise and becomes a competitive advantage.

If you are exploring how offshore capability could support your business growth, book a chat. It may be worth rethinking what your first hire should actually look like.