How to choose a Nearshore partner: 25 due-diligence questions (tech, process, risk) 

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Roadmap DevOps 2026: skills and tools for enterprise teams

Roadmap DevOps 2026: Skills and Tools for Enterprise Teams

How companies that need nearshore in Portugal find their way to us.

What if your next IT team was already in Lisbon?

In case you missed it... 

Aubay Experts

Aubay Portugal invites companies, partners, and talent to discuss what it takes to build future-ready technology operations.

An open door to building your next Tech Hub in Portugal

Aubay Portugal at Web Summit 2026

The best route combines three decisions made together, rather than in sequence.

What Is the Best Way to Establish an R&D Hub in Portugal? 

Setting up a tech hub in Portugal requires a number of partners. The order in which you engage them can either speed up or delay your team’s entry into the market.


I Want to Open a Tech Hub in Portugal. Who Should I Talk To? 

 Creating a tech hub in Portugal does not require giving up control. Learn how the BOT model works, which decisions you retain, and what to assess in a partner.

Who Can Help You Set Up a European Tech Hub in Portugal Without Giving Up Control?

For a CTO, CIO or VP of Engineering, this gap has consequences that extend beyond recruitment: delayed launches, overstretched teams and less capacity to respond to business priorities.

Eurostat data illustrates the scale of the challenge. Among EU businesses that recruited or tried to recruit information and communication technology specialists in 2023, 57.5% struggled to fill those positions. A lack of applications was the most frequently reported obstacle, alongside challenges related to qualifications, experience and salary expectations.

Against this backdrop, the question is no longer simply how to hire faster. It is where and how to build technology capacity without compromising quality, collaboration or control.

Portugal brings together several factors relevant to that decision: working-hour overlap with major European markets, strong English proficiency and an EU regulatory framework. For companies looking to scale, building a tech hub in Portugal can help bring delivery capacity closer to business ambition.

When the talent shortage limits growth

An unfilled vacancy is more than an open position. It can mean a missing capability within a team, a dependency that blocks other work or additional pressure on people already operating at capacity.

When this continues over time, recruitment stops being solely an HR concern. It begins to influence architecture decisions, product priorities and commitments to customers.

The answer does not have to involve replacing internal teams. It can mean complementing them with a talent base in another market, while keeping technical leadership, product knowledge and prioritisation within the organisation.

This is where a tech hub becomes valuable: not as a short-term way to fill vacancies, but as a structure for building capacity over time.

When hiring challenges become delivery challenges

A escolha de uma localização não deve depender apenas do custo por profissional. Para quem lidera tecnologia, importa perceber como a equipa vai trabalhar, comunicar, aceder a informação e integrar-se na operação.

Portugal apresenta uma combinação de fatores que merece ser avaliada nesse contexto.

Proximidade horária para trabalhar em conjunto
Choosing a location should involve more than comparing costs per professional. Technology leaders also need to understand how the team will work, communicate, access information and integrate into the wider organisation.

Portugal offers a combination of factors worth considering.

Working-hour overlap that supports collaboration
Mainland Portugal shares the UK’s local time and is one hour behind Central European markets observing CET/CEST. While these are not identical time zones across Europe, they provide substantial overlap throughout the working day.

For engineering teams, this makes it possible to schedule planning sessions, code reviews, architecture discussions and incident resolution within shared working hours.

The value goes beyond making meetings easier to arrange. It means being able to clarify a decision while work is happening, rather than turning every question into a wait until the next day.

Why build a tech hub in Portugal?

In the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index,](https://www.ef.com/saen/epi/),Portugal ranks sixth among 123 countries and regions, with a score of 612 and a “very high proficiency” classification.

This does not replace assessing each professional’s communication skills. It does, however, provide a relevant indicator for organisations that work in English and need to integrate teams into international workflows.

Within a tech hub, effective communication means more than participating in meetings. It means documenting decisions, discussing alternatives, explaining risks and collaborating with product, operations and business teams.

English as a shared working language

Building a team in Portugal means operating in an EU Member State subject to the GDPR. For European organisations, this allows collaboration within a shared regulatory framework. A relationship between entities established in the European Economic Area does not, in itself, constitute a transfer to a third country.

This proximity does not guarantee automatic compliance. Appropriate contracts, clearly defined responsibilities, security measures and controls over access to personal data remain necessary. Organisations must also assess where systems are hosted and whether providers outside the European Economic Area are involved.

The advantage is starting from a common regulatory foundation, not removing the need for risk assessment.

A shared European data protection framework

For technology leaders, the value of a nearshore model also depends on how quickly the required skills can become available.

Through its Team Extension service, Aubay Portugal presents the possibility of scaling teams in under 30 days. This offers an option for organisations that need additional capacity without relying exclusively on new internal hiring processes.

If a company’s internal hiring timeline is six months, the possibility of strengthening a team within 30 days changes the planning equation. It can bring access to required skills forward and reduce the period during which the roadmap depends on unfilled positions.

The comparison still requires clear criteria. Making professionals available is not the same as having a fully productive team on day one. Autonomy also depends on onboarding, access, product knowledge and integration with existing processes.

The timeline should therefore be considered alongside the required profiles, team size and onboarding plan. Speed creates value only when it translates into delivery capacity.

From six months of hiring to 30 days to strengthen a team

Location creates favourable conditions. The collaboration model determines whether those conditions translate into results.

A tech hub needs shared objectives, clear responsibilities and access to the context required to make sound decisions. Without these foundations, geographic proximity solves little: the team remains disconnected from the product and dependent on fragmented instructions.

Before moving forward, five areas need to be clear:

- **Hub objectives**: strengthen an existing team, develop a product or take responsibility for a technology area.
- **Priority skills**: identify what is needed to move the roadmap forward, rather than replicating every internal role.
- **Leadership and accountability**: define who owns architecture, priorities, quality and performance.
- **Operational integration**: prepare access, documentation, tools and collaboration routines.
- **Success measures**: track onboarding time, delivery quality, predictability and team continuity.

This clarity helps distinguish temporary reinforcement from a structure designed to grow. It also makes it possible to start with a defined scope and expand the team as the collaboration demonstrates results.

Nearshore in Portugal: an extension of the organisation, not a separate team

Technology talent shortages call for more than faster recruitment processes. They require organisations to reconsider how they build and distribute their teams.

Portugal offers a relevant combination for European businesses: closely aligned working hours, strong English proficiency and a shared data protection framework. The opportunity lies in turning that proximity into integrated collaboration, connected to the product and business priorities.

Through Team Extension, Aubay Portugal helps organisations strengthen their teams with technically assessed professionals and presents the possibility of scaling in under 30 days.

Building a tech hub in Portugal does not have to begin with a large operation. It can start with a missing capability, a team with a clear objective and a model designed to support future growth.

Building long-term capacity in Portugal

Talk to Aubay Portugal about the skills you need and the right model for building your technology team in Portugal.

[Let’s talk about your tech hub](https://www.aubay.pt/en/contacts)

The next step in your roadmap starts with the right team

The roadmap is defined. The budget is approved. But the team needed to deliver the next projects has yet to be hired.