Bangkok, Chiang Mai and the rest
Bangkok holds most of the country’s engineering employment, concentrated around enterprise IT, banking and a maturing startup scene. Chiang Mai is smaller, cheaper, and has a distinct character: a strong remote-work culture and noticeably better retention, partly because people who move there are choosing a life rather than chasing a salary step.
Three kinds of provider
Local IT services firms serving Thai enterprises, largely in Thai. International outsourcing arms of larger Asian groups, usually treating Thailand as one delivery location among several. And a small number of foreign-founded delivery companies built to serve clients abroad, which is where Azendo sits.
The third category is small. That is a genuine limitation of the market and worth knowing before you shortlist.
Why we chose to build here, and what the trade-offs are, is covered under why we deliver from Thailand.
Thailand against India, Vietnam and the Philippines
| Compared | Scale | Cost | Retention | Europe overlap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | Very large | Lowest | Variable | Good |
| Vietnam | Large and growing | Low | Moderate | Good |
| Philippines | Large | Low | Moderate | Moderate |
| Thailand | Moderate | Moderate | Strong | Good |
This table is our own assessment from operating here since 2010, not a published index. Scale and cost are well documented elsewhere; retention is the column we would treat most sceptically from any provider, including us, because almost nobody publishes it. Ask for a specific number and how it is calculated.
The structural picture is easier to verify. Thailand’s digital economy policy, the investment incentives behind the data-centre build-out and the size of the promoted digital sector are published by the Thailand Board of Investment and the Digital Economy Promotion Agency.
Where the market is heading
Thailand’s BOI framework has made foreign-owned technology companies straightforward to operate, and the engineering workforce has grown steadily with it. The notable shift over the last five years is the move from back-office and support work toward genuine product engineering.
What Azendo delivers from this market starts with outsource software development services.