The IT Industry in Puerto Rico: Country Profile & Overview

The small exotic island, Puerto Rico is more known for its touristic potential and beautiful beaches rather than for tech and IT. But in the last decade, Puerto Rico has also invested in the tech sector, facilitating the digital transformation of almost every sector. The aerospace, biotechnological, and financial sectors are the main target industries for digital to come in. Based on these sectors, Puerto Rico opens new ways to develop IoT, SaaS, AI, and blockchain. But how and when this will happen, depends heavily on the government and existing tech companies there.

Why working with a Puerto Rican IT company

Puerto Rican tech companies are among the fastest-growing in the Central-American region due to the high number of newly created and registered IT companies - more than 600 between 2019-2021. Almost every new IT company is empowered by an accelerator or incubator that is the financial pillar of the IT Small and Medium Businesses. Overall, there were more than 22.000 different jobs created in tech out of 26.500 yearly STEM graduates. Also in the Latin America and Carribien region, Puerto Rico is the 2nd best AI service provider - an impressive performance for Puerto Rico taking into consideration the Latin American market. 

Most of Puerto Rican professionals are already familiar with the latest technology in the matter of web, AI, and app development. Combined with their English and Spanish skills, young graduates almost always have a high chance of finding a job in home, where the views are amazing, friends and family are close, and opportunities are much better than almost anywhere in the region. 

What you should pay attention to when working with a Puerto Rican IT company

The main problem that Puerto Rican companies are facing is market penetration. The demand for services on the island is still small, and existing companies outsource projects from other partners even if local professionals are skilled and yet to be valued at their true price. On the other hand, Puerto Rican IT companies don't show a strong intent to reveal their capabilities and export services on their own, as other companies from the neighboring countries do. Even if there were more than 600 tech and IT companies, only 10 of them decided to register on TechBehemoths - the fastest-growing IT platform that connects businesses with reliable projects (as of August 2021).

How reliable are Puerto Rican IT companies

Puerto-Rican tech companies still didn't manage to provide enough digital services worldwide to make a difference in terms of reliability or to make a name for themselves. That's because few of them are taking a chance to show the world how IT is done. Nonetheless, like in many other cases, there are reliable and less fair companies from Puerto Rico. TechBehemoths always recommends taking your time and choose carefully if the chosen company, be it in Puerto Rico or somewhere else is the right one for your project. 

How Tech Industry in Puerto Rico evolves in 2022

Besides that Puerto Rico is a US territory, it also has friendly tax legislation regarding cryptocurrencies. And this may turn into a tech development opportunity for the tropical destination. It's no news that already several Bitcoin millionaires moved to Puerto Rico in 2021, and more will come in 2022. On the other hand, tech entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico is also growing at the same pace with the number of new tech jobs created in the country. So, local authorities should make sure they have enough qualified specialists to cover the needs of the tech sector. If 2022 will be a successful year for Puerto Rico's tech industry - it is yet too early to know.