COUNTRY GUIDE
Strong exports, global R&D investment, and deep engineering talent — Serbia's case for hiring software developers.
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Talent pool
~140,000+
IT professionals
English proficiency
High
/ #25 globally (EF EPI 2025)
Hiring timeline
20 days
average with ALLSTARSIT
Savings vs US
up to 65%
on senior dev rate
IT exports
$4.5B
2025, National Bank of Serbia
Tech hubs
3 major hubs
Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš
Serbia's ICT sector exported a record €4.552 billion in 2025, up 10% year-over-year, with a trade surplus of €3.529 billion. IT is now the country's single largest export category, ahead of traditional industries. This growth has been sustained, not a one-off spike: exports have risen roughly tenfold since 2012, when they stood at just €375 million.
Serbia's government has backed this growth with real institutional infrastructure, including science and technology parks in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, and Čačak, a data center in Kragujevac, and a dedicated Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Novi Sad. The IT workforce reached nearly 139,000 people in 2025, up 3.4% from the year before, concentrated primarily in Belgrade and Novi Sad, which together account for roughly 75% of the country's technical talent.
Serbian companies build software across a genuinely broad range of sectors (agriculture, medicine, cloud infrastructure, and gaming among them) with growing specialization in AI, fintech, and predictive analytics. The government has structured tax policy specifically to support this: a flat 15% corporate tax rate paired with a 200% deduction on qualified R&D investment gives companies doing genuine engineering and innovation work a meaningful incentive to base that work in Serbia rather than simply outsourcing routine development.
More than 4,000 ICT firms now operate in Serbia, and the country has attracted real, sustained R&D investment from major global technology companies, including Microsoft, AMD, and Schneider Electric. Serbia has also produced its own homegrown product success story: Nordeus, founded in Belgrade in 2010 by three former Microsoft employees, built Top Eleven into the most successful mobile football management game ever made, with over 240 million registered users, before being acquired by Take-Two Interactive for $378 million in 2021 — proof that Serbia's talent pool can build and scale its own global products, not just service them for others.
In July 2025, Serbia's government repealed a scheme that had incentivized hiring foreign professionals, a move the Serbian IT Association warned could push some foreign talent and companies to reconsider their presence in the country — a reminder that Serbia's policy environment, while generally supportive, can shift with little warning. The same multinational R&D centers that make Serbia attractive are also competing for the same limited pool of senior engineers, so expect more competition at the senior level than the country's overall size suggests.
Anastasiia Chernenka
Head of Recruitment
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Payroll cycle
In Serbia, salaries are usually disbursed monthly. Employers are required to process wage payments a minimum of once per month.
Employer taxes
15.15%
Overtime pay
Any work exceeding the standard weekly working hours is considered overtime and is governed by the terms of the employment contract or collective agreements. There are limits to the amount of overtime an employee can work when asked to work additional hours or on holidays, not exceeding eight hours per week or four hours in a single day.
Overtime that goes beyond 40 hours a week is compensated at a rate higher than the regular pay, typically at 126.00% of the employee's average wage. When overtime is carried out on public holidays, the compensation is set at 110.00% of the employee’s normal pay rate.
Paid leave
Employees earn the right to 20 days of paid annual vacation after completing a year of service with their employer. For those who have been with the organization for less than six months, annual leave is accumulated at a rate of 1/12 per month. Any days not taken can be rolled over until the end of June the subsequent year.
Sick leave
Employees qualify for 30 days of paid sick leave, during which they receive 65% of their regular salary from the employer. However, if the illness is a result of a workplace injury or ailment, the employer is obligated to pay 100% of the employee's standard earnings during this leave. Should the sick leave extend beyond 30 days, the responsibility for compensating the additional leave shifts from the employer to the state.
It is mandatory for employers to provide a medical certificate verifying the illness within the initial three days of the employee's sickness.
Public and provincial holidays
Notice period
Employers are required to notify an employee eight days in advance of termination (or five days during a probationary period). Conversely, an employee planning to end their employment contract is obligated to give 15 days' notice.
For layoffs, a notification period of 30 days is mandatory.
13th Month Bonus
The law doesn't mandate 13-month salary payments. Any bonuses are issued at the discretion of the employer.
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