Many tech companies require employees to return to the office and focus on building face-to-face teams, but are welcoming large numbers to Latin America to find developer talent, particularly for post-training AI models.
Revelo, a full-stack platform for Latin America’s vetted developers, has seen a new surge in demand for engineers who can help with LLM training, said Lucas Mendes, co-founder and CEO of Revelo. Revelo has over 400,000 developers on its platform, driving the hiring and payment process for its US clients.
Mendes said this recent surge in demand for Rebello’s talent is being driven by the next phase of the AI revolution, the post-training LLMS.
“There’s a competition for data, especially professional human data, and in reality it can help LLMs excel in very specific high value tasks,” Mendes said. “Coding is one of these tasks, and what happened last year was a surge in demand. [companies] Building a basic model looking for an engineer who can become an effective expert and provide that human data to make LLM code better. ”
LLM training accounted for 22% of Rebello’s revenue in 2024.
Mendes added that this demand often appears to come to them, as this demand helps them find experts in specific coding languages and fill in the post-training gaps they already do.
Rebello supplies workers to U.S. companies Intuit, Oracle and Dell, including “almost all major hyperscale AI providers.”
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Rebello is not the only company trying to connect US companies to Latin American programmers. Other companies such as Terminal, Tecla are only a few with the same goals.
This demand for skilled developers after training is merely the latest adoption trend that Rebello has been able to ride since it was founded in late 2014.
Mendes said he launched Rebello with co-founder Lachlan de Crespigny because the war for talent was tight at the time, and he thought that if they created a network of talent vetted in Brazil, companies could find the talent they needed.
Demand is there, with Rebello raising more than $48 million in venture capital from companies including Social Capital, FJ Lab and the Balor Capital Group. The company also expanded from Brazil to the broader Latam.
The Covid-19 pandemic has expanded the potential scope of Rebello “on a massive scale,” Mendes added. “All of a sudden, we started getting inbound from a US company where you actually have a very high quality distribution team and suddenly realize that some of those engineers are in Latin America,” Mendes said. “So, what usually happens. They hire one or two and really like the trade-off between quality and quality cost, and they say, “Hey, I want more of these, where do I find them?”
As businesses return to face-to-face work, the rise of decentralized remote work has largely begun to fade, but Rebello is still growing. Mendes joked that he disliked being a disagreement with being a disagreement, but their demand for Ratham’s talent has not diminished despite the move to Tech’s office.
Mendes said he believes that demand from US companies for these Latin American developers remains as these developers fall into the “proximity” category of non-US workers as opposed to “offshoring.” He believes in the fact that Rebello’s talent is located at the same time that client companies make these employments more attractive.
Rebello sees ample demand for acquiring five other competitors that have focused on LATAM talent over the past 30 months, including Alto and Parecisa, announced in March.
“We’re building the backbone of that global talent in the age of AI, and there will be more acquisitions in the future,” he said.
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