Monterrey scores 532 on EF's 2025 English index. Mexico City scores 428. Same country, same national average of 440, and a 104-point gap between two of its biggest tech cities (EF EPI 2025, Mexico). If you're a Mexican developer aiming at a US company, that gap is the whole story. Your time zone is close to perfect and your code is probably fine. English is where most applications from Mexico quietly die.
This guide covers the parts nobody puts in the job post: how your hours line up with US teams, what the paperwork looks like when a US company pays you, and what gets a Mexican engineer through a US interview loop.
Key Takeaways
- Most of Mexico sits on UTC-6 all year, so you share Central Time in the US winter and sit one hour behind New York in winter and two hours behind in summer.
- Mexico's national English score (440) is below the global average of 488, which means strong English makes you stand out fast.
- Many developers billing US clients register with the SAT and look at RESICO; exported services can qualify for 0% VAT if the conditions are met.
- US teams hiring from Mexico mostly screen for spoken English and ownership. The stack is rarely the blocker.
Your hours are an asset. Use them.
Mexico dropped daylight saving time on October 30, 2022, except Baja California and a group of municipalities along the US border that still change clocks with the US (Wikipedia). For everyone in Mexico City, Guadalajara or Monterrey, the clock stays at UTC-6 all year (per the IANA time zone database). The US moves around you:
| US season | New York | Chicago | San Francisco |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winter (first Sunday of Nov to second Sunday of Mar) | You are 1 hour behind | Same time | You are 2 hours ahead |
| Summer (second Sunday of Mar to first Sunday of Nov) | You are 2 hours behind | You are 1 hour behind | You are 1 hour ahead |
That table is the best argument you have. A 9am standup in Chicago is 9am or 8am for you. A 10am meeting in San Francisco is 11am or noon. You can pair live with a US team for a full working day, which a developer in Eastern Europe or India cannot offer. Say that in your cover note. Hiring managers think about it, but they rarely see a candidate say it plainly.
The English gap, honestly
The national number is low: 440, down 19 points from the previous year, and below the 488 global average (EF EPI 2025). EF's sample is self-selected, so treat it as a signal and not a census. But the signal matches what we see in interviews. Plenty of Mexican engineers read English documentation all day and still freeze when a US product manager asks a follow-up question at normal speed.
Nuevo Leon scores 519 and Jalisco 489 in the same report. Guadalajara lands at 511. If you live in a hub, you're competing with people who already practice. If you don't, the upside is bigger, because a US recruiter who has screened ten candidates with shaky English will remember the one who explained a trade-off clearly.
Our job posts ask for B2 or better, and in practice client-facing roles need something closer to C1. We check it live, in English, during the process. If you're not there yet, start with how to improve your English for remote developer jobs and practice explaining your own code out loud before you apply.
Getting paid: the SAT side
This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and your situation matters, so confirm with a Mexican contador before you sign.
Most developers who work directly for a US company as contractors register with the SAT, get an RFC, and issue a CFDI for each payment. Two things come up in almost every conversation:
RESICO. The Regimen Simplificado de Confianza is open to individuals whose prior-year income stayed under MXN 3.5 million, and it covers professional services. The ISR rate runs from 1% to 2.5%, tiered by monthly income, and it's applied to what you actually collect without deducting expenses (Alegra). There are eligibility exclusions, so check yours.
VAT on exported services. Article 29 of the VAT law applies a 0% rate to services that are exported, meaning services used abroad; the article lists information technology services among them (SDV Asesores, Art. 29 LIVA). Accountants add conditions in practice, like documenting that the client is foreign and the service is used outside Mexico, and the SAT audits export VAT refunds closely. Keep your contract and payment records clean from month one.
The other route is being paid through an Employer of Record or a staffing firm, where someone else handles the Mexican side. For the full list of payment setups and what each costs you in time, read how LATAM developers get paid by US companies.
What US teams check when the resume says Mexico
After a lot of screening calls, the pattern is boring and consistent:
1. Can you explain your own work out loud? Why you chose Postgres over Mongo, what broke, what you'd do differently.
2. Do you write clearly in async? A PR description and a Slack update tell a US manager more than a certificate.
3. Do you own outcomes? "I built the endpoint the ticket asked for" loses to "I noticed the ticket would double-charge on retries, flagged it, and fixed the idempotency key."
Stack matters less than people think. We have open roles for Python backend engineers, React and Next.js frontend engineers and a few dozen others. What sinks candidates is almost always one of those three.
Talent Land, held at Expo Guadalajara as recently as 2025 (Expo Guadalajara), now runs at Expo Santa Fe in Mexico City (Talent Land). Events like that are a cheap place to practice pitching yourself to people who aren't your coworkers.
A Concrete Version
Here's a composite, not a real person. Daniela is a backend developer in Guadalajara with six years of Node and Python, mostly at a local fintech. Her English is solid in writing and nervous out loud.
She spends six weeks recording herself explaining two past projects in English, five minutes each, and rewrites her resume so every bullet has a number ("cut report generation from 40 minutes to 3"). She applies to a US role, passes the coding assessment, and does the async video interview in English. Her first live call is at 10am Chicago time in July, which is 9am for her.
She signs as a contractor. Say she bills USD 5,000 a month (a round number for the math, not a benchmark). That's USD 60,000 a year. At 20 pesos per dollar that is about MXN 1.2 million a year, well under the MXN 3.5 million RESICO ceiling, and her monthly peso income lands in the 2% ISR bracket on Alegra's table. Her contador registers her, sets up CFDIs to a foreign client with the 0% VAT treatment, and tells her to keep the contract and every wire record in one folder. The English took six weeks. The tax setup took one meeting with her contador.
The Honest Counterpoint
The time zone advantage shrinks if the team is on the East Coast and runs early. In summer an 8:30am New York standup is 6:30am in Mexico City. Some teams will not move it.
Also, contracting directly is not automatically better than a local job. You lose employer benefits like IMSS, aguinaldo and vacation premiums unless your contract replaces them, and you carry your own paperwork. If you have a family depending on stable income, a full-time role through an Employer of Record, or a strong Mexican employer, can be the smarter call. And if your English is genuinely at A2 today, applying to US roles now mostly burns your first impression. Fix the English first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a US visa to work remotely for a US company from Mexico?
Generally no, if you work from Mexico as a contractor or through an Employer of Record. You would need a visa to work while physically in the US. This is general information, not immigration advice.
Should I charge a US company VAT?
If the service qualifies as an export under Article 29, it can be invoiced at 0%. Whether it qualifies depends on your client and how the service is used, so confirm with a contador.
Is Monterrey or Mexico City better for US remote work?
Where you live matters less than your English. Monterrey's average is higher, but a developer in any city who speaks confidently beats the regional average every time.
The Bottom Line
From Mexico, your hours already work. Spend your prep on spoken English and on explaining your own decisions, get the SAT side set up with a contador before the first invoice, and apply where the stack fits. Start with the open roles at Ruzora, and if you're earlier in the process, read how to get a remote job with a US company from LATAM.
Roberto Espinoza is CEO of Ruzora, which places senior LATAM engineers with US startups. Browse open roles.
