Why companies hire in Pakistan
- An established software services industry that has long served clients in the US, UK, Europe and the Gulf.
- Engineering hubs in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.
- English is widely used in business and technical education, so written specs, code reviews and calls work in English.
- Lower rates than comparable teams in the US or Western Europe, which can fund a longer pilot or more evaluation work for the same budget.
Cost: compare total cost, not hourly rates
Rates vary widely with seniority and the kind of work. As one reference point, Expedey's rate is $25-49 per hour. More useful than any hourly figure is the total for the same scope: ask each team to price the same pilot and to say whether evaluations, monitoring and post-launch support are included. Our AI agent cost guide shows how scope turns into cost.
Time zones: plan the overlap
Pakistan Standard Time is UTC+5 all year; Pakistan does not use daylight saving time, so the gap to the US and UK changes twice a year.
| Location | Pakistan is ahead by | 9:00 local is, in Pakistan |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 9 hours (summer), 10 hours (winter) | 18:00 or 19:00 |
| California | 12 hours (summer), 13 hours (winter) | 21:00 or 22:00 |
| London | 4 hours (summer), 5 hours (winter) | 13:00 or 14:00 |
| Dubai | 1 hour | 10:00 |
Overlap matters less than you might think if the team writes things down: a daily written update, recorded demos and a shared tracker let work move forward while you sleep.
How to vet a team for AI agent work
- Ask to see an agent running in production and have them walk through its architecture: tools, permissions, evaluations, monitoring.
- Ask how they measure quality before launch. A good answer describes an evaluation set and a pass threshold, not "we test it thoroughly".
- Ask what happens when the agent is wrong or unsure. Look for approval steps, hand-offs and failure handling.
- Ask for a reference call, even if the case study is under NDA.
- Start with a paid pilot of a few weeks on one workflow, with success criteria agreed up front.
Our 12-point checklist for choosing an AI agent development company goes into more detail.
Contracts, payments and data
- Intellectual property: the contract should assign code, prompts, evaluation sets and infrastructure to you.
- Confidentiality: sign an NDA before sharing data, and agree which systems the team may access.
- Data handling: ask where data will be processed and stored, and use test or redacted data where possible.
- Payments: contracts are commonly in US dollars, paid by bank transfer or through services such as Payoneer.
- Registration: Pakistani software exporters can register with the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB); asking about it is a quick check that you're dealing with an established business.
- Local presence: some firms also have an office in your market. Expedey's US office is in Houston, Texas.
Red flags
- Only demos, never a system running on real data.
- No answer on how quality is measured or what an agent costs per task to run.
- Pressure to skip the pilot and sign a large fixed scope.
- Reluctance to put IP assignment in writing.
