Latin America (LatAm) has become a very sought-after area of the world in recent years—especially for business. In 2021 alone, investment in LatAm grew by 3.5 times and the region minted 26 new unicorns, otherwise known as businesses that have reached a valuation of $1 billion without being listed in the stock market.
On top of that, LatAm’s tech sector is expected to grow tenfold in the next decade, with some analysts comparing the region’s rapid and sudden digital change on pace with the rate of growth in the early days of Silicon Valley.
No matter what industry, a shared vision is often necessary for a new ecosystem to emerge, and founders across Latin America are melding minds across markets, mindsets, and networks to improve the region’s offerings to job seekers.
Ranging from long-standing corporations to innovative new startups, let’s take a look at what Latin America Reports has dubbed the best places to work in Latin America’s growing job ecosystem for 2022.
Roche
Throughout its 125-year history, Roche has grown into one of the world’s largest biotech companies, as well as a leading provider of in-vitro diagnostics and a global supplier of transformative innovative solutions across major disease areas.
They share a commitment to their people, partners, stakeholders, and, most importantly, their patients—with a devotion that remains as strong as it was on the first day of their journey.
The company focuses on finding new medicines and diagnostics and establishing data-based insights that evolve the practice of medicine and help patients live longer, better lives.
Shifting away from a one-size-fits-all approach to delivering the best care for each person, this company is a great one to work for people who want a career in blazing new trails in healthcare.
The company has a wide variety of opportunities and can match you with a career within their organization based on your profile.
In addition, they have a large spectrum of apprenticeships, intern programs, and full-time opportunities to launch careers. Although this company is all over the world in LatAm they have a presence in Venezuela, Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica.
Cargamos
Cargamos is an open logistics platform that facilitates e-commerce in Latin America.
The Mexican company repurposes unused spaces in empty parking garages and shopping malls as mini distribution centers, providing a hyper proximity delivery network that’s fast and accessible.
Cargamos was founded in Mexico City in 2019 by Ivan Ariza.
About a quarter of this company’s delivery fleet is made up of zero-emissions vehicles such as electric bicycles, motorcycles, and cars.
Environmentally friendly transport and a multitude of pod locations enable Cargamos to reduce the carbon footprint of each package by 80%. The company is on a mission to “break the monopoly of the logistics industry giants” and has announced plans to expand into the U.S. and Colombian markets in the coming years
Cargamos is also giving back to the LatAm community through its Educa program, which is designed to provide better technology education to citizens of the region.
For those who want to be at the forefront of an industry that is on the precipice of a huge paradigm shift and join a company that gives back, this company is a great choice.
Mercado Libre
Mercado Libre is an Argentine company headquartered in Buenos Aires, that operates online marketplaces dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions, including mercadolibre.com. As of 2016, Mercado Libre had 174.2 million users in Latin America, making it the region’s most popular e-commerce site by a number of visitors.
With offices across Central and South America and Spain, Mercado Libre is one of the biggest employers in LatAm. In 2021 they created 16,300 new job offers and ranked up as the #1 best place to work in Argentina, the #2 best place to work in Colombia, and the #4 best place to work in all of LatAm.
They lead with a motto to transform the lives of millions of people in Latin America by democratizing commerce and financial services. Mercado Libre makes products more available and accessible to populations through information technology. Mercado Libre, being a very large and successful corporation, has many benefits and perks for those who want to work there.
Source Meridian
Source Meridian is a development software company that works on solving many of the most challenging problems in the healthcare space.
They are laser-focused on specific technologies in the health care and life science industries using big data analytics, healthcare technology, artificial intelligence (AI), healthcare interoperability, and real-world evidence
Their staff of international software engineers and data scientists work with clients to analyze their content models and business processes.
They analyze and question existing business models, leveraging state-of-the-art technology that results in new products and new streams of revenue while keeping their clients at the forefront of the industry. Their goal is to build products for customers that use the technology of tomorrow rather than the technology of today.
Source Meridian has two offices in the United States and three offices in Latin America. They are located in Philadelphia (US), Medellín (CO), Rionegro (CO), and Cali (CO). For those who are looking to bolster their career in health tech, Source Meridian is a great place to do so.
The Live Green Co
The Live Green Co is a sustainable food tech company founded by Priyanka Srinivas in 2018, with its flagship headquarters in Santiago, Chile, and a brand new HQ in Boston, MA, USA.
The company aims to transform the food industry with 100% plant products, clean labels, functional ingredients, and sustainable production and packaging.
With a team of engineers and scientists they have designed a software, called or known as Charaka™, where about 15,000 plants and 500,000 data points have been programmed into the database. When the company formulates products, Charaka™ recommends 100% plant ingredients to replace preservatives and chemical additives.
The Live Green Co team has 51% women and 49% men—all from diverse backgrounds and education ranging from India, Chile, USA, Netherlands, and Singapore to name a few.
The team’s spectrum of age groups is broad ranging from 21 to 65 years, including skill sets from food scientists, data scientists, microbiologists, developers, sales, business development, designers, and more.
This company is making waves in the food industry to help improve it for the better, looking to expand its technology to the rest of the food industry, making it a great place to work for those who want to be a part of the plant revolution.
Santander
Santander is a financial services and insurance company in both Europe and Latin America. Santander’s diversification overseas, especially in Latin America, has helped the bank cope with tough conditions for lenders in Europe in the years since the financial crisis.
South America serves individual and business customers through the company’s presence in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Peru, providing them with a strong position and widespread presence in the region.
Santander is a company that believes that LatAm has great potential, provided by the fact that the region comprises large economies and major portions of the population that are still unbanked.
In view of this scenario, The company remains focused on expanding, sharing positive experiences from each country, and delivering profitable growth—backed by a sustainable increase in its customer base.
In 2021, Santander focused on helping customers in the transition to a green economy, jointly developing green products and services across regions, while promoting the financial health of their diverse customer base, especially the most vulnerable. For those looking to gain stability in their career, and help the LatAm region evolve for the future—Santander is a great place to apply to.
Polymath Ventures
Polymath Ventures is a company helping to build large and transformative companies for the emerging middle-class in Latin America. Their core brief is that a sizable and empowered middle class is the foundation of a more equal, stable, and prosperous overall society.
The company’s focus is to put all its efforts into using human-centered design to develop scalable technologies and business models that solve the largest and most urgent problems of the middle class in Latin America, a segment that has historically been neglected by traditional companies.
Solving the problems of the middle class empowers and transforms the lives of the people who are part of it, and by proxy generates the social and economic boost that the region needs.
Two of Polymath’s brightest examples of success are Autolab and Tani. Autolab is the automotive spare parts and repair platform in Latin America that empowers independent workshops and stores to grow their businesses through technology.
Tani is a medical procedures platform that provides quality care and transparent prices for the middle class; among others. Polymath mandates to create impact through disruption, building for an abundant LatAm. For those looking for a job that can make an impact, this is the place.
Blue Box Ventures
BlueBox Ventures is a professional services company based out of México that is the first of its kind dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs and corporations to accelerate new businesses and keep already existing ones consolidated.
BlueBox offers international companies services such as the planning and operation of their own business incubators. Corporations can then launch calls to the entrepreneurial world and accompany candidates in a mentoring process to fine-tune and validate their business models.
In turn, the corporations can invest in the ventures, and buy part or all of the project if the parties determine it as a good fit. The company also offers corporate scouting services to find startups focused on a particular topic and in which the corporate needs solutions or, as an intermediary, for a valuation and subsequent investment or purchase.
The principle of their model is based on a collaborative culture between companies, in which both parties obtain benefits and reduce development and market entry costs.
The company currently has operations in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, but its business connections go beyond Mexico however, already connecting startups from Colombia, Argentina, and Chile with Mexican corporations. For those looking to start a budding business career in LatAm, this is the place.
Oracle
Oracle is a company with a leading motto of “change lives doing what you love”, and with a tagline like that, one would be hard-pressed to find a better place to work.
From advancing energy efficiency to reimagining online commerce, the work Oracle does is not only transforming the world of business—it’s protecting governments, powering non-profits, and giving billions of people the tools they need to outpace change.
With teamwork as one of its core pillars, Oracle believes in working together to make things the best they can be. They collaborate, share ideas, and give constructive feedback—driving their employees to their utmost potential by asking them, “What future will you create?”.
Although headquartered in the US, the company has main offices in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay.
The company has many career opportunities and wants its employee’s success to be its priority by supporting growth with a variety of career development programs, providing resources to give you access to world-class training anytime, and establishing leaders that listen.
Kiwibot
Kiwibot is an innovative company changing the way food is delivered. Much like last-mile delivery apps, Kiwibot enables customers to order food from participating restaurants in their area, but rather than dispatching a delivery person via bike or car, the food is delivered by their autonomous robot on wheels—Kiwibot.
Led by CEO Felipe Chávez Cortés, Kiwibot has made over 150,000 deliveries and built over 400 robots making them the number one robot delivery platform globally since its start in 2017. Since then the company has been striking partnerships with industry giants and expanding across the globe from Medellín, Colombia, to California, USA to Taipei, Taiwan.
Teaching a robot to navigate chaotic city streets and sidewalks is a huge technical challenge in itself, and one that Kiwibot is making huge strides in. According to Forbes, the startup has recently signed a collaboration with Careem, a subsidiary application of Uber operating in the Middle East, to launch 1,200 delivery robots in Dubai, UAE.
This company is based out of Colombia, and is making an impact with the world’s most affordable and technology-driven delivery service for local commerce around the world. Why not be employed on the cutting edge with this future-focused company?
DHL
DHL is the “world’s most international company” that ships to over 220 countries and territories and have shipping for business, personal shippers, and freight.
Their coverage in LatAm includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, and The Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.
In a global business such as DHL, the opportunities are endless. They work hard to create an environment where every individual can keep learning, keep growing, and enjoy a rewarding long-term career.
In efforts to positively contribute to society, and reduce their environmental impact, they hope through the employees that embody their company they can make a positive difference in the world. Promoting culture, values, and teamwork, DHL is a company that works to ensure that everyone feels valued and rewarded for the contribution they bring—making it a great place to work in LatAm.
Octobot
Company Octobot is a software consultancy partner, passionate about transforming people’s digital experiences with user-oriented design, top-level software development, and scalable technology—helping companies and entrepreneurs alike stay relevant in 2022.
Octobot’s software development process follows what is called the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) methodology, which helps them to fulfill project scopes for businesses of all types successfully.
The company is able to provide extremely fast time-to-market while also fine-tuning features to ensure alignment between strategy, design, and development. This method is vital in the timeline from prototyping to launching the final product, helping them to transform a business’s biggest goals and aspirations into actuality.
The company believes in the importance of offering its team every opportunity to improve their skills, gain practical experience, and learn from each other in a collaborative, friendly environment. As a company proud of its digital products because they also make a difference in other people’s lives, this company does everything it can to show the same pride in its employees.
The Port of Cartagena Group
The Port of Cartagena Group is the main logistics platform in the Caribbean. Thanks to its strategic location and the high efficiency of its maritime terminals, it has established itself as a fundamental connection center for the transshipment of cargo both regionally and globally.
Currently, it connects with 750 ports in 150 countries around the world and serves 25 shipping lines. Likewise, it is the main export port in Colombia: through it, the country mobilizes more than 60% of the bilateral trade with the US, making it one of the most important ports on the continent of South America.
The port origin of Cartagena is an organization with a mission to be a determining factor of local social, industrial, economic and tourist development. The company generates more than a thousand direct jobs and is always looking for opportunities to build a community through social responsibility programs, which are carried out through the Port of Cartagena Foundation.
Operating since 1993 under a private administration regime and in concession for 40 years, this is also one of the best companies to work for in Colombia according to Great Place to Work® Institute.
Prometeo
Promoteo is the largest Open Banking platform in Latin America, providing a single point of access to 101 bank connections. This is huge for the population of a region that is highly unbanked, with nearly 55% of the population still without a bank account.
Promoteo provides an API platform that allows you to interoperate with the current (and somewhat tricky) financial sector in LatAm—available in over 10 countries in the region and counting.
Businesses can access key information on their users to create 100% digital products. The API also allows organizations to connect with their users’ banks so that money movements are easy, allowing payments at financial institutions to use the payment services associated with each of them.
Combining a group of talented people with different perspectives and backgrounds is the key to a team that overcomes any challenge and, better yet, breaks down any impossible. At Prometeo we managed to have that team. Every day we work and commit ourselves to achieving a more open and connected financial system.
Falabella
Falabella is a leading multinational company in the world of retail and founded more than 100 years ago in Chile by Mr. Salvatore Falabella where its headquarters are located. Currently the company boasts presence in four Latin American countries—Chile, Argentina, Peru and Colombia and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Falabella’s strategy is based on achieving, through the virtuous circle of integrated retail, the capacity to provide their clients with the most complete offer of high-quality products and services, growing each time with a greater offer.
At the same time, they hope to maintain the individual strategies and leadership of each internal company within their umbrella enterprise.
The company advances in its goal of being the leader in e-commerce in the region as a conglomerate with many different subsidiaries including department stores, supermarkets, and shopping centers.
Because of the size and diversity of this company, if you are a person looking to get into retail and want a career with lots of upward potential for growth, Falabella is a great company to work for.
Disclaimer: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
