All three tiers run offshore; the question is how you structure the team and what each tier costs
By Andy Schachtel, CEO of Sourcefit | Global Talent and Elevated Outsourcing
Key Takeaways
- All three tiers run offshore: level 1 intake and triage, level 2 application and network support, and level 3 systems, cloud and security roles, with a team lead over them if you want one. There is no reason the build has to start at the bottom.
- Sourcefit’s IT support rates are $1,130 a month for entry level, $2,033 for mid level and $2,808 for senior staff, all in, against a US median of $61,860 for a user support specialist and $76,220 for a network support specialist before benefits.
- The help desk is the easiest function in the company to measure, so set the targets before day one: first-contact resolution of 70 percent or better at level 1, response and resolution times by priority, and reopen rate.
- Policy, privileged access approvals and ownership of security incidents stay with you; the offshore engineers do the work under those controls.
The direct answer to “can I run my IT help desk offshore” is yes, all of it, and most companies that do it end up moving more of the function than they planned. The help desk is rules-based, ticket-driven and measured to the decimal, which is exactly the profile that suits a dedicated offshore team. The decision is rarely whether; it is how to structure the team, and there are two good ways to do it.
We’ve built help desks for clients from four-person level 1 teams to full IT operations with team leaders, level 2 engineers and systems administrators. This post sets out what each tier does offshore, how to build the team, what each tier costs at our published rates, and the handful of things that decide whether the arrangement works.
Which help desk tiers can be outsourced?
All three. Level 1 covers intake, triage, password and access requests, device troubleshooting and onboarding administration, and runs on runbooks with quality visible immediately in first-contact resolution. Level 2 covers application, configuration and network support. Level 3 is the tier people assume stays onshore, and for some clients it does, but we staff systems administrators, network and cloud engineers, security analysts and IT team leads for companies that want the whole function offshore.
What stays with you is the authority layer: IT policy, privileged access approvals and ownership of security incidents. Your offshore engineers work under those controls, inside your ticketing and monitoring tools, with named logins you can revoke in a minute.
Top down or bottom up
There are two ways to build the team, and neither is wrong. The bottom-up build starts with a level 1 desk, because it runs on runbooks and proves itself fast, then adds level 2 once the knowledge base is good enough for a new engineer to work from, and level 3 when you decide you’d rather have the engineers on your team than on a vendor’s retainer. Companies with a strong internal IT lead who wants to stay hands-on usually build this way.
The top-down build starts with the lead. You hire an offshore help desk team leader or IT operations manager first, and that person helps recruit and stand up the engineers beneath them, writes the runbooks with your IT lead, and owns the desk from day one. This is how we build under our Sightline model, where Sourcefit supplies the lead and the quality layer and the team delivers against agreed SLAs while still reporting to you and working to your KPIs, and it is how one agribusiness client runs its entire help desk with us: a team leader and three level 2 engineers who handle the application and network work alongside a planning, procurement and finance team of more than 20. There is no intrinsic reason to start at the bottom; the top-down build is faster to full coverage and puts the person who will own the desk’s quality in the room from the start.
Whichever way you build, MetricNet’s principle still applies: any ticket that can be resolved at level 1 should be resolved at level 1, because every escalation adds the cost of the next tier on top of the first. Their benchmarks put a level 1 ticket at around $16 on average and a desktop support ticket at over $100. A desk that resolves 70 percent of contacts on first touch does more for your cost per ticket than any tooling change.
What does an offshore IT help desk cost?
Sourcefit’s IT support rates are $1,130 a month for entry level, $2,033 for mid level and $2,808 for senior staff, per full-time employee working from home. Office-based staff add $100 a month. Each rate is all in: the employee’s salary and statutory benefits at cost plus our flat $395 management fee, itemized on the invoice. There are no setup, recruitment or exit fees.
| Role | Tier | US median base salary (BLS, May 2025) | Sourcefit monthly rate, all in | Annualized |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Help desk analyst | Level 1 | $61,860 (user support specialist) | $1,130 | $13,560 |
| Level 2 support engineer | Level 2 | $76,220 (network support specialist) | $2,033 | $24,396 |
| Systems or network administrator, team lead | Level 3 | $90,000 to $110,000 before benefits | $2,808 | $33,696 |
The US figures are base salary before benefits, so the fully loaded gap is wider than the table shows. Australian salaries for the same roles are similar once converted to US dollars and UK salaries run somewhat lower; in all three markets the local cost is several times the offshore rate. The full rate card, with every role on the site, is on our pricing page, and what the $395 fee covers, line by line, is in our management fee guide.
How do you keep quality up when the help desk is offshore?
By measuring the same things you measure now and reviewing them weekly. Response and resolution times by priority, first-contact resolution (70 percent or better is a reasonable level 1 target), mean time to resolve, reopen rate and ticket volume by category, all reported from your own ITSM tool so the numbers are yours. Sourcefit’s training and quality team samples tickets and coaches behind the engineers as part of the standard fee, and your IT lead sets the targets.
The second quality lever is the transition itself. The pattern that works is knowledge transfer against your documentation, tool access, a defined scope for the first weeks, then expansion, with a hypercare period at the start when your senior engineer shadows escalations. Most help desks are stable within six weeks. The ones that struggle almost always skipped the documentation step.
Coverage and hours
A help desk in the Philippines covers US night hours on day shifts and US days on night shifts, and South Africa and the Dominican Republic cover the gaps for clients who want follow-the-sun coverage without a single team working rotating nights. Australian and UK clients get their business hours from the Philippines and South Africa respectively, with the overlap built into the schedule rather than bolted on.
Who should be on the team, and how do you find them?
Recruit for the tier, not the title. For level 1, CompTIA A+ and ITIL Foundation are a floor; for level 2 and above, Microsoft 365 and Azure Administrator, CCNA and the relevant cloud certifications. We verify certifications and run practical troubleshooting assessments before you see a shortlist, and you interview and choose. Most help desk roles are recruited and onboarded in three to four weeks.
Then decide who manages the team. In a bottom-up build the engineers report to your IT lead and work in your tools, with Sourcefit handling employment, HR, equipment, IT and quality support behind them. In a top-down build under Sightline, the offshore team lead runs the desk day to day and your IT lead manages the lead. The team is yours either way; if you later decide to move them to your own entity, they go with you, with no transfer fee.
Frequently asked questions
How much does IT support outsourcing cost? Sourcefit’s IT support rates are $1,130 a month for entry level, $2,033 for mid level and $2,808 for senior staff, per full-time employee working from home. Office-based staff add $100 a month. Each rate is all in: salary and benefits at cost plus the $395 management fee.
Which help desk tiers can be outsourced? All three: level 1 intake and triage, level 2 application and network support, and level 3 systems, cloud and security roles, plus the team lead over them. IT policy, privileged access approvals and ownership of security incidents stay with you.
How quickly can an offshore help desk be set up? Most help desk roles are recruited and onboarded in three to four weeks. Hiring the team lead first and letting them stand up the engineers is the fastest route to full coverage; either way, a hypercare period usually has the desk stable within six weeks.
Can offshore engineers work in our ITSM and monitoring tools? Yes. Engineers work in your ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Freshservice or Zendesk instance and your monitoring tools under named logins and your access rules. Nothing is rebuilt on our side.
Is an offshore help desk secure? Sourcefit holds ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 27701 certification directly, has a SOC 2 report and operates GDPR-aligned data handling. Home-based engineers work on company-managed computers over a VPN with traffic routed through Cloudflare, with local storage locked down where your policy requires it.
To learn more about how Sourcefit builds offshore IT help desks from level 1 to level 3 at a published monthly rate, visit sourcefit.com or contact our team for a consultation.
