"Must have four hours of overlap with US Eastern time." "EU hours." "UTC+1 ±3h." Remote job posts are full of timezone requirements, and candidates often read them as "be online whenever we are". That is rarely what employers mean.
What overlap actually means
Overlap is the window when you and your team are both working. Employers want it for three reasons:
- Meetings. Stand-ups, planning, one-to-ones and customer calls need people in the same hour.
- Unblocking. Questions answered within the same day, rather than the next.
- Handovers. Support, operations and on-call roles need clean shift changes.
The common thread is predictability. An engineer in Lagos who is reliably online 9:00–13:00 New York time is easier to work with than one who is "flexible" and sometimes online, sometimes not.
Do the timezone maths once
Most African countries sit between UTC+0 and UTC+3, which is a real advantage for European and UK employers. US roles take more planning.
- Lagos and Kinshasa are UTC+1. Accra and Dakar are UTC+0. Cairo, Johannesburg and Kigali are UTC+2. Nairobi and Addis Ababa are UTC+3.
- London is UTC+0, or UTC+1 in summer. Central Europe is UTC+1, or UTC+2 in summer.
- US Eastern is UTC−5, or UTC−4 in summer. US Pacific is UTC−8, or UTC−7 in summer.
Daylight saving changes the gap twice a year in Europe and the US, while most African countries do not change their clocks. Put a reminder in your calendar for late March and late October.
Five ways to show it before the interview
- Put your hours in UTC on your CV and profile. "Nairobi (UTC+3) · available 07:00–16:00 UTC" removes guesswork. On Tamborin, set your hours during onboarding and employers see the overlap with their own core day automatically.
- Name the overlap in your application. "That gives four hours daily with your US East team, 9:00 to 13:00 ET."
- Give an example. "For two years I worked with a team in Toronto, joining their 10:00 stand-up from Lagos every day."
- Reply to recruiters in their hours. Answering emails during the employer's working day is a quiet signal that you will be there when it matters.
- Show your setup. A sentence about your backup power and internet tells a recruiter you will not drop off calls. See our guide on power and internet backup.
When the overlap is hard
US West roles from East Africa can mean evening and night work. Be honest with yourself about whether you can sustain it. Some options:
- Propose a split day: a few hours in the morning, a break, then the overlap in the evening.
- Ask whether the overlap is needed daily or only on certain days.
- Look for roles marked "Any timezone" or async-first, which exist in engineering, writing, design and AI training work.
In the interview
When the question comes, answer with specifics: your hours in UTC, the overlap with their core day, and how you handle urgent issues outside it. "I'm online 07:00–16:00 UTC, which overlaps your London day completely. Outside those hours I check messages once in the evening for anything marked urgent."
That answer shows you have thought about how the team works, which is exactly what the requirement was trying to find out. Our timezone overlap guide has a checklist to set yours up.