Staff shortage, structural change, impact of AI: what awaits the Ukrainian IT market

Author

Valery Moisieiev

In the IT sector, salaries have been slowly declining since 2023. The median salaries in December 2024 for leading specialties were as follows:

software engineer – $4,500;
QA/QC/SDET (testers) – $3,400;
data engineer – $5,300;
developer – $5,000.

Such data was provided by Iryna Ippolitova, an analyst at DOU, during a discussion on the prospects of the IT market, organized by the Center for Economic Strategy. recounts the most interesting things that were said there.

The situation on the IT labor market

A steady increase in the number of vacancies has been going on since 2023 — now there are 6,300 of them at DOU, in 2023 there were about 4,000, but in 2021 — 9,000, Ippolitova reported.

A structural shift is taking place in the market. Before the full-scale war, most IT specialists worked in service or outsourcing companies, and now more in product companies. This shift has two consequences:

the number of people working in small companies (up to 50 people) is growing;
the demand for IT marketers is growing, the requirements for specialists during the search are changing.

About 25% of IT company employees are physically abroad.

Only 2 of the 10 largest IT companies increased their staff in the second half of 2024

Compared to 2023, now:

more IT professionals are looking for work (25% vs. 12%);
the duration of the job search has increased (54% vs. 40% are looking for more than two months);
the number of applications to employers has increased when searching (45% apply to 20+ companies, up from 30%);

57% found a job with a higher salary, up from 65%.

How IT companies recruit personnel in 2025

Viktor Shalnev, head of NIX, noted that customers often cancel their orders if they will be worked on in Ukraine. They are afraid that the work will be disrupted due to the war — for example, a specialist will be mobilized.

With the outbreak of the Great War, NIX was forced to abandon its personnel selection model. "Previously, we recruited hundreds of students, trained them, selected them, and thus received the necessary specialists every three months. Now we can’t afford it. We work from the wheel, that is, we are looking for people for a specific vacancy, for which the customer has put forward many requirements and restrictions," said Shalnev.

The most painful issue is mobilization. An IT company can reserve 50% of its staff. "And we strive to fill the other 50% with people who are protected from mobilization by age, large families, etc.," the manager shared. "People are our main resource, but it is now unreliable."

He confirmed that the number of vacancies on the market has increased, but almost all of them are for qualified specialists.

How IT companies work in front-line Kharkiv

"According to our estimates, 25% of IT specialists from companies operating in the city are currently in Kharkiv, another 25% are abroad, and the rest are in other parts of Ukraine," said Oleksandr Medovyi, CEO of AltexSoft, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Kharkiv IT Cluster.

In 2024, companies and individual entrepreneurs registered in the region paid a total of UAH 14 billion in various taxes and fees. This is more than in 2023.

According to Medovoy, the growth of food companies, which is now being talked about a lot, is largely a consequence of a successful combination of circumstances in individual companies. In general, the food business is under strong pressure from AI, and the boundaries between food and service companies are rather conditional.

Prospects for the IT market

According to Ippolitova, previously the growth of the market was largely ensured by foreign orders, now the role of this factor is much smaller. Yes, Ukrainian products are growing, but in general the mood in the IT community is quite pessimistic, they do not expect much growth and improvements.

Shalnev believes that improving the security situation is the main factor that will affect the development of the market.

"Then the potential accumulated now will be released," he explained.

His company will return to the previous model of working with personnel, will recruit students again.

The growth of product companies is currently mainly due to miltech. The head of NIH said that due to the lack of government orders for startups and the ban on the export of defense products, entrepreneurs are often forced to open their company abroad. Then Ukraine is forced to import their products.

Medovy drew attention to the fact that major changes are expected in Europe due to the development of the miltech industry. Ukrainians have a good chance in the fight for these orders.

In his opinion, for the development of the IT market in Ukraine it is necessary to:

preserve the FOP system so that people can work directly with foreign employers;
preserve Diia.City for business;
do everything possible to anticipate the situation with security and mobilization.

The state of the Ukrainian IT market — key figures

Currently, the IT market accounts for 3-4% of Ukraine's GDP and 14% of the total volume of exports.

The information and computer technology sector in Ukraine employs almost 430 thousand people: 302 thousand individual entrepreneurs and 14 thousand enterprises with 127 thousand employees. The number of IT workers is estimated at 343 thousand.

Export of IT services and its share in total exports of services

Since 2021, a special Diia.City regulatory and taxation regime has been in place for IT companies. Currently, it has 1,695 residents, and in the first quarter of 2025 they paid 7.1 UAH billion in taxes.

In 2024, $462 million was invested in Ukrainian startups. Last year exceeded the previous one by 2.2 times in terms of investment volume, but remains lower than in 2021. The fastest growing industry is defense technologies.

8 of the 10 largest companies in the sector reduced their staff in the second half of 2024. The only exceptions were Ajax Systems and Genesis.

In March, exports of IT services increased by 2%, to $545 million, which was the second monthly increase after the minimum reached in January. The share of IT in exports of services increased to 42.6%, which was due to a drop in total exports of services after the cessation of Russian gas transit through Ukraine.

The key markets were the US (37%), Malta (9%), the UK (8%) and Cyprus (7%), which together accounted for more than half of exports.

In 2024, imports of IT services reached a record $980 million, up 25% year-on-year, but this is only 4% of total services imports. In Q1 2025, imports increased by 37.5% year-on-year, to $282 million, with the main importing countries being Ireland (15%), the US (12%) and Germany (8%).