Rising vacancies, shrinking talent: Ukraine's IT faces a personnel crisis — SoftServe experience

The number of IT vacancies is gradually increasing – on the DOU portal alone, it increased by 30% compared to last year. Companies are traditionally looking for front-, back-end and full stack developers and want to see candidates with developed "soft" skills.

However, at the same time, the Ukrainian IT sector has faced an unprecedented personnel crisis, says Andriy Pereymybida, head of the SoftServe talent development center. Liga.Tech talked to him about what influenced the shortage of specialists who still dare to enter the sector, despite the loss of its positions, and how much traditional education helps them.

The number of vacancies is gradually increasing.

The IT job market is gradually improving. This year, almost 60,000 offers were published on DOU, which is 30% more than in 2023.

Although the 2021 figure is still far away – then there were 113,000 vacancies on this service alone. In 2022, their number was affected by a full-scale war, coupled with the trend of large-scale layoffs and the rapid development of artificial intelligence, which can cover the needs of companies.

Over the past few years, Meta has laid off over 20,000 employees, Microsoft has cut 10,000, and Ukrainian Reface has cut 35% of its team to become profitable.

Despite this trend, the growth of the job market was also noticed at SoftServe. It hired 625 Ukrainian IT professionals, 215 of whom were graduates of its own training courses. Last year, there were fewer new employees — 294, of whom 105 were graduates of its own courses.

Traditionally, companies need front-, back-end, and full stack developers in various programming languages. Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Data Science are also popular.

Although former students are now primarily interested in the company, how much it corresponds to their life values, Andriy Pereymybida noticed. Programming language is less important, because during a career it will have to be changed more than once: "In three or four years you will move on to another project that will use a different programming language with different technologies."

This is confirmed by a study by IT Research Ukraine . For more than half of IT professionals surveyed, the employer brand plays an important role.

Traditional education remains conservative

Over 90% of IT professionals have higher education, most of them have a technical specialty, according to a study by IT Research Ukraine. A university can really give an impetus for development, especially since some cooperate with IT companies. In addition to basic knowledge, institutions provide useful acquaintances.

SoftServe Academy partners with 95 universities around the world, including 66 institutions in Ukraine, which request to review their curricula.

However, the peculiarity of academic education is its conservatism, believes Pereymybida. In contrast, private schools can afford flexibility and adherence to the tools and practices that companies actually use.

Students are one of SoftServe's two main sources of talent. This category needs to be interested in innovative solutions and projects, while the other category, switchers, is easier to offer work to.

"This is a person with experience who consciously moves into a different direction and risks what they already have. So, they will try to achieve success in an affordable project, not looking for how innovative it should be. It is easy enough to offer a switcher a job that will provide a steady income and a permanent place," says Pereymybida.

What skills do employers value?

Along with technical skills, English remains a must, and knowledge of it affects salary. Soft skills play a big role, which are not paid as much attention in classical universities as technical skills.

One of the elements of "soft" skills is critical thinking, which has become especially necessary against the background of the development of artificial intelligence. The academy has several courses on AI: for everyone (on using tools for everyday tasks) and for developers (fundamentals of AI development, practical Data Science and machine learning with Python). For students, the academy has added an AI mentor who can answer questions.

"June" decreased compared to 2021

The average age of an IT worker is currently 31.5 years old. Andriy Pereymybida recalls that 10 years ago the median age was lower. The industry is getting older, although it remains relatively young.

It's important for companies to maintain a balance between experienced professionals and beginners. 2021 was a peak year for open positions and opportunities for entry-level specialists. That was when a large percentage of IT "junior" people entered the industry.

Now this percentage is lower, because companies do not have such a need to expand their staff. This year, the export revenue of the IT sector fell by 5%. Andriy Pereymybida explains this by the impact of the war and the situation on the global market. Because of this, the number of clients in the Ukrainian IT sector has decreased.

Although there is no need for expansion, the number of vacancies continues to grow. This may be due to the outflow of personnel – this year 11,000 specialists may leave the country. Such a shortage forces companies to more actively search for talent, for example, thanks to specialists without experience. In 2024, the number of such vacancies increased rapidly – +83%.

In addition, students may emigrate, as local universities compete with foreign institutions. This is compounded by a demographic crisis. According to the CIA , Ukraine has the highest average annual number of deaths per 1,000 population.

According to our interlocutor, such problems with personnel have never been in Ukraine before. He predicts that we will face a fairly large shortage of personnel. But this crisis is a global problem, not just Ukrainian. Researchers from Gartner believe that the demand for talent will exceed its supply by 2026.

ManpowerGroup, a recruitment company, indicated in one of its studies that 76% of IT companies in the world are facing a staffing crisis. Moreover, businesses in any industry have the hardest time finding IT professionals to perform their tasks.