In the last few years, Ukraine has become a strong, well-known player in the international IT market. Ukrainian engineers are among the best offshore developers — they are in high demand in European countries and the US. The IT potential of Ukraine has been rapidly growing due to strong technical education and a good level of English of senior software development engineers.
In this paper, we share the statistics of the Ukrainian IT market, which will tell us why Ukraine is one of the top outsourcing destinations in Europe and many other locations around the globe. We’ll unveil the number of software developers with tech education, the revenue of the Ukrainian IT industry, an estimated number of developers with different tech stack, Ukrainian software development hubs, and much more.
Overview of the Ukrainian IT Industry
Ukraine has a huge amount of educated software development engineers. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe. According to the latest surveys, its workforce is about 20 million people. Data.Worldbank reports about 83% of working Ukrainians having a higher education, which means that the country has a wide pool of educated workforce. The IT talent pool of Ukraine is one of the largest in Europe. Ukrainian IT talent pool comprises around 185,000 professionals and is constantly growing. There are about 23,000 new engineers graduating from universities every year. According to the Outsourcing Journal, Ukraine occupies 1st place in the Outsourcing Market ranking in Eastern Europe.
185k engineers already in the Ukrainian IT industry, 23k junior engineers from Ukraine are graduating from tech universities each year.
The IT industry plays a significant role in the Ukrainian economy. In 2020, the industry revenue reached $5.4 billion. The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) analysis claims that the IT industry increased by 150% in the period from 2011 to 2015, and more than doubled in the period from 2015 to 2020. The tech industry has created 420,000 jobs in IT and related industries in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian IT market is constantly developing resulting in numerous tech products being built and IT projects being carried out from Ukrainian R&D centers. Ukrainian developers are in demand in the Eastern European IT market because of their expertise and strong skills in most trending technologies in the 2021 IT industry.
Ukrainian Software Developers for Hire
Ukraine has a large pool of developers of any tech stack. Ukraine is a country where one can find a skilled software developer to match any project needs due to a few factors. Firstly, many Ukrainian engineers work with several technologies or programming languages simultaneously. Secondly, Ukrainian tech resources are usually employed within multinational project teams, which in turn allows them to gain the expertise needed.
In Ukraine, there is a wide choice of front-end, back-end, and full-stack software development engineers for hire. To find out the most popular technologies within the Ukrainian software development market, we’ve compared the number of specialists with such technologies as Java, Node.js, Ruby, and JavaScript:
| NUMBER OF JOB OPENINGS ON THE LOCAL JOB BOARD | NUMBER OF UKRAINIAN DEVELOPERS ON LINKEDIN | |
| Java | 692 | 34,000 |
| Node.js | 441 | 25,000 |
| Ruby | 156 | 4,900 |
| JavaScript (front-end) | 637 | 30,000 |
The Ukrainian IT sector is a multi-technological IT community where one can find senior
Ruby, Node, or Java engineers. Many developers master several coding languages, become full-stack developers, and follow the best practices of project development. That’s why it is difficult to count the exact number of IT professionals in Ukraine, although it is not a problem to find a professional team of software development engineers.
Main Hubs of Software Development Services
The core of the Ukrainian IT community is located in the larger cities. According to the DOU data, more than 70% of the Ukrainian developers live in TOP-3 cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv. 11% more are located in Dnipro and Odesa. Percentage of developers in main software development services hubs:
| UKRAINIAN CITY PERCENT OF DEVELOPERS |
| Kyiv 44,2% |
| Kharkiv 14,5% |
| Lviv 12,8% |
| Dnipro 6,2% |
| Odesa 5,2% |
| Sumy 1,1% |
Smaller regional city centres like Sumy boast IT hubs with the longest employee tenure and a more loyal attitude towards their end clients. Loyalty is intertwined with a limited number of local employers and a family-like attitude towards resources. For instance, Sumy-based IT company, Infinity Technologies, has 5+ years of employee tenure, which is twice the industry standard. This leads to better project results and minimal to no risks for company end clients to lose their engineers before a project has been implemented.
Main Hubs of Technical Education
Ukrainian tech education is one of the strongest in Europe. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data, Ukraine is the 1st country in central and eastern Europe by number of graduates entering the labor market. Some 402 universities and colleges prepare new software development engineers and IT specialists. In addition to the state educational institutions, there are industry players, regional IT communities, and non-governmental organizations taking an active part in educating tech talent for hire from Ukraine.
Number of universities and technical degree graduates in Ukraine by region per year:
| UNIVERSITIES | BACHELORS | MASTERS | PHDS | |
| Kyiv region | 108 | 8,583 | 3,451 | 498 |
| West of Ukraine | 78 | 7,420 | 2,682 | 279 |
| Center of Ukraine | 79 | 8,782 | 1,949 | 315 |
| East of Ukraine | 77 | 7,964 | 2,345 | 385 |
| South of Ukraine | 57 | 5,628 | 1,368 | 244 |
Popular local job board rating of top technical universities in Ukraine:
- National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
- Ukrainian Catholic University
- Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University
- Kharkiv National University of Economics
- Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University
- Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics
- Sumy State University
- Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
- Chernivtsi National University
- Ivan Franko National University of Lviv
It’s a trend nowadays to build local software development practice hubs around a strong technical university located within the same city.
Ukrainian Software Development Services — the Answer for European Tech Talent Shortage
A worldwide shortage of senior-level software development engineers is increasing each year. Under such circumstances, Ukrainian developers play a significant role in the Eastern Europe IT market. Here one can find about 185,000 IT professionals working with varied trending technologies in IT 2021.
As mentioned above the main IT hubs are located in the 5 biggest cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Odesa. However, one can find a professional team of senior software development engineers in smaller hubs as well. The top tech specialists in Ukraine are graduates of the top technology universities in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Sumy, and other cities.
Summing Up
Ukraine has a large pool of tech talents proficient in front-end, back-end, and full-stack technologies. It comprises around 185,000 IT professionals. Many of them work with several technologies or programming languages. Among the most popular technologies, there are Java, Node.js, Ruby, and JavaScript. On LinkedIn one can find around 100,000 software engineers, working with this tech stack.
| Should you be interested in discovering a cooperation opportunity with a Ukrainian IT vendor, Infinity Technologies AG will be happy to book a discovery call with your company! |