The demand for IT specialists in Russia has increased by 63% this year, the office of the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko has announced.
“As of early 2023, there are about 59,000 open vacancies in the IT sector on the domestic market,” the office said in a statement on Friday.
The Russian government is working to support IT specialists and improve their qualifications as part of a dedicated national project, the statement added. Since 2019, the government has funded training in various IT jobs for more than 343,000 people, with plans to put some 500,000 through the program by 2024, it said.
The demand for IT specialists can be partially explained by the need for Russian firms to switch to domestically developed software as major foreign companies opted to leave the country after the start of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine over a year ago. Some IT workers, who are predominantly young people, were also among those who fled the country after a partial mobilization was announced last fall.
According to Kommersant newspaper, an industry representative claimed there’s “not just a shortage of personnel, but a serious crisis” in the IT market in Russia.
However, a spokesperson for Russia VK social media platform told the paper that the lack of qualified IT staff is a constant feature of this market. The situation became more pressing last year as “top employers, including VK, increased hiring,” he noted.
The chief of the IT personnel department at Russian online retailer Ozon, Anastasiya Kuchay, told Kommersant that her Ozon Tech team had grown by 40% in 2022 and now consists of around 4,000 people. Russian tech giant Yandex also reported a 16% increase in its staff last year, according to the outlet.