Ranking TOP-50 largest outsourcing IT companies in Ukraine

The number of IT specialists in Ukraine increased by a record 50,000 in 2021 compared to 2020, but IT companies themselves faced a shortage of specialists. So, in 2021, more than 112 thousand vacancies were published on DOU - almost twice as many as last year.

As of December 2021, there were more than 250,000 IT specialists in Ukraine, which is 50,000 (24%) more than in 2020.

The five leading IT companies in Ukraine remain unchanged: EPAM, SoftServe, GlobalLogic, Luxoft and Ciklum.

The first company with more than 11,000 employees (EPAM) appeared in the rating, and in general, the staff of the top 50 Ukrainian IT companies grew by 12%.

The gender balance is changing every year, in 2021 there are 79% more women in the IT industry than in 2015. Then, in total, they accounted for only 14%, today 25% of all IT specialists are women.

The average age of an IT specialist in Ukraine is 28 years.

In programming languages, Python and JavaScript have become a real breakthrough. They grew by 89% and 66% respectively. But Java, popular in the early tenths, has declined significantly - in 5 years it has been used 39% less. They continue to write mobile applications for Android and use it in web development, but the emergence of new languages is gradually replacing the former leader.

Among the most attractive cities for IT specialists, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Vinnytsia should be singled out, they were included in the TOP-3 cities with the highest level of loyalty among IT specialists in terms of comfort of life. The TOP-5 also included Kharkiv and Chernihiv. Kherson, Zaporozhye, Chernivtsi and Nikolaev received the lowest marks.

In the DOU rating - "The largest IT companies in Ukraine" EPAM is in the lead - 11,600 employees, SoftServe - 9,462 employees, GlobalLogic - 6365 employees, Luxoft - 3581 employees, Ciklum - 3006 employees.

Ranking TOP-50 largest IT companies in Ukraine in 2022

AIN Ranking of outsourcing and service IT companies by the number of employees

Overall, as can be seen from the ranking, the situation in Ukraine has had a significant impact on the listed companies. The top five companies recorded either a decrease in the number of employees or a stable number of employees, such as Luxoft. As reported to by EPAM, which had 15% fewer specialists in its Ukrainian staff in November compared to December last year, more than a quarter of those who left the country at the beginning of the war have already returned. Nevertheless, a certain number of them see their immediate future abroad:

“Compared to the previous year, the number of specialists cooperating with ERAM has decreased. However, there is a reasonable explanation for this. After all, several thousand of our specialists left Ukraine to escape the war. More than a quarter of them have already returned home, but some see their immediate future in other countries. After completing the permitted 90-day stay in Europe, we have observed active relocation processes within the company for several months. Thanks to a large number of EPAM offices worldwide, specialists can work in the countries of their choice and receive support from the company and local peers. Currently, the relocation is the key reason for the change in the size of the Ukrainian team.”

According to SoftServe, 2,000 people have relocated abroad. Some of them have returned, but a significant number of people remain there and are being legalized in other SoftServe locations. In this case, they cease to be employees of SoftServe Ukraine.

“There is also the phenomenon of staff turnover, which is natural for the company this year, but due to the slower pace of hiring and the number of vacancies on the market, the number of employees does not level off as quickly. In addition, we do have some optimization going on, but it is not of a pronounced widespread nature. We maintain a talent pool sufficient to launch new projects and open new vacancies quickly. Most of them are focused on the internal pool, but we also open vacancies for external staffing. We are actively working to attract new customers and projects in Ukraine,” added Anastasia Frolova, Country Manager Ukraine, SoftServe.

Ciklum also noted that many Ukrainian specialists have left and switched to local contracts in the delivery centers of Poland and Bulgaria. The Ukrainian office of the latter employs 2,800 people, which is 14% less than last year.

Number of specialists in top 3 IT companies

Although half of the companies did not show an increase in employees, the other ten reported an increase in their Ukrainian teams. Among them are Intellias with an increase of 11% (54.5% last year), N-iX with +10% (42.3%), and Grid Dynamics with an increase of 21% (24.9%). At the same time, Avenga (formerly CoreValue) reported 727 specialists, which is 107% more than last year.

As Avenga explained to AIN.Capital, the company’s growth is mainly driven by the M&A program and the company’s presence in other countries. In addition, the offices in Ukraine operate in a self-sufficient manner, regardless of power outages. Thus, according to Avenga, clients receive services, and the team has the opportunity to work.

“We are establishing our presence not only in Europe, but also in South America (the recent merger with the Argentine company IncluIT gave us an increase of 800 people. Before that, the integration with Perfectial increased the Ukrainian team by 500 specialists. We also have good growth in existing customers, even during the war we did not lose any of them. Analyzing the last three years, which were quite difficult for the world, we did not have mass layoffs, salary cuts, or other drastic measures; our attrition was on average 15-18% when the market had already reached 30%,” said Marta Romaniak, Managing Director at Avenga.

It is a good sign that all the companies in the ranking continue to hire specialists. Although growth is not as rapid as it was a year ago, the availability of vacancies may indicate a step-by-step recovery of the industry. For example, SoftServe plans to hire additional 764 specialists globally in the near future, with 239 vacancies open in Ukraine. At the same time, EPAM notes that there is no massive hiring at the moment, and the need for specialists is mainly covered by the company’s internal talents. In November 2022, they were mainly looking for niche specialists, such as Performance Analyst, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Big Data, Python, etc.

Number of specialists & number of vacancies

Grid Dynamics has the most vacancies in Ukraine among the top twenty. In 2022, the company closed its offices in Russia and focused on scaling in Europe. As of December, it has about 1,600 specialists in Ukraine and plans to hire another 300 in the near future. GlobalLogic is also relatively active in hiring, with 279 vacancies open at the time of the survey. In their comment, the company noted that they are looking for specialists in various areas, including C++, .NET, Manual QA, Automation QA, Embedded QA, C/Embedded, Machine Learning, and Linux Kernel.

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