📊 The CIS IT Job Market: First Half of 2026

The SmartSNG.Dev Association has prepared a consolidated review of the IT job market across the CIS for late 2025 — the first half of 2026. The review rests on two layers of data: public analytics from leading platforms and our own anonymous community survey. We aggregate the sources, normalize them where possible, add expert interpretation — and complement them with a slice gathered from our community.

Methodology. The review combines two layers. The first is public studies: hh.ru and Habr Career (Russia), Djinni (Ukraine), Antal Kazakhstan and local-community surveys (Kazakhstan), dev.by (Belarus). The second is our own anonymous market survey: the salaries the community has submitted through the form complement and cross-check the picture. Our sample is still small, so the country figures rest primarily on open sources, while our own slice is shown separately. The sources use different methodologies (median vs average, offered vs actual salary), so direct cross-country comparison of the figures is not valid — we state the source and metric for each block.

💡 This is your data too. The country figures below come from open sources and our survey. Add your salary anonymously through the form — it will feed our next market studies.

🇷🇺 Russia: a cooling market, slower salary growth

After several years of abnormal demand, the market is returning to balance. According to hh.ru, over the year (February 2025 → February 2026) the number of IT vacancies in Russia fell by roughly 36%, while the number of resumes grew by about 30%. Competition for each role spiked — the hh index (resumes per vacancy) climbed from the "overheated" 2024 levels to a point where, for the first time in years, it became an employer's market:

Source: hh.ru, Habr ("Information Technology" field). The hh index is the number of active resumes per vacancy.

Salaries. Two metrics must be kept apart. The median offered IT salary in vacancies rose over the year from ≈ ₽89,900 to ≈ ₽100,000 (hh.ru). The median actual salary in the Habr Career survey for H2 2025 is around ₽183,000 (Moscow — 230k, Saint Petersburg — 200k, regions — 159k). The 2026 forecast ranges from "inflation +2–3%" to +10–20% above inflation for seniors, where the expertise shortage persists.

Stratification across specializations deepened. Median salary dynamics by role over the past ~4 years (₽ thousands; green — growth, pink — decline):

Source: hh.ru / Habr. Data scientists rose from 202 to 252k, network engineers from 87 to 151k, product managers from 107 to 149k. Python and frontend dipped slightly over the same period.

The share of vacancies offering remote work rose to 36% (30% a year earlier), while candidates want remote in 55% of cases — the expectations gap persists.

🇺🇦 Ukraine: a median under pressure, stratification by grade

The freshest open data comes from Djinni, the largest hiring platform: statistics on candidate expectations, offered and actual salaries update in real time. Over the last 30 days the median for hired candidates is around $2,000/mo, the median offered range in jobs is $1,500–$3,000, and candidate expectations are $1,200–$3,500. In winter 2026 more people are hired but at lower rates — the 5–6-year bracket took the hardest hit.

Source: Djinni salary statistics (live, last 30 days). Midpoint of the median offered-salary range in jobs.

Remote contracts with Western clients carry a notable premium over domestic rates — so some strong specialists effectively earn above the "domestic" medians shown.

🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: a talent shortage and fast-growing demand

The market is expanding, but the gap between skills and demand is widening. According to Antal Kazakhstan and government statistics, by mid-2025 some ≈ 19,500 developers and AI specialists were officially registered, while a single vacancy attracts up to 17 resumes. More than 70% of employers plan to revise salaries in 2026, most often in the 10–20% range.

The fastest demand growth is in data and AI:

Source: Antal Kazakhstan, Job Market Overview & Salary Survey 2025–2026. Projected demand growth per role.

On pay (survey of 420 IT professionals): ML engineers lead (≈ ₸1.6M/mo, ~$2,900), followed by data scientists (₸1.1M) and DWH specialists (₸1.08M). The average software developer is around $2,000/mo in conversion.

🇧🇾 Belarus: high competition, growth below the market

According to dev.by, the average IT salary by autumn 2025 was around BYN 7,200 before tax (higher for AI specialists — ~BYN 8,000). The average software developer by early 2026 earns about $1,500/mo; Senior full-stack and DevOps — $3,200–4,800, Lead and ML/AI — from $4,500 to $8,000+. The median offered IT salary grew 15.4% across 2025 (from BYN 2,140 to 2,470) — slower than the market overall. In March 2026 the number of IT vacancies was 12% lower than a year earlier. The tax factor persists: HTP (High-Tech Park) residents pay 9% income tax instead of 13%, which is significant at higher grades.

🇦🇲 🇦🇿 🇺🇿 Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan: insufficient data for analysis

Honestly: for these countries we found no representative open studies for 2026. Only aggregators such as Glassdoor are available, with very small samples — e.g. the Tashkent estimate is built on 19 entries, Baku on 59. That is not enough even for a basic median, let alone a breakdown by grade and stack.

Tentatively (with a wide margin of error): a developer in Baku earns a few thousand dollars a year by official Glassdoor reporting, in Tashkent significantly below the regional level; for Armenia the public platform salaries.am exists, but we could not obtain consolidated 2026 figures in the open.

Conclusion for these markets: a proper analysis requires primary data collection — which is exactly what we gather through our form. Any "precise" figures here would be guesswork, so we do not present them.

✅ Key takeaways

• Russia is past the overheating peak: fewer vacancies, more resumes, the highest competition in years. Salary growth has slowed and shifted toward seniors and scarce specializations (data science, network engineering).
• Ukraine: hired median ~$2,000, offered range $1,500–$3,000 (Djinni); more hiring but lower rates — the 5–6-year bracket fell hardest.
• Kazakhstan is the region's "hottest" market by demand dynamics (Big Data, fintech, AI), but with a growing qualification gap and tough competition at entry.
• Belarus grows below the market amid some of the highest competition; the HTP tax regime remains a meaningful income factor.
• Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan are an information-deficit zone: open 2026 data is insufficient, so we are filling the picture with our own survey.

The overarching regional trend is stratification: the market no longer grows evenly, and the gap between in-demand and fading directions is measured in tens of percent. The data the community submits feeds our next market reviews.

📑 Sources

Some of these platforms may be unavailable from certain countries in the region (blocking or sanctions — e.g. DOU is blocked in Russia, dev.by in Belarus, and Russian resources are restricted in Ukraine). We therefore add a web-archive mirror for each source — it opens everywhere.

• hh.ru — open labor-market analytics: stats.hh.ru · mirror
• Habr Career — IT salaries: career.habr.com/salaries · mirror
• Djinni — salary statistics for Ukrainian developers: djinni.co/salaries · mirror
• Antal Kazakhstan — Job Market Overview & Salary Survey 2025–2026: antalkazakhstan.kz · mirror
• dev.by — IT salaries: devby.io · mirror

Prepared by the SmartSNG.Dev press office: an aggregation of open data from the sources listed, complemented by a community survey. All rights to the primary data belong to their respective owners.