Structural shift in the IT market: experts assessed the change in demand for personnel

The current situation in the IT personnel market is a structural shift, not a temporary recession: companies are not just cutting vacancies, they are redistributing tasks within existing teams and automating standard processes, said Karina Ostronosova, product director of QuantInsight, an AI platform for personnel analytics at Stakhanovets. She shared her comment with Lenta.ru.

Earlier it became known that over the past 12 months, the total number of IT vacancies in the domestic labor market has decreased by almost a third.

“The entry level is becoming the most vulnerable segment; the share of vacancies for entry-level specialists is only 10-11 percent of the total number of IT offers, while the number of resumes has increased by 21 percent. Competition has increased exponentially. Income growth for IT specialists has slowed. But the forecast of the Ministry of Labor remains positive - the need for IT personnel until 2033 is estimated at more than 313 thousand people. Consequently, we are not talking about a decrease in demand as such, but about a change in its structure,” Ostronosova said.

Technical director of the Stakhanovets company Sergei Shcherbakov, in a conversation with Lenta.ru, also noted that the reduction in the number of IT vacancies is not a sign of the decline of the industry. This is a consequence of market restructuring. After a period of extensive hiring and accelerated digitalization, companies are moving to streamline IT functions and more rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of personnel investments. But the market is not shrinking evenly, but is segmented.

“The average salary in IT remains at about 183 thousand rubles, but within individual areas the dynamics are multidirectional. There remains strong demand for architects, cybersecurity specialists and AI developers. The shortage of engineering personnel in the country is estimated at approximately 600 thousand people, and it has not disappeared - only its structure has changed. The future does not belong to universal programmers, but to specialists at the intersection of disciplines,” Shcherbakov emphasized.

At the same time, according to the expert, generative AI in this sense does not replace the engineer, but strengthens him - automates routine data analysis and frees up resources for tasks that require expertise, architectural thinking and responsibility for safety.