Russia's IT job market has stalled: salaries are flat and AI is keeping juniors out

Russia's IT labor market is facing salary stagnation: according to CNews, specialists' pay is barely growing because of the spread of neural networks and the general state of the economy, and some job seekers cannot find work for up to six months.

Why salaries have stopped growing

According to the report, two factors coincided: growing use of neural networks in development and a difficult economic situation. The result is that IT salaries in Russia are effectively frozen. A significant share of job seekers, the publication says, search for up to six months and then accept the terms offered, without even trying to bargain for higher pay. The balance of power in the labor market has clearly shifted toward employers.

Just a few years ago, the shortage of qualified IT staff in Russia was considered almost chronic: companies competed for specialists and regularly raised salary offers to keep employees from moving to rivals. The CNews piece records a reversal of that dynamic. A candidate's market has become an employer's market, and now it is candidates who must accept terms they would recently have considered inadequate, simply because they have no alternative offers in hand.

• Trend: stagnating IT salaries in Russia
• Causes: growing use of neural networks + the economic situation
• Job search duration: up to six months for some specialists
• Candidate behavior: accept the offered salary without trying to raise it
• Demand for juniors: companies have virtually stopped hiring them

Why have companies stopped hiring juniors?

A separate and possibly the most alarming part of the report is the almost complete absence of demand for junior specialists. According to CNews, companies do not want to hire beginner developers, probably because some entry-level tasks (simple code, routine scripts, minor fixes) can now be handled by AI tools, with no need to pay a salary or spend time training a junior employee.

Traditionally, a junior position was not only a source of cheap labor for routine tasks but also an entry point to the profession, where a specialist gradually gained experience and grew into a mid-level and then senior developer under the guidance of more experienced colleagues. If companies cut this rung en masse, the institution of mentoring and gradual in-house growth, which long underpinned the industry's entire model of reproducing its workforce, is effectively dismantled.

What risks does this create for the future?

The report states plainly that abandoning junior hiring threatens serious problems down the road: if the industry stops training beginners today, a few years from now there will be a shortage of experienced mid-level and senior developers, who usually come up precisely from junior positions. It is a vicious circle: AI reduces the need for beginners today, but undermines the talent reserve from which the industry would have needed to draw specialists in a few years.

A similar dynamic, a squeeze on entry-level hiring as AI tools grow more capable, is being discussed in other labor markets, where tech companies are also reconsidering how they hire young specialists. For the Russian IT market the situation is made worse by added pressure from the general economic climate, so the effect of AI adoption is layered on top of companies' already cautious policies on expanding headcount.

Under these conditions, graduates of specialized universities and retraining courses are especially vulnerable. A few years ago they saw IT as one of the most reliable paths to employment, with fast income growth. CNews records that this path now works quite differently: a degree or course certificate no longer guarantees quick entry into the profession, and competition for the few junior positions is noticeably higher than before.

The report's own wording, that the situation "threatens serious problems in the future", leaves open the question of how exactly the industry and the state might respond to this imbalance, whether through internship programs, subsidized employment for beginners or other measures to compensate for the disappearing bottom rung of the development career ladder.