In St. Petersburg's IT sector, demand for juniors has increased.
But for 700 open vacancies, there are more than 9,000 resumes from beginner IT specialists.
Since the beginning of the year, employers in St. Petersburg have posted nearly 700 new vacancies for "juniors" (specialists without experience) in the IT sector. This is 15% more compared to the same period last year when fewer than 600 similar vacancies were posted in the city's labor market. This was reported to "Vedomosti North-West" by the director of HeadHunter in the Northwestern Federal District, Yulia Sakharova.
"Moreover, the demand at the beginning of this year also exceeds the figures from early 2023 by 106%. Back then, juniors in St. Petersburg had access to just over 300 vacancies. However, today's demand still falls short of early 2022, when before the announcement of the Special Military Operation, employers maintained a fairly high demand for IT specialists, including juniors, and posted more than 800 vacancies for beginners in January 2022 alone," she said.
Regarding the total number of IT vacancies in the city, juniors account for 10% of all openings. Meanwhile, "middles" with 1 to 3 years of experience make up 47% of all required employees, "middles" with 3 to 6 years of experience account for 37%, and "seniors" hold only 6% of vacancies.
At the same time, about 9,000 IT specialists without experience are looking for jobs in St. Petersburg, representing one in ten resumes. In 2024, there were 3% more such resumes, and in 2023, 14% more.
"In this case, the decline in the share of junior resumes is quite simple to explain: people grow professionally and eventually move into a new professional stratum—middles—updating their resume information accordingly. On average, we see that transitioning from a junior to a middle for an active specialist can take from one to 2.5 years," commented Sakharova, adding that most resumes come from those who entered the IT field in 2019 or during the pandemic.
It is worth noting that the median salary for juniors in St. Petersburg currently stands at 64,500 rubles, which is 13% higher than at the beginning of 2024 and 20% higher than in 2022. Meanwhile, the highest salary offers now reach nearly 120,000 rubles.
Representatives of IT companies interviewed by "Vedomosti" stated that the demand for specialists, including those without experience, remains as company project portfolios continue to grow. "The portfolio of a system integrator in modern realities is constantly changing and being replenished with solutions from new Russian vendors. With the increase in the number of projects, the demand for specialists in these vendors grows sharply, but finding them on the market is extremely difficult. Therefore, having an internal process of developing experts in narrow fields and products is critically important," said Pavel Chuzhmarov, Deputy General Director of Wone IT. He added that the company collaborates with educational institutions to find juniors and launches its own internship programs.
A representative of the press service of "Rostelecom" also stated that the growing number of projects leads to a need for personnel, which they can hire through internship programs. "The hiring of junior specialists at 'Rostelecom' takes place through an internship program launched annually in the summer-autumn period. Usually, hiring is based on project needs: if projects plan tasks for juniors, the company hires them. Accordingly, the more such projects, the greater the demand for young specialists," said the company's representative.
At the same time, the head of the IT company Proptech Solutions, Roman Blonov, believes that the 15% increase in vacancies is a seasonal effect at the beginning of the year and does not fully reflect the labor market situation in the IT sector, as more than 12 resumes are submitted for each open vacancy in St. Petersburg, which is quite a lot. "This is a consequence of aggressive online course advertising, where people try to transition into a new field in about six months. We've seen cases where juniors received additional training at the expense of the company and then left after a few months in search of higher-paying jobs, so they are now hired much less frequently," he commented.
Blonov also added that the number of job-seeking IT specialists in the labor market could increase even further in the near future. According to his data, several companies are reducing their non-core departments, contributing to the growing number of active resumes. It is worth noting that in early 2025, "Kommersant" reported that three of the largest IT companies ("Lanit," MTS, and "VimpelCom") reduced the number of IT vacancies in 2024 by 15-18%. Meanwhile, according to "Habr.Career," the total number of vacancies decreased by 5% year-over-year. Market participants attributed this to business optimization and the development of artificial intelligence, which partially replaces employees.