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Марія БровінськаWork
31 December 2025, 12:45
2025-12-31
Top IT companies were asked to describe 2025 in one paragraph. Here's how the past year will be remembered by the leaders of EPAM, Ciklum Headway Inc, Railsware and others
2025 was a year of endurance, difficult decisions, and strategy revisions for Ukrainian IT. Business worked under the pressure of war, staff shortages, a global slowdown, and the rapid development of AI — and at the same time, it was looking for growth points. We asked top managers of Ukrainian IT companies to describe in one paragraph what this year was like for them: what hurt, what worked, and what lessons they are taking with them into 2026. However, most of them were more verbose and revealed interesting insider insights.
2025 was a year of endurance, difficult decisions, and strategy revisions for Ukrainian IT. Business worked under the pressure of war, staff shortages, a global slowdown, and the rapid development of AI — and at the same time, it was looking for growth points. We asked top managers of Ukrainian IT companies to describe in one paragraph what this year was like for them: what hurt, what worked, and what lessons they are taking with them into 2026. However, most of them were more verbose and revealed interesting insider insights.
«The focus shifts from the question of «how to do it?» to the question of «what and why to do it?""
Stepan Mytish, Vice President, Head of ERAM Ukraine
For our company, 2025 was a landmark year: we not only celebrated our 20th anniversary in Ukraine, but also made a significant contribution to the development of the state, completing the digital transformation of the State Statistics Service and holding the first AI hackathon with the Ministry of Digital Transformation. If we talk about the industry as a whole, the past year can be characterized as a year of stabilization for the Ukrainian IT industry. After a rapid decline in the first years of the war, in 2024 the industry reached a point of equilibrium and reached a plateau with signs of recovery in the labor market and exports, although the challenges in 2025 continue.
The second key trend has been the «AI revolution». However, contrary to initial predictions of a rapid replacement of engineers, it is developing according to a more conservative scenario. It has become clear that artificial intelligence will not replace programmers in the near future. Instead, the role of the engineer is being transformed: the focus is shifting from the question of «how to do it?» to the question of «what to do and why to do it?». We are responding to these changes by investing in our own AI ecosystem for internal transformation, developing EPAM AI/Run products to optimize the SDLC (to achieve more with less effort), and implementing AI agents capable of solving complex problems, not just individual atomic tasks.
Among the biggest challenges:
Pricing and high competition. The global economic situation does not allow us to increase prices for services, which creates some pressure on profitability. Also, attracting new and retaining existing customers has become an extremely competitive game due to the risks of war. This requires us to be maximally efficient and constantly optimize to maintain healthy business profitability.
The pace of transformation with AI. We are making significant progress in implementing artificial intelligence at three levels: for the transformation of the company itself, for the optimization of our own processes and for the creation of solutions for customers. However, the challenge remains not the fact of transformation itself, but its pace. We strive to be leaders in this area, so our internal bar is very high. Sometimes the «old mindset» and inertia slow down the processes a bit, so despite the obvious successes, we always strive to move even faster and more aggressively.
Long-term demographic challenge. This is a problem that becomes more urgent with each year of the war. The outflow of young talent from the country creates pressure on the industry in the long term. For a business that is built entirely on people, retaining and developing talent within the country is a critical task that is becoming increasingly difficult.
«One of the less obvious but tangible challenges has been the constant state of expectation and uncertainty»
Vitaliy Nuzhny, Regional Delivery Head at Ciklum
Of course, 2025 for the IT industry was strongly influenced by the war in Ukraine and the rapid development of artificial intelligence. At the same time, one of the less obvious but tangible challenges was the constant state of expectation and uncertainty — as it turned out, the process of negotiating a peace agreement can be no less a source of stress than shelling of energy infrastructure. Every news or statement about a possible development of events has a strong impact on everyone: top management, clients, colleagues — we all have our own expectations and hopes for the end of the war. For Ciklum, this year was largely about training, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence. We launched a three-level development program for technical specialists — from a basic understanding of the application of AI to domain expertise and training of AI engineers ready to create solutions with an AI component. Given market trends, this was a timely and much-needed initiative that helps our specialists be prepared for the professional challenges of today and the future.
«It has become obvious that the sustainability of the industry directly depends on people»
Anton Pavlovsky, CEO and founder of Headway Inc
2025 was a year of resilience and inner maturity for the Ukrainian IT industry. Despite the war, constant security threats, blackouts, and emotional fatigue, technology companies continued to work, scale, and take on broader responsibilities than just business development. It became clear that the sustainability of the industry directly depends on people, and therefore companies must support society — their teams, the economy, and the country — so that we can all continue to work and develop.
For me and the Headway Inc team, one of the key processes of 2025 was the rebranding — as a logical step in response to the scale the company has achieved over the years of growth. Its implementation on our own required long-term preparation, clear planning, and deep team synchronization, so it became both a serious management challenge and an important achievement.
At the same time, the year brought significant results: attracting the largest first investment round during the full-scale invasion, 4th place in the world ranking of EdTech companies according to TIME, and selection for Endeavor as the first company with Ukrainian roots in this community. Even in extremely difficult conditions, Ukrainian product companies are able to grow, create value, and contribute to the sustainability of society.
«2025 has become a year of landing and maturity for the IT industry»
Ivan Pogrebnyak, Chief Delivery Officer at Master of Code Global
In our opinion, 2025 has become a year of landing and maturity for the IT industry — and at the same time a turning point due to the rapid development of AI, which has raised business expectations for the speed and scale of innovation. Innovation has become increasingly valued only when it provides a measurable effect and stable, predictable delivery. AI is already noticeably enhancing creative and analytical processes and partially accelerating development, but its impact remains uneven and requires responsible application — with a focus on security, compliance and long-term quality of solutions.
Against this background, the requirements for specialists have also changed noticeably: they have become higher, and the ability to learn quickly, work with modern tools, and take responsibility has become basic for absolutely all positions, technical or operational.
For us, 2025 was about reframing our approaches, not scaling back our ambitions: we invested in team development, internal expertise, and operational discipline. A separate challenge was delivery transparency — the ability to see risks early and respond to them before they impact the bottom line, and this is where we significantly strengthened over the year.
Team safety also remained an important topic. In 2025, the LIFT99 space in Kyiv, where some of our Masters worked, was damaged by Russian shelling. Fortunately, no one was injured — and we promptly informed the team, provided support, and quickly resolved all organizational issues.
«It became clear that success is not about chasing new AI models»
Sergey Korolev, Co-CEO, Railsware
This is a year of awareness of the new reality and a slight «sobering up» after the AI hype. AI has already gone beyond demos or entertainment and has become part of routine work in many places. But it has become obvious that success is not in the pursuit of new models. It is already clear that we need to thoughtfully integrate AI into real products, without ignoring the basics. And another important lesson is that we should not forget about people and what is human: engineering discipline, product thinking, user trust.
In addition to the obvious global factors, one of the interesting challenges of 2025 is the ability not to scatter, both in terms of attention and business resources. On the one hand, there are many new tools, opportunities and requests, and the biggest temptation is to say «yes» too often. On the other hand, from a business perspective, we see a significant number of prospects and potential partnerships. For our product teams, this has meant increasingly checking ourselves: does an idea really add value to products and customers, or is it just our reaction to information noise. For me personally, this has been a year of reminders of the importance of prioritization — calm, logical, without FOMO. The BRIDGeS framework, which we have been using for many years to make decisions, has come in handy, as always. It helps to «ground» and organize hundreds of thoughts, proposals and plans, choose the best and work calmly. And this balance without chasing trends has a tangible impact on the company’s sustainability.
«Building new approaches is difficult but necessary work»
Dmytro Bondar, CEO and co-founder of Boosta
For the company and for me personally, the key challenge of 2025 was the transformation of Boosta from one operationally integrated company to a full-fledged holding. Previously, we worked as a single structure with several internal projects, and today it is 18 business units, service teams and 8 operational departments.
In parallel, we revised our growth strategy — we placed greater emphasis on the launch and development of new projects, their quality and potential. This required rethinking the processes that we had been building for 11 years and a willingness to change what formally worked. A clear understanding helped: many «best practices» are a thing of the past and no longer provide a competitive advantage. Building new approaches is a difficult but necessary task, and the first results confirm the correctness of this course: most business units are demonstrating growth.
«A year has passed in the process of learning what AI is»
Mykyta Artemchuk, CEO Prom
A year has passed in the process of learning about what AI is and how to properly apply it in the company and keep up with the market. Currently, we have clearly divided the tasks in the field of AI into 2 areas: those that increase the efficiency of employees, help solve complex tasks on the backend of the product; and those that affect the user experience and interface. This has given a tangible impetus and focus in specific experiments and areas of responsibility. Many of these experiments are already showing a noticeable positive result.
For me and the entire management team, the biggest challenges are maintaining a balance between investing in growth and maintaining a safety margin in the form of profit. Unfortunately, you often have to give up what you want to get what you need.
There are a lot of candidates, there are enough vacancies, but there are no matches. Recruiters from EPAM, Ciklum, Sigma Software, EVO and others explain the paradox of hiring in Ukrainian IT
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