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Наталя ХандусенкоWork
21 May 2026, 16:03
2026-05-21
Where to find a job in IT for $5000+ without crypto and gambling — IT professionals share their experience
An IT-specialst asked his colleagues where they are currently working to earn from $5,000. According to him, the domestic Djinni is currently issuing zero offers for such an amount. However, the author is not interested in just «gallery generic» earnings, but in working on a truly meaningful product, where a Front-end engineer can influence ideas, UX and work with business analysts on acceptance criteria. That is why popular high-paying niches like gambling or crypto («where you just f*** for money») were immediately banned.
So where to look for such vacancies? Are foreign customers ready to work with Ukrainian sole proprietors directly, or should developers look for ways to legalize in Europe? We have collected the most striking answers and real cases shared by the IT community.
An IT-specialst asked his colleagues where they are currently working to earn from $5,000. According to him, the domestic Djinni is currently issuing zero offers for such an amount. However, the author is not interested in just «gallery generic» earnings, but in working on a truly meaningful product, where a Front-end engineer can influence ideas, UX and work with business analysts on acceptance criteria. That is why popular high-paying niches like gambling or crypto («where you just f*** for money») were immediately banned.
So where to look for such vacancies? Are foreign customers ready to work with Ukrainian sole proprietors directly, or should developers look for ways to legalize in Europe? We have collected the most striking answers and real cases shared by the IT community.
«Gentlemen tomatoes, and not only, where do you work to earn $5,000 or more?», a Front-end developer asked the IT community on Reddit with this question.
In the comments to this post, the developers note that on Djinni, vacancies with a salary of $5,000 or more are often not publicly available, but recruiters can offer such a budget privately by responding to a resume.
In addition, if the ad states $4,500, it is worth going through an interview, because after successful interviews, most companies are willing to negotiate and raise the bar to $5,000–$5,500.
Large Ukrainian outsourcers also have similar budgets, but they organize strict selections, trying to find a «man-orchestra» for the price of one specialist, so having the knowledge to pass the conditional SoftServe, it is better to look for contracts directly.
The main source of high rates remains direct foreign contracts, which are easiest to search for via LinkedIn — both by passively waiting for offers and by independently monitoring vacancies and sending out resumes wherever possible.
The community confirms that foreign customers willingly and without problems cooperate with Ukrainian sole proprietors, and it is possible to find such a job even thanks to a simple response on LinkedIn or when foreign recruiters themselves write in private messages.
At the same time, IT professionals emphasize that the current situation should be assessed realistically, as the IT market has significantly declined. It is extremely difficult to get an offer of $5,000 from the street right now — this requires a lot of luck, unless the candidate has unique experience in the field of Military Tech or in ultra-trendy niches.
«If you can build your own multi-agent multimodal pipeline and justify why it should be that way, or distill a separate domain of knowledge from a large model without significant loss of accuracy and efficiently enough for local deployment, you will be offered much more from the start,» says the IT specialist under the nickname Veles.
One of the users also advised studying reviews about companies on DOU: there is a special salary satisfaction scale there, which, according to the IT expert, really works.
UncarefulEngineer
Galley, senior tomato/timlid, 8K. Previously GIG, now in the state, so that they can give reservations.
Ok_Pollution_4240
Data engineer. I always look for work through LinkedIn, I don’t even have an account on Ginny. I work through outsourcing/austaffing for sole proprietors, or directly again for sole proprietors, no problems. I work mainly with Americans, because for them such a salary for a senior is a pittance. Before getting a job, I always discuss the issue of time zones, whether it’s okay for them if I work in theirs, that is, in fact, it’s asynchronous work and I only meet with the team for 2-3 hours at most.
Nani_Po
I worked at a Canadian company where senior devs were getting around 80-100k/year. But I got there based on recommendations from friends, and they didn’t post any vacancies on job sites. The company is literally perfect, there are clear values, good management, onboarding, and processes are worked out as much as possible so that people can work comfortably. Bullies and abusers were fired in 1 day. The product itself is very interesting, it was grown in stages from a small one, without this «we want all the functions to be ready and working in the MVP». Unfortunately, it was absorbed by another company, layoffs occurred, and the product went down the drain. The highest chance of finding something like this is to have a lot of connections and good relationships with people who work on large products where values are followed. And I also saw somewhere on LinkedIn — they posted a list of sites from the American market and some of them had vacancies for worldwide.
IndividualScarcity44
My stack: Java Enterprise, from legacy to microservices on 21 Java. Just from 5k it is already the level of a confident senior (not that after 2 years of development he pretends to be a senior). I have 9 years of experience, this year I changed companies, they agreed on 6k gross. Israeli SysAid (Google has everything). There were 3 more offers from other places — gambling for 5k, another product for 6 but still a lead, and legacy also for 5k. I was deliberately looking for at least 5k because at my last job it grew to 4k euros. The search (active) lasted from the end of December to the end of March. In April I started working.
IT_freak
I am a frontend developer with experience in backend. I have AWS certification. Salary is more than 5k, I work in a gallery. But now it is difficult for frontend developers in Ukraine to find such a job for such a salary.
dacassar
For me, relocation became such an option after the annexation of Crimea. The last 5 years in Cyprus, native mobile development, before that big tech from the world’s top 10. About 5,500 euros after taxes.
Lenti
Techlead, a food company, I get a little more than that range. Honestly, I don’t know if I would get the same salary anywhere now. I get it myself mainly because the company has consistently increased it throughout my time there (I started with an intern salary).
The Smoke
I work for a foreign company with an office in Ukraine. Remotely, except for some events when we need to gather in the office. But our company hires only actual residents of Ukraine. By the way, I got hired through Ginny.
The participants in the discussion also said that they earn from $5,000 working as C++ Backend developers in medium-sized Ukrainian «galleries», specialists in product companies, as well as motion designers or content creators for YouTube.
