Ukrainian-Estonian miltech startup Farsight Vision is focusing on mid-market compensation to avoid a repeat of the 2021 scenario, when a bubble of abnormally high salaries in the IT sector inflated, ultimately leading to a market collapse. Something similar is happening now in the defense industry.
Ukrainian-Estonian miltech startup Farsight Vision is focusing on mid-market compensation to avoid a repeat of the 2021 scenario, when a bubble of abnormally high salaries in the IT sector inflated, ultimately leading to a market collapse. Something similar is happening now in the defense industry.
Farsight Vision creates «digital twins» of terrain—detailed 3D models built from drone data. Using such 3D spaces, the military can plan operations with maximum precision, lay out IRC routes, use drones for navigation, and more.
Co-founders Viktoriya Yaremchuk and Volodymyr Nepiuk registered the company in April 2024. In the same year, they created a legal entity in Estonia, which became the parent company for the Ukrainian division.
Part of the engineering team, business development and sales are located in Estonia. The main product development and work with the military takes place in Ukraine.
According to Yaremchuk, the Farsight Vision team is growing quite slowly: from 25 employees in mid-2025 to 45 specialists now. These are specialists in Ukraine and Estonia, there are several colleagues in other countries.
«We also take on part-time volunteers who have a full-time job but want to help. For example, university professors. Some specialists help in their free time and then come to us full-time,» said Victoria Yaremchuk in an interview with DOU.
The startup currently has open positions for robotics, computer vision, and Python engineers. However, such specialists are difficult to find on the Ukrainian market, as there are few of them.
«We don’t hire those who aren’t ready to work hard. A defense startup isn’t like a relaxed outsourcing company. You really have to work here, and everyone can see that,» the co-founder added.
According to Yaremchuk, in 2025, a bubble with unrealistic salaries began to form in the defense sector.
«In 2021, the IT sector has already experienced a crisis, when salaries rose to unrealistic levels, and then the market collapsed. In 2025, something similar began to happen in the defense industry. Companies are trying to get scarce specialists, so they hunt them down or try to retain them by increasing salaries. We do not do this. We want people to choose Farsight Vision not because of the salary, but because of the mission and the opportunity to create a unique product,» Yaremchuk noted.
She added that the company tried to lure candidates with high salaries, but the performance was lower than expected.
«For strategic roles, we have options, this is normal practice for startups. Regular roles do not provide for options, but there is always a chance that a specialist will grow into a strategic position,» explained the co-founder of Farsight Vision.
