Ігор Вишневський That's Life 9 November 2026, 10:39

In large companies, every third IT worker is booked, in small ones - only every tenth. What the DOU survey data shows

Over the year, the share of IT professionals booked in Ukrainian IT companies increased from 13% to 24%.

Such data was established based on the responses of almost 8,000 male IT professionals in Ukraine during a DOU survey conducted in May-June of this year.

As of June, a total of 31% of IT workers had reservations: 24% from their employer, another 7% from a second job.

The survey data allows us to establish a trend: the higher the professional level of an IT professional, the greater the chance of receiving a booking from an employer. Among Lead+ specialists, 38% have it, among managers — 37%. In contrast, among seniors, 25% are booked, among middles — 19%, and among juniors — only 6%.

The highest share of those booked by their employer is among managers (53%). Developers (20%) and QA specialists (21%) have the least bookings.

In the first half of 2026, the largest growth in reservations was observed among security specialists (+14 pp), finance and law (+13 pp), Data Science and Sales/BizDev (+12 pp each). At the same time, the share of reservations among managers remained almost unchanged.

It is obvious that in government institutions, significantly more IT workers have reservations than in the sector as a whole — 53%. Among IT companies, employees of product companies have reservations most often (26%). In outsourcing companies, this figure is 20%, in startups — 19%, and in outstaffing companies — only 16%.

An interesting fact is that the number of reserved employees correlates with the size of the company: in IT companies with over 1,000 employees, every third IT worker (33%) has a reservation from their employer, while in the smallest companies with up to 10 people, only 9% do.

Over the year, the share of reserved positions increased in companies of all sizes, but most significantly in large ones: by 12 percentage points among companies with over 1,000 employees.

Another obvious fact confirmed by the survey is that almost two-thirds of IT professionals (63%) have reservations at DefTech — this is more than twice the average.

As for the geographical principle, over the past year, the largest increase in the number of reserved IT workers occurred in Kyiv — from 16% to 30%. In Lviv, the share of reserved workers increased from 13% to 24%, and in Dnipro — from 11% to 21%.

As dev.ua reported, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine has appealed to the Ministry of Economy with proposals for changes to the new rules for booking employees.

At the end of October, the Cabinet of Ministers published a resolution on new reservation rules. According to it, a limit of 95% was set for the energy and defense industries, and the criticality criteria were to be reviewed within 10 days.

“The result could be delays in the supply of weapons to the military.” How do the new reservation rules threaten defense companies and what worries IT companies?