EPAM has no plans to scale back operations in Ukraine, despite the full-scale war. Ukraine remains the company’s second-largest delivery location: over 9,000 specialists work here out of more than 62,000 EPAM employees worldwide.
EPAM has no plans to scale back operations in Ukraine, despite the full-scale war. Ukraine remains the company’s second-largest delivery location: over 9,000 specialists work here out of more than 62,000 EPAM employees worldwide.
«The war did not force us to leave and will not force us to leave. We were, are and will be in Ukraine as long as there are people here who want to work and clients who want to cooperate with Ukraine,» said Stepan Mytish, vice president and head of EPAM Ukraine, in an interview with LIGA.net.
According to him, during the years of full-scale war, it was not Ukraine’s role for EPAM that changed, but the model of work.
EPAM employs over 9,000 specialists in Ukraine. According to Mytish, this makes the country the company’s second-largest delivery location in the world. «The company sees huge potential in Ukraine — quality, creativity, and hard work of talents,» the head of the Ukrainian division noted.
At the same time, the war significantly changed the geography of the team’s work. By 2022, EPAM had developed large office hubs in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Lviv, and was also opening offices in southern Ukraine. The company now operates on the principle of what Mytish calls «the geography of resilience.» People can work where it is safer and more convenient for them, regardless of where the company’s office is located. The most striking example is Kharkiv. Before the full-scale invasion, more than 2,000 EPAMs worked there. Now about 200–300 employees remain in the city. Some of the Kharkiv employees have moved to Transcarpathia, Chernivtsi region, Kyiv, Lviv, and other regions.
According to Mytish, in 2025, the total profit of the company’s Ukrainian legal entities — EPAM Systems and EPAM Digital — amounted to about UAH 1.8 billion.
At the same time, EPAM does not consider Ukraine only as a source of personnel. «Ukraine remains the company’s main delivery location,» Mytish emphasized. According to him, Ukrainian specialists are also actively involved in new areas, in particular, in working with artificial intelligence.
According to Mitish, EPAM offices across Ukraine are equipped with diesel generators and backup Internet lines. The company also organized shelters when needed. At the beginning of a full-scale war, the EPAM head says the main risk to the business was not technology or production capacity, but human safety. «We don’t have factories or production, so the main risk to the business was human safety,» he said. In the first weeks after the invasion, the global company created a $100 million fund to help Ukraine, Ukrainians, and EPAM employees. According to Mitish, in the first week of the war, each employee was paid $1,000.
EPAM later launched the Family Resettlement Program to provide financial and logistical support to workers and their families, as well as EPAM Response, a program to assist victims, institutions, and educational institutions.
In total, during the war years, according to the head of the Ukrainian unit, more than 2.2 billion UAH was allocated for assistance.
The war has also changed the role of the CEO, Mytish believes. «A peacetime CEO simply manages the business. A wartime CEO simultaneously manages the business, people, risk, and trust,» he said.
According to him, during a crisis, the speed of decision-making is especially important. «In the first days of the war, it became clear: the right decision made at the wrong time is already the wrong decision,» the head of EPAM Ukraine noted.
At the same time, he believes that a leader should not try to personally control all processes. His task is to define a framework and give teams enough freedom to adapt solutions to a specific situation. «People don’t expect perfect solutions from you. They expect honesty and transparency. That’s how trust is built,» said Mitish.
