Work

«2 likes and I’ll start writing a daily blog for an unemployed Frontend Developer,» wrote Ivan Savytsky, an IT professional from Zhytomyr, on his LinkedIn about three weeks ago. He has been looking for a job since last fall after being fired from EPAM.

When an IT specialist from a defense company agreed to talk to dev.ua, the first thing he clarified was that his name cannot be revealed, the company cannot be named, and his position is also taboo. What exactly his employer company is training him for, how many people work there, is better left unsaid. «I can’t say almost anything. Or rather, absolutely nothing. Where I work, who I work with, what I do, who these developments are for, or where my work is. I can’t even tell my girlfriend, because if someone finds out, there’s a high probability that she’ll come for us,» the publication’s interlocutor says. This is the daily routine of Ukrainian DefTech in 2026. The industry, which has grown from zero to over 1,500 companies in three years of full-scale war, operates by rules where silence is the basic security standard, not the exception. dev.ua tried to figure out exactly how security is arranged from the inside. Spoiler: only a few people wanted to talk about this topic. But even what we managed to find out paints a rather revealing picture.

In two years, Ukrainian defense tech has gone a way that classical industries take decades to achieve. From a niche segment, it has transformed into one of the most scarce markets for engineers — with its own salaries, rules of the game, and barriers to entry. At first glance, it looks like a classic «overheated» market: lots of vacancies, aggressive hiring, and salaries that are supposedly on par with IT. But if you dig deeper, the picture is much more complex — and much less clear-cut.

Hello! It’s #vsrativakansii again. We’re publishing a new selection of trashy offers from employers that surprise and infuriate IT people. Today — about salary based on eye color, polygraph for cleaning ladies, and candidates with only Apple equipment.

Just two years ago, the conversation about AI in recruiting was limited to futuristic scenarios — an algorithm reviews resumes, a bot conducts interviews, a person receives an offer from a machine. Today, the reality is much more prosaic and at the same time more interesting. Most Ukrainian IT companies have already integrated AI into their hiring processes — but not in the way they predicted. dev.ua spoke with recruiters and talent managers from SoftServe, EPAM, N-iX, Ciklum, Railsware, Levi9, PlantIn, Master of Code Global, Intetics, EVO, Capgemini Engineering — and found out where AI is already working, where it is deliberately not allowed, and why the line between «assistant» and «judge» is fundamental.