Data Science Job Market Research in Ukraine, January-June 2022

At the Faculty of Applied Sciences of UCU, we continue to research the job market in Ukraine for positions related to Data Science. For this, as before, we use data on the number of vacancies from the websites dou.ua and djinni.co. Based on the analyzed data, we publish a report every six months with key insights. In January, we published the report for 2021, and now we invite you to read the semi-annual report for January – June 2022.

During January-June 2022, 745 vacancies in the field of Data Science were posted on the mentioned sites (according to the Data Science category on dou.ua and djinni.co, which actually includes the positions of data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, CV / ML / DL / NLP engineers). During the same period in 2021, there were 1,120 such vacancies (that is, the offer of vacancies decreased by 33.4%).

If we compare the first half of the previous years, then in 2022, with the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, a sharp decline in the job market began, which in March 2022 exaggerated the decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

If we consider the ratio of the number of vacancies in the field of Data Science to the total number of vacancies in IT (data dou.ua ) by city, then in January-June 2021 smaller cities, such as Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro were in the lead:

In January-February 2022, Kyiv had the advantage, and from the beginning of the war up to June – Lviv:

 

The position of data scientist (275 vacancies) was the most in demand on the above-mentioned sites, as always, but ML engineer (149 vacancies) followed, and Data engineer (61 vacancies) took third place.

* Vacancies without the specified level of experience are not taken into account

If we compare with the same period in 2021, then in 2022 the smallest decline in offers was for Data Scientist (for specialists with the Middle and Senior level of experience, the number of offers was even higher than in 2021) and ML engineer (similarly, the number of vacancies for Middle and Senior is more , than in 2021); also in 2022 there was a much higher demand for CV engineers and NLP engineers (especially Middle and Senior)

However, the number of vacancies for Data Analyst (especially Junior) and Data Engineer (all experience levels) has decreased significantly.

As for the difference in demand by level of experience, the graphs show that the number of vacancies for beginners decreased the most because of the war.

The total number of vacancies across the cities

The largest number of vacancies in the first half of 2022, for obvious reasons, was in Lviv (407 vacancies), in second place was Kyiv (304 vacancies), in third place – Kharkiv (50 vacancies), there was practically no offer in Dnipro (24 vacancies) and Odesa ( 13 vacancies).

* Some vacancies are taken into account several times because the sites often indicate several cities for one vacancy. 

The total number of vacancies by the level of experience

As for the distribution of vacancies by professional level, Middle (262 positions) specialists had the highest demand, Senior (236 vacancies) were in second place, and Junior (215 positions) was the least in demand.

*Where the employer did not indicate in the title the required level of experience, we used the following distribution by year: Junior – up to 3 years of experience; Middle – 3-5 years of experience; Senior – 5+ years of experience. In the case when neither the level of experience nor the number of years of experience was indicated, the vacancy was not reflected in the diagram.

Distribution of vacancies by experience levels and cities

Consolidated data on the professional level, time, and city are given below.

 As for the companies that are most looking for specialists in the field of Data Science, in the last six months, unlike previous years, it is difficult to single out large companies that had the most vacancies. If in 2020-2021 the top 10 companies that posted 25-30% of vacancies from the total number were singled out, then in the first half of 2022 can be singled out a maximum of 3 companies that had slightly more vacancies than others: Data Science UA, Luxoft and N -iX

Conclusion

In January 2022, the number of vacancies in the field of Data Science was even higher than in January 2021, but due to the worsening geopolitical situation in the country, a slow decline in the market began already in February 2022. Evidently that with the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, a sharp decline in the job market began, which in March 2022 exaggerated decline in March 2020. However, since April, activity on the job market began to slowly recover.

Comparing the ratio of the number of remote jobs to the total number of jobs (see graph below), as well as the ratio of jobs abroad to the total number of jobs, the increase in such offers during the war is noticeable.

Clearly that in this half-year Kyiv lost its leadership in terms of the number of vacancies and Lviv gained it. There were a small number of vacancies in cities such as Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipro but, for obvious reasons, almost all of them involved remote employment.

Due to the war, the demand for specialists with Junior experience level fell the most (more than twice compared to the same period in 2021), the demand for specialists with Senior experience level decreased the least (by 19.4% compared to the same period in 2021).

As for the various Data Science positions, the largest decrease in vacancies was for Data Analyst (by 78%) and Data Engineer (by 75%); the offer of vacancies for Data Scientist decreased the least (by 6.7%), and for ML engineer, NLP engineer, CV engineer and DL engineer, the total number of vacancies was even slightly higher than in the first half of 2021.