If we disregard the marketing hype from recruitment agencies about "crazy IT salaries," the picture looks more modest. According to DOU research, only one in nine specialists in the Ukrainian IT industry earns $6,000 per month. The median stands at $2,900: that's what a typical IT professional makes if we exclude extremes.

Who exactly is at the top

The $6,000+ category primarily includes software architects, senior developers with 7+ years of experience, cybersecurity specialists, and machine learning engineers. Engineering managers and technical directors stand out separately — their incomes often exceed the $8,000–10,000 mark.

Geography matters too: specialists working in distributed teams with clients from the USA or Western Europe consistently command higher rates than those focusing exclusively on the domestic market or outsourcing to CIS clients.

Where the majority is

Half the industry — around 50% of respondents — remains in the range up to $2,900. These are primarily middle-level specialists with 2–4 years of experience, QA engineers, junior developers, and some project managers. For Kyiv or Lviv, this is already decent relative to the general labor market, but substantially lower than what is portrayed in public discourse about IT salaries.

Context matters: DOU research captures data primarily among active platform users — meaning the sample is somewhat skewed toward more engaged and, likely, better-paid specialists. The actual median across the entire industry could be even lower.

What this means for the market

The gap between the top 11% and the rest is not an anomaly but a structural feature of the market. IT is not a uniform "salary fairy tale": between a junior earning $700 and an architect earning $9,000 lie different worlds in terms of demands, competition, and career trajectories. The problem is that public discussion about the industry typically focuses on the upper segment, creating inflated expectations for those just entering.

For employers, this gap is both an advantage and a risk: retaining a specialist who has reached the $5,000+ level becomes increasingly difficult without a competitive offer from a foreign team.

An open question: if half the industry stays at $2,900, and full-scale war continues to pressure the domestic market — will this median hold through the end of 2025, or will declining demand from Ukrainian clients push it down?