Are IT specialists no longer in demand among Tatarstan employers?

Less — only for coaches

This autumn, 12% of Russian companies plan to reduce staff — one and a half times more than a year ago, according to the services Rabota.ru and SberPodbor. In October, an absolute record was recorded for the decline in employers’ interest in information technology specialists: the number of vacancies for them fell in Kazan by 41%, and in Tatarstan by 44% compared with October 2024, according to data from the hh Statistics service.

Moreover, demand for IT specialists has been falling for a long time: already in 2024, from March to September, the growth of vacancies slowed until it became negative in October, and over the following 12 months the decline continued.

At the same time, according to the published data of the platform, the number of CVs from IT specialists — applicants for vacant jobs — is growing in the republic and its capital. And while in June and July 2024 this growth in Kazan amounted to only 8% compared with the same period in 2023, in October 2025 it reached a maximum of 29%. In Tatarstan, the monthly growth of CVs in this professional field has exceeded 20% since November 2024, and in October 2025 reached an absolute record of 28%.

For the time being, IT vacancies in Kazan remain in the top 10 professional fields with the highest demand for specialists over the past month — along with vacancies in medicine and pharmaceuticals, they occupy the last two lines. In October, employers in Kazan offered 6% of vacancies for IT specialists — four times fewer than in sales and customer service.

The number of vacancies for them in Tatarstan has decreased by 44% over the year. Only HR specialists and coaches are doing worse — there the decline amounted to 46%. In Kazan, the situation is little better — here the number of IT vacancies dropped by 41% (lower in this ranking were only specialists in strategy, investment and consulting (-45%), as well as HR and coaches (-47%)).

At the same time, the ratio of active CVs to active vacancies in the IT sphere reached 18.7 in October, which the service assesses as “an extremely high level of competition among applicants for jobs.”

The fruits of optimisation and falling consumer demand

The decline in the number of offers in the labour market had already been predicted in the July report of the Bank of Russia “Regional Economy”. It pointed to an “accelerating decrease in employers’ need for workers”, most acutely felt in three regions — the Urals, the south of the country and the Volga region.

“The level of competition for jobs has increased and in most regions of the country has become moderate,” the Bank of Russia stated. “For many respondents [enterprises], the need for staff has decreased due to falling demand for products and the optimisation of work processes.”

At the same time, the Bank of Russia noted “the greatest slowdown in wage growth in the regions of Central Russia, the Volga region and the Urals”.

“In general, across the country, the growth rate of the average number of employees in April 2025 compared with April 2024 has hardly changed (Table B-2-1),” the regulator noted. “The increase in the number of employed in the mining and manufacturing industries has slowed. In wholesale and retail trade, the number of employed in annual terms has decreased. The dynamics of employment in trade were largely affected by the closure of car dealerships and staff reductions among car dealers in a number of regions of Central Russia and Siberia. Some companies in the manufacturing sector also carried out layoffs due to declining production volumes and the closure of clothing manufacturing enterprises.”

The forecast for the future in the report appeared rather pessimistic — the Central Bank pointed to an increase in the share of enterprises expecting to maintain staff numbers unchanged (65% versus 62% surveyed in January 2025), as well as the share of those planning to reduce staff (11.5% versus 6.9% in January 2025). The trend was most evident among enterprises in mining, mechanical engineering and pharmaceuticals due to declining demand for products.

According to experts, in the near future layoffs and further reductions in vacancies in Russia will intensify primarily in three sectors:

• construction, where declining demand for housing will continue due to expensive mortgages;
• consulting and B2B services due to clients’ budget savings;
• mechanical engineering, resource extraction and certain segments of retail.

At the same time, the most vulnerable to layoffs will be workers who do not bring companies direct profit:

• non-technical IT specialists,
• entry-level employees without experience,
• marketers, administrative staff,
  
• seasonal and contract workers,
• workers whose functions can be transferred to AI.

Employees whose functions can be transferred to AI will fall under layoffs.

The main reasons for layoffs are:

• rising costs,
• increased taxes,
• falling consumer demand,
• the need to raise salaries for employees essential to business.

Plus taxes minus benefits equals staff cuts

The President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Sergei Katyrin, told journalists that the situation with layoffs should stabilise in 2027. However, not all experts of Realnoe Vremya are so optimistic.

She noted that today businesses are forced to make very large investments in information security to meet all growing regulatory requirements. The need to transition to domestic software and hardware systems, which are often significantly more expensive than imported ones, also has a major impact on the situation.

Given that, in light of the internal and external situation in the country, all these trends will persist, staff reductions in companies will continue, and employers will try to run their operations with fewer labour resources.

AI will replace programmers, but not digital security specialists

According to her, year after year the demand for frontend and backend developers and testers is declining. Moreover, she says, the fall in demand is also affecting various analysts, including data scientists, as artificial intelligence is starting to handle large amounts of information effectively. As AI develops, routine, mechanical tasks that can be automated will be taken over by neural networks — and with this the demand will increase for professionals capable of creating and training AI and analysing the resulting data.

She noted that the skill of programming in its traditional sense is also gradually losing its exclusive value, giving way to more complex competencies.

But the need for information security specialists, particularly in cybersecurity, is, on the contrary, only increasing. Moreover, AI itself is becoming a new tool for cyberattacks, so the need will grow critically for specialists capable of protecting infrastructure from threats posed by models trained by malicious actors. In contrast to hackers, the key role will be played by specialists whose competencies combine digital security, technical expertise and the ethics of using neural networks. It is they who will be able to make the AI environment truly secure and productive both for model developers and for users.

“Given these trends, the UCSB Research Centre is already working on developing AI protection, particularly through the MLSecOps approach, which integrates machine learning with security at all stages of the model’s life cycle,” she added. “We are also actively working with students, inviting them to internships where they gain experience in professions that will definitely be in demand in the long term.”

‘Only those who are ready to learn every day will remain on the market’

Roman Sukhary, Chairman of the Committee for the Development of Digital Technologies at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Tatarstan, believes that layoffs of IT specialists are natural, as in recent years the industry grew too quickly, largely due to the hype around digitalisation and remote work.

“Now companies are reassessing their budgets and revising their teams, removing redundant roles,” he says. “In my view, this is not a crisis but rather a stage of market maturation. But it is important to understand that the demand for programmers has not disappeared — the profile of specialists is simply changing. Today, valued are not those who know one framework or language, but those who think like engineers, who can quickly master new tools, understand product architecture and see the system as a whole.”

The Realnoe Vremya interlocutor emphasised that the concept of a developer has long ceased to be a narrow specialisation — today a specialist must be ready for constant change, otherwise he will simply drop out of the process.

He believes that the least protected today are specialists who work on standard tasks: frontend layout, website support, testing without automation. But data engineers, architects, ML and infrastructure specialists, on the contrary, will be retained until the last, because companies understand that these people not only “write code” but create the foundation for the business.

“If we talk about prospects, the market will most likely regulate itself,” Roman Sukhary concluded. “After a wave of layoffs, stabilisation will occur, and then growth will begin. But only those who are ready to learn every day will remain on the market.”