How to hire a development team in Ukraine: Ultimate guide

Over the last decades, Ukraine has established itself as a prominent hub for IT outsourcing, consistently ranking among the top global destinations. This is not a stroke of luck but a testament to the adaptability of Ukraine’s tech sector, which continues to drive innovation and deliver results even despite the challenges. After the full-scale Russian invasion, development teams in Ukraine have managed to weather the storm and maintain a service delivery level of approximately 95%. Through careful preparation and execution of contingency plans, the local IT industry remained resilient, so Ukraine is still a popular destination for setting up dedicated development teams among businesses all around the globe.

But what should you expect from partnering with a development team from Ukraine? Let’s explore the local talent, look at the services and industries they specialize in, and learn about the best cooperation methods that will help you reach your business goals as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

5 main reasons to hire a development team in Ukraine

Ukraine boasts one of the largest tech talent pools in Central and Eastern Europe, which makes the country a major location for software development outsourcing. As of 2025, there are more than 346,000 ICT specialists in the country. Let’s look at what you can expect from hiring a development team from Ukraine.

1. Specialization diversity and extensive experience

According to DOU, the local talent pool is dominated by software engineers, who make up around 47% of all experts working in the IT industry. The second place belongs to QA engineers–approximately 17%. The rest are somewhat evenly distributed among those who either specialize in a narrower domain (DevOps engineers, Data Scientists, UI/UX designers, etc.) or non-tech experts working in HR, marketing or sales.

Over the years, Ukraine’s IT sector has matured into a powerhouse of highly experienced professionals. 37.2% of local IT experts have more than five years of experience, while 38.6% have been working in the industry for three to five years. The country’s well-developed education system and booming interest in IT ensure a steady influx of new specialists, so approximately 24.2% of the local tech talent have less than two years of experience. This allows businesses to build development teams in Ukraine with a tailored mix of senior, mid-level, and junior specialists, ensuring the right balance of expertise and cost-efficiency to match their project needs.

2. Broad industry expertise

Years of cooperation with clients from all over the world have allowed Ukrainian engineers (and vendors as well) to accumulate experience in a wide range of industries. If you hire a development team from Ukraine that has worked with clients from your domain, it can not only ensure a smooth and productive project execution but also provide useful insights and suggestions based on their prior successful cooperation. This, in turn, will enable you to go beyond your initial needs and reach your business goals even more effectively. 

When it comes to a typical development team from Ukraine, local engineers can offer experience in ecommerce, fintech, banking, healthcare, etc. Many top international industry players, including Samsung, IBM, Bosch, LG, BBC, and Lebara, are benefiting from cooperating with local teams. 

3. Versatile technical capabilities

No matter what technology stack your project requires, Ukrainian developers possess diverse tech expertise to meet your needs. According to DOU, JavaScript is the most widely used programming language among Ukrainian engineers, being a primary language for 15.4% of local developers. TypeScript follows closely with 15.1%, making it a popular choice for scalable front-end and full-stack development. Python ranks third, with 14.7% of developers using it primarily for web applications, as well as Data Science and AI solutions. Python is followed by Java and C#—each at 12.7%.

Beyond these top technologies, Ukrainian developers also specialize in PHP (7%), Kotlin (3.5%), C++ (3.1%), Swift (2.3%), Go (2.1%), Ruby (1.9%), and Dart (1.1%), offering a robust and diverse talent pool for a wide range of software development projects.

4. Strong English skills

According to the EF English Proficiency Index, Ukraine maintains a moderate level of English but continues to improve its ranking, currently holding 40th place among 113 countries.

English skills among Ukrainian IT professionals have seen notable progress. As stated by DOU, over recent years, the share of specialists with Upper-Intermediate or Advanced proficiency has risen from 47% to 55%. This improvement is especially noticeable among those with over a decade of industry experience.

5. High availability of outsourcing talent 

Even the most skilled software engineers will find it difficult to bring value to your project if all of their experience is based on working for a product company instead of an outsourcing one. Luckily, you will not have to face this problem if you decide to hire a Ukrainian development team. A considerable share (36.1%) of local engineers work for companies that specialize in software outsourcing. 

Related: Top software development companies in Ukraine with a strong portfolio

Partnering with a development team in Ukraine: What engagement model will benefit your business the most?

Now, we have a better understanding of the advantages of hiring local software developers. So, let’s look at the most common cooperation models and choose the most advantageous way to partner with a development team from Ukraine for your business.

Staff Augmentation

This is the simplest and most common way to hire a development team in Ukraine. It allows businesses to scale their engineering teams with flexibility by integrating Ukrainian experts into their in-house teams. While you maintain full control over management, task distribution, and daily operations, the vendor helps you find and onboard the right talent.

The key advantage of this model is adaptability—it enables companies to quickly expand development capabilities or bring in niche expertise while retaining direct oversight. Additionally, it offers full scalability, allowing businesses to adjust team size as needed based on the evolving project demands.

Managed Team

If you want to hire a Ukrainian development team with more autonomy while still maintaining strategic control, a Managed Team is an ideal choice. This model provides a self-sufficient team responsible for dealing with a specific part of your product—such as building a feature, modernizing legacy software, or migrating to a new platform. While daily operations are managed by a dedicated project manager from the vendor, you retain ownership of the product vision and roadmap.

The main advantage of this model is reduced micromanagement. You stay focused on high-level business objectives—communicating with the team, receiving structured reports, and refining the roadmap—while the vendor ensures smooth execution. 

Custom Solution Development

For businesses looking to solve complex challenges with an end-to-end technology solution, partnering with a Ukrainian development team for Custom Solution Development is the best option. In this case, the vendor takes full responsibility for turning your vision into a full-fledged solution.

This engagement model requires minimal involvement beyond defining business goals, acceptance criteria, and technical constraints. The vendor handles the entire development lifecycle, from architecture and coding to deployment and ongoing maintenance, providing regular updates on progress, budget tracking, and milestone reporting.

Many of these partnerships begin with a Product Discovery, during which your Ukrainian team will conduct an in-depth analysis of your business needs, market landscape, and competition. This stage ensures that the solution is both strategically sound and technically feasible, enabling a seamless transition from planning to execution.

How can you benefit from all three engagement models?

While each of the cooperation models offered by outsourcing providers, including development teams from Ukraine, serves its own purpose, a business can actually benefit from all of them. 

Indeed, each model can serve as a stepping stone in the process of forming a long-lasting partnership with your vendor. You can start out with Staff Augmentation, during which you get more familiar with your tech partner and the experts it provides. After you have built up some trust, you can form a Managed Team and make your vendor more involved in your delivery process. If both organizations enjoy a fruitful and productive relationship, you can then take the next step—completely delegate your custom solution development to your partner and form a dedicated development center. 

Sounds too good to be true? Let’s explore a real-life example of N-iX’s client hiring a development team in Ukraine starting with a Managed Team model and gradually transforming that cooperation into a strategic partnership that resulted in the formation of a dedicated development center. 

How to hire a Ukrainian development team and build a long-lasting partnership: Success story by N-iX

Lebara–a leading European mobile virtual network operator–aimed to hire a development team in Ukraine using a Managed Team model. This team would take some strain off of their own tech experts during a comprehensive digital transformation that the company was going through at the time. 

They partnered with N-iX, which provided a single development team to assist Lebara with several projects. These included migrating the Hybris-based B2C platform, BI solution performance optimization, and Azure microservices development. After successful cooperation on the initial projects, Lebara decided to expand its partnership with N-iX and involve it in additional digital transformation streams. Several new specialized teams were formed, each offering different expertise, such as data or cloud. Additionally, the company initiated an audit of its development teams and requested assistance from the N-iX Solution Group. This team of highly skilled solution architects, business analysts, and product managers provided a data-driven report with recommendations on how to boost efficiency and optimize costs. This helped the company address the pain points and build a strategic roadmap for its IT department.

As our cooperation continued, Lebara gradually delegated all R&D capabilities to N-iX. This has led to the formation of a full-fledged dedicated development center, which counts over 100 experts. This cooperation, which began in 2014, is still going strong to this day. 

Read more: Faster time to market with full-scale digital transformation in telecom

What makes N-iX a trusted partner for hiring a development team in Ukraine?

• Significant outsourcing experience

N-iX has been providing software development outsourcing services for over 22 years. With more than 2,200 tech specialists on board, we are experts in forming partnerships based on any cooperation model, be it extending the client’s tech team with top experts, forming self-sufficient managed teams, or end-to-end custom solution development.

• Wide industry specialization

Our portfolio spans over 160 active partnerships and long-term cooperations with Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders, for example, Fluke Corporation, Lebara, TuneIn, and Currencycloud, to name a few. This has helped us acquire a deep specialization in various domains, including manufacturing, fintech, banking, retail, telecom, and more.

• Deep technical expertise

Through a rigorous recruitment process, N-iX ensures the hiring of the top 2.6% of global tech talent. This allows us to offer profound technical expertise that can cover any need, be it data analytics, AI and Machine Learning, cloud, embedded software and IoT, or something else.

• Industry recognition

Our commitment to excellence in the field of IT outsourcing has been recognized by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP), which has included N-iX in its Global Outsourcing 100 list for eight consecutive years. Beyond that, N-iX has been acknowledged by Forrester, ISG, CRN, and Clutch as a leading global technology provider, further validating our expertise and commitment to innovation in software development.