The demand for data analysis and ML specialists in Russia has increased 30-fold

Over the past 10 years, the demand for data analysis and machine learning (ML) specialists in Russia has increased 30-fold. This is evidenced by the results of a study of the online recruiting platform. hh.ru .

According to her, the maximum growth rate in the number of vacancies was observed for four years — from 2020 to 2024. The number of job offers increased 2.5 times during the specified period.

At the same time, data infrastructure and DevOps have become the fastest growing area — the number of vacancies has increased 3.6 times since 2020. The next in the top are data analysis (2.5 times), data engineering and BigData (1.9 times), as well as ML (1.8 times).

The highest-paid specialists in 2024 were ML engineers (maximum median salaries reach 590 thousand rubles), data analysis specialists (470 thousand rubles) and security engineers for highly loaded systems, or SRE engineers (400 thousand rubles). This is followed by data engineers (365 thousand rubles) and computer vision engineers (324 thousand rubles).

Analysts also said that specialists with work experience from 1 to 3 years are most actively recruited (this requirement is found in 48% of vacancies), as well as from 3 to 6 years (44% of vacancies). The demand for aspiring professionals is also increasing — the number of vacancies increased by 44% last year. Graduates of such universities as MIPT, HSE and Moscow State University, who additionally received applied training at the Yandex School of Data Analysis and other specialized programs, are particularly in demand among them.

Experts expect an increase in demand for MLOps specialists, data engineers and neural network specialists, experts in NLP, CV, recommendation systems and video analytics in the coming years.

The study analyzed vacancies and resumes of ML and DS specialists posted on hh.ru in the period from 2014 to 2024, in-depth interviews were conducted with team leaders and product managers of leading IT companies and IT recruiters.