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Written according to AIN.UA editorial standards and sponsored by Genesis
MacPaw, Readdle, and Genesis offer the most exciting tasks and stack technologies. UIKit is still the most popular UI development tool. And over 20% of survey participants had never worked with cross-platform solutions; AIN.UA has conducted iOS development market research in Ukraine. Its goal is to find out where is the best workplace for iOS developers in Ukraine, what they miss in their current jobs, and what kind of content they like to consume.
It was an anonymous survey published on the AIN.UA website, shared through professional channels for iOS developers and in companies with appropriate specialists. It is a nationwide research on iOS developers working for Ukrainian companies, and took six weeks. It is market trend research. In total, 113 respondents answered 21 questions.
*This research could be possible thanks to the support of the co-founding company Genesis, a partner of our study.
Genesis is a cofounding company building global technology businesses together with the best entrepreneurs from CEE. It is one of the largest publishers of applications in the world — the company’s apps have been downloaded more than 300 million times and are used by millions of people monthly.
Genesis is one of the best technology teams in CEE. In the last five years, the company regularly ranks first in the DOU's best IT employers' rankings. In 2023, Genesis was recognized as the best employer of Ukraine in the Forbes rating.
Genesis has been developing mobile applications for over 10 years. Within the tech ecosystem, we have created and grown more than 20 businesses that successfully compete with global leading products in various fields. iOS development is one of our priority areas, so we were happy to support the study of the Ukrainian iOS market implemented by AIN.UA. As a business, we have to understand the needs of developers and the current market landscape. At the same time, as an employer, Genesis is interested in ensuring that potential candidates have comprehensive information about all players and market opportunities. We believe that this study will contribute to the development of the iOS niche in Ukraine, as well as the emergence of new and successful iOS products.
Artem Kopanyev, COO at Genesis
Nine years ago, I was an iOS developer myself, and it was the beginning of my long path in IT. Unfortunately, there was no such research in our industry then, and we had to search for information on our own. And now we can follow market trends and enjoy analytics helping female and male developers select a future employer as well the companies create the best job offers.
Yaroslav Morozov, CEO at Universe, a company from the Genesis ecosystem
The most popular programming language among iOS developers is Swift, which almost 95% of the specialists use. The second most popular is Objective-C, used by 31.86%. Other languages like C, C++, JS, or Ruby are used by less than 2% of developers. The rest is used by less than 1% of respondents.
UIKit is still the most popular UI development tool. 66.67% of iOS developers use it. SwiftUI, released in 2019, is used by only 26.13%. At the same time, 7.21% of developers apply both tools in their work: UIKit for its old, well-known code and SwiftUI in the case of Pet projects.
According to the large-scale salary pool conducted in winter 2022-2023 by AIN.UA, iOS app developers who use UIKit and SwiftUI have a median salary of $4,850, and those who work with Flutter, $2,400.
It may be compared, for example, to .NET developers with C# — $4,000 (the same median salary as in the past year) and Unity — $3,430.
JavaScript programmers who work with Angular.js earn $4,650 on average (versus $3,200 in the previous year); Node.js, $3,500; React.js, $4,200 (a bit lower than the last year’s median). The lowest median income is registered by those who work with Vue.js — $2,650.
And Kotlin developers who create Android apps in Android Framework earn $5,200 on average. Those who use Flutter get a $4,500 median salary.
According to the large-scale salary pool conducted in winter 2022-2023 by AIN.UA, iOS app developers who use UIKit and SwiftUI have a median salary of $4,850, and those who work with Flutter, $2,400.
It may be compared, for example, to .NET developers with C# — $4,000 (the same median salary as in the past year) and Unity — $3,430.
JavaScript programmers who work with Angular.js earn $4,650 on average (versus $3,200 in the previous year); Node.js, $3,500; React.js, $4,200 (a bit lower than the last year’s median). The lowest median income is registered by those who work with Vue.js — $2,650.
And Kotlin developers who create Android apps in Android Framework earn $5,200 on average. Those who use Flutter get a $4,500 median salary.
According to the large-scale salary pool conducted in winter 2022-2023 by AIN.UA, iOS app developers who use UIKit and SwiftUI have a median salary of $4,850, and those who work with Flutter, $2,400.
It may be compared, for example, to .NET developers with C# — $4,000 (the same median salary as in the past year) and Unity — $3,430.
JavaScript programmers who work with Angular.js earn $4,650 on average (versus $3,200 in the previous year); Node.js, $3,500; React.js, $4,200 (a bit lower than the last year’s median). The lowest median income is registered by those who work with Vue.js — $2,650.
And Kotlin developers who create Android apps in Android Framework earn $5,200 on average. Those who use Flutter get a $4,500 median salary.
Almost 18% of questioned iOS developers had never worked with cross-platform solutions. Flutter is the most beloved and used by 48.21% of respondents. React Native and Kotlin got 23.21% and 21.43%, respectively.
About one-third (28.57%) of Ukrainian iOS developers had never applied SwiftUI, but would love to. For AR, Combine, and CoreML technologies, it’s 6% to 9%. A trendy AI technology is desired only by 4.4% of developers.
Ukrainian IT specialists think the most fun tasks and stack technologies for an iOS developer are offered by companies specializing in iOS app development. The leaders here are MacPaw (14.29%) and Readdle (10.71%). Genesis (8.93%) got third place. EPAM, with its 6.25%, is the only company that could hit the 5% bottom line.
11.54% of developers believe Genesis has the highest wages in the market. MacPaw goes slightly after Genesis, according to the survey results (10.26%). Grammarly and Readdle both got a 7.69% rating.
20.59% of pool participants mean that MacPaw, the company with the second-high salaries, has the strongest iOS developer team. Then comes Readdle (12.75%), and Grammarly follows with 7.84%.
The most useful application that iOS developers also feel the proudest of participating in its development is Diia which has got almost 10% of all votes. monobank and Grammarly apps share the second place with 9.01% each.
Readdle Documents, or PDF Expert, and Uklon apps got into the top 5 with 7.21% as well. The war-related products are worth mentioning, too. It is air alarm notification apps and some unnamed military apps.
Only 11% want to change jobs, and 27% are sure they don’t want to. 18.35% are likely to change, and 43.12% would rather stay.
Concerning the titles, there is a foreseeable inequality between Juniors and Leads toward the latter. Over half of Juniors (56.25%) will likely change jobs. Middle and Senior developers, however, are less inspired to change — 28% and 30.77%, respectively.
There is no Lead who wants to change jobs in the near future. Only 13.79% just may think in this regard. 34.48% (the highest percentage among others) of Lead level specialists don’t want to change their jobs.
Concerning the job search, creating a profile on Djinni, Recruitika, or Skyworker is the most popular way for 71.25% of survey participants and 65% of existing prospects.
Over half of iOS developers would update their LinkedIn profile and switch to the Open for opportunities status. The last and the smallest category are those who would ask their fellow recruiters for help — 28.75%. 15% admitted they would use any possible way to find a new job.
A higher income is among the most critical causes for changing jobs for 51.28% of specialists. A better technology stack and a more powerful team are preferred by 38.46% and 34.60%, respectively. Just 12.8% of developers are concerned about better communication with their C-Level.
A certain amount of survey participants mentioned the importance of finding a company/a team without Russians and/or working on projects related to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. This point of view fully corresponds with other studies which confirm that most IT specialists find quitting the Russian market, financial support of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and continuing of salary payments for mobilized employees a minimal must for every company present in Ukraine.
The iOS developers criticized the lack of mentorship and freedom, unneeded routines bureaucracy, and burnout after simple work like layouts and bug fixing in their current companies.
Experienced developers recommend beginners to read free books from Apple, learn the technical documentation, and independently try to write as much code as possible.
Learning courses and books from Apple and a lot of practice. You need to be ready to learn new things and evolve. It is your profession. Don’t sell yourself for cookies and ‘a friendly team’.
It’s hard to give a full list of resources that you may need. Every project has its specifics. You can’t know everything. So choose what you like. Here is some friendly advice: Don’t stop if something somehow works. Always ask yourself why. Why did it or didn’t it work? Then, figure out how the tools you use work. Finally, try to understand why some practices are often recommended, and others aren’t. There is no silver ball, but you must always motivate your choices. It is a skill beyond the value.
Start with a book from Apple about Swift basics. Then, watch Paul Hudson’s videos. After that, learn Stanford SwiftUI courses and read the Swift Programming Language book. Done? It’s time to work on a project that will get into the App Store. It was my way, and I recommend doing so to everyone. I managed to achieve a decent programming level from scratch just in four months.
Almost half (47.75%) of involved IT specialists reside in Kyiv or the Kyiv region. Second place is the Lviv region with 12.61%. Kropyvnytskyi is in third place among big cities (5.41%).
The Other category got 9% of all votes. It includes the regions of Ukraine that aren’t present in the diagram and other countries where our specialists had to relocate.
Most participants in our survey are experienced. In total, over 63% have Senior level and above. Senior (35.14%) and Team Lead (26%) are the most common titles. 22.52% of participating iOS developers have a Middle level. And there is only 14.41% of Juniors.
About 7% joined the iOS industry less than a year ago. It is a bit higher than the average market share of specialists with less than a year of experience (7%). However, some of them could have more development experience in other fields.
21.43% have 1 to 3 years of experience, 29.46% from 4 to 6 years, and 21.43% from 7 to 10 years. Finally, 18.75% have been iOS developers for over 10 years. In general, these numbers correspond with average market numbers, except for the 10+ years group: 13.5% for the development market in total and 18.75% for iOS developers.
The iOS developer titles correspond with their working experience. 57.14% of Juniors have been in the profession for less than a year, and the rest, 42.86%, have up to 3 years of experience. 56% of Middle-level specialists have worked for 1 to 3 years, and the other 44% from 4 to 6 years. Senior and Lead-level professionals have over 10 years of experience — 15.35% and 42.86%, accordingly.
A fun fact may be that there are some Leads with 1 to 3 years of experience, or even less than a year. In any case, the reason for that may be the survey concentration only on the iOS teams. Its participants likely have more experience in other projects and teams.
The Ukrainian iOS teams are mainly developing Beauty & Health mobile apps (25.69%), e-commerce applications (19.27%), and office tools (17.43%). The last positions in the top 5 belong to travel and fintech/cryptocurrency services.
Among the iOS developers we surveyed, 41.44% work for outsourcing companies. This figure is close to the average value in IT market — 44% work for outsourcers. And 53% of iOS developers are employed in product companies, which is significantly higher than the market average of 35%. Startups employ less than 3% of developers, and the others have less than 1%.
The most common sizes of iOS teams are 2-5 (34.23%) and 6-10 specialists (29.73%). 9% belong to teams of over 51 people. 8% are single developers.
Almost every iOS developer uses Apple smartphones. The Android user share is 5% vs. 95% with iOS gadgets.
*The Genesis Ecosystem members are presented in the research as one. The ecosystem includes OBRIO, Universe, PlantIn, Holy Water, Boosters, Keiki, SUITSME, Legit, Lift etc.
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