CAREER MANAGEMENT IN UKRAINIAN IT COMPANIES IN THE CONTEXT OF WAR AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

The article examines what is happening to career trajectories in Ukrainian IT companies under the simultaneous pressure of war and the spread of artificial intelligence. The relevance of the topic stems from the fact that career growth has always been one of the main staff retention tools in the industry, while today the usual vertical trajectory has stopped working: at the bottom, artificial intelligence narrows the entry into the profession; in the middle, income growth has halted, with 68,2% of the surveyed experts forecasting frozen or declining salaries; at the top, the core workforce is drained by mobilisation and emigration. Survey data show that 43% of IT specialists report substantial changes in their professional plans caused by the war. The purpose of the study is to determine the state of career trajectories in Ukrainian IT companies and to substantiate a management model suitable for conditions in which vertical growth is blocked. The methodological basis includes content analysis of academic publications and industry research, methods of systematisation and comparison, as well as tabular and graphical methods. The classification of business careers by the criterion of success is applied to the conditions of the Ukrainian IT industry in 2025-2026, and it is established that the four types of career are in different states: the monetary career is practically blocked, the status career is narrowed, the power career is limited, whereas the professional career remains open and is at the same time the best rewarded, since the premium for artificial intelligence competences reaches 56%. On this basis, a transition is substantiated from managing a career ladder to managing a career lattice, in which an employee can move in four directions: vertically, horizontally, deeper into expertise, and by changing the field of activity. The fourth direction is confirmed by data on the Ukrainian artificial intelligence segment, where 60% of specialists have moved in from other fields. The lattice model becomes operational only under three conditions: documented role profiles, managers trained to hold career conversations that do not involve promotion, and recognition of horizontal moves as an achievement. A system of eight indicators for monitoring career processes is proposed, the key ones being the internal replacement ratio and the share of horizontal transitions. The practical value of the results lies in their applicability by IT companies when revising career development systems and staff retention programmes.