The number of vacancies for servicing Huawei base stations and other Chinese equipment is growing

Over 11 months, the number of vacancies from Russian companies searching for employees servicing Huawei servers, data storage systems and base stations increased by 28% year-on-year, according to HeadHunter. The surge began in the second half of the year. At the same time, the demand for employees to service equipment from American vendors is falling. The trend is due to the fact that supplies of equipment from the Chinese vendor have increased several times, according to the Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. There is no official service for equipment in the Russian Federation.

The demand for employees to service servers, data storage systems (SDS) and telecommunications equipment of Huawei in the Russian Federation increased in January-November year-on-year by 28%, to 7.1 thousand active vacancies, HeadHunter calculated. The company notes that the active growth of vacancies for the position of a full-time employee servicing Huawei equipment began in the second half of the year. Thus, in the first half of 2021, 2022 and 2023, the average number of vacancies was approximately at the same level and amounted to 3.2–3.3 thousand.

At the same time, according to HeadHunter, the demand for employees servicing American IBM equipment fell by 9% year-on-year over 11 months and by 25% compared to the same period in 2021. Demand for HP support workers has not changed.

Habr Career confirmed to Kommersant a general increase in demand for employees administering internal equipment of companies by 10–12% in 2023. According to Avito Works, in November the demand for such specialists in total increased by 2.5 times compared to the same period last year. Average wages in the segment increased by 34% year-on-year, a service representative noted.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, many foreign brands stopped maintaining their equipment, including Dell, HP and IBM. At the end of 2022, Chinese Huawei disbanded its corporate division in the Russian Federation, which also included technical support. (see “Kommersant” dated December 19, 2022). After this, prices for technical support for departing brands increased by an average of 40% (see Kommersant on April 22).

The top 3 areas that most often seek specialists to service Huawei equipment include IT and system integration (3.1 thousand vacancies), telecommunications (1 thousand vacancies) and electronics production (493 vacancies). Kommersant discovered on HeadHunter that MegaFon, for example, was looking for a Huawei equipment maintenance specialist. A representative of the operator explained that MegaFon has a large fleet of equipment from various vendors, including foreign ones. “We have always developed internal expertise, so we regularly recruit specialists in various fields,” he says.

The Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RAUIE) stated that the demand for Chinese equipment from Russian organizations has grown significantly over the past year, without specifying the figures. At the same time, the demand for Huawei storage systems, servers and base stations has doubled in the last month alone, according to RASPP.

According to Victoria Khaba, vice president for organizational development and personnel management of Aquarius Group of Companies, the increase in the number of vacancies for equipment service is associated with the cancellation of vendor guarantees. Previously, foreign equipment was serviced centrally, now these are scattered service centers of integrators and distributors, says Dmitry Laskov, technical director of HiTech-Integration. “We note a shortage of specialists who service Western equipment. This is also due to the fact that they are beginning to reorient themselves towards Russian products and do not see their development in the field of foreign solutions,” he says.

Valentin Gubarev, Deputy General Director for Business Development at CROC, notes that, according to a survey conducted in the summer, two-thirds of companies have difficulties maintaining IT infrastructure, of which for 78% the personnel issue comes first. “After the departure of foreign vendors, the share of companies servicing infrastructure with service partners increased by 27% and now amounts to more than 50%. A third of companies now maintain infrastructure on their own,” he says. According to Mr. Gubarev, almost everyone who continues to support foreign equipment strives to extend its service life as much as possible, since migration to new solutions is a long and labor-intensive process.

Timofey Kornev