Field report from Priborium, an instrumentation conference in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok (often called Russia's Silicon Valley). What we heard from Siberian engineering teams and why the local hiring market behaves differently from Moscow.

We spent several days last week in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk — at the Priborium forum. It's a specialist instrumentation conference that gathers engineers, hardware developers, and product teams from the Siberian technology cluster. The One was there as a hiring partner. Here are the live observations: what we heard from engineering teams and why the Siberian IT market is structured differently from Moscow.

Why we went to Akademgorodok

Novosibirsk Akademgorodok is one of Russia's strongest technology clusters — historical R&D heritage and a dense concentration of instrumentation companies, R&D institutes and IT teams. When Priborium invited us as a partner, we agreed without long deliberation: it's a chance to talk directly with CTOs, chief designers and product leaders we usually see only remotely.

We came not to "find candidates" — we came to understand the market. The forum had parallel exhibitor zones for instrumentation businesses, IT companies, NSU and NSTU programmes. The audience: exactly the segment we work with — technology teams of 50-300 people building real products.

What we showed at the booth

The booth was minimal: brand-colour roll-up, brochure stand, one idea — "we help technology companies find specialists with deep qualifications". No marketing traps. We came for conversations, not business cards.

On the table: brochures on our IT recruitment services, technical interview checklists, QR codes to the blog and Telegram bot, branded chocolates. Over three days we talked to several dozen managers and engineers. Several substantive conversations turned into specific role discussions after the forum.

The One agency team behind the booth at Priborium forum with branded materials and treats
The One booth: brochures, branded chocolates and QR codes for quick contact.

What we heard about the Siberian IT market

The main impression: the Novosibirsk market is structured differently from Moscow, and most federation-wide "how to hire in tech" models don't transfer directly.

  • Less candidate fluidity. A senior developer in Novosibirsk changes jobs less often than every 12-18 months. Median tenure in one company is higher than in Moscow. This affects the funnel: fewer active candidates, but stronger team attachment.
  • Strong university linkage. NSU, NSTU, INP SB RAS — most strong engineers pass through them. Direct work with labs and faculty pays off here more than job-board postings.
  • Demand for embedded and hardware engineers. Moscow's market is heavily skewed toward backend and frontend for B2C services. In Novosibirsk we heard several times: "we need an embedded engineer with FPGA experience, we've been looking for six months". That's a completely separate funnel.
  • Less willingness for full remote. Many teams work with physical hardware — lab benches, prototypes. Remote only works partially. This narrows the geographic search but raises the importance of local networking.
The One roll-up setup before the forum opens: installing the branded banner in the Akadempark lobby
An hour before opening: setting up the roll-up on the second floor of Akadempark.

Three conversations we'll remember

I won't recap everything, but three meetings stand out.

Chief designer at an instrumentation company: "We need engineers who can write code for microcontrollers and also understand the physics of the process. There are maybe twenty of those graduating in the whole country per year — we know them by name. Hiring is a separate quest." This is a completely different task from "average senior backend", and the approach to it has to be different.

CTO of a product startup: "I have one big pain — even when we find a strong developer, in a year they get poached by a big Moscow company paying 2×. Retention has become more important than hiring." A familiar pattern, but in Novosibirsk it's sharper due to Moscow pressure and remote-work options.

HRD of an R&D institute: "We used to grow through NSU graduates. Now half of them leave for IT and Moscow. We urgently need new sources — not bootcamps, but specialist engineering programmes." This conversation turned into a discussion on how an agency can help bridge production teams to senior-year students at technical faculties.

Key takeaway: The Siberian IT market needs not a Russified Moscow hiring model, but its own — university-grounded, hardware-aware, with a strategy built on retention rather than just attraction.

What we do next

The trip turned a few abstract hypotheses about the Siberian market into specific work items. Over the next months we will:

  • Launch a dedicated track for instrumentation and hardware teams in Novosibirsk. Contact bases for engineers with embedded and FPGA experience — separate story we're building.
  • Initial agreements with two NSTU faculties on access to graduating students — pilot the format of "engineering" internships with placement guarantees.
  • A series of materials on retaining specialists in smaller cities — where Moscow counter-offers turn local hiring into a survival race.

Thanks to Priborium organisers and Akademgorodok for the invitation and the venue. We'll be back next year with a Siberian track already built up.

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Siberian IT track
Hiring embedded / FPGA / hardware engineers in Novosibirsk?

If your role fits the Siberian engineering specialty — write to [email protected]. We're building a dedicated candidate base for instrumentation, embedded and FPGA with Novosibirsk regional focus.

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