Ukrainian Software Developer moving to Poland - job and salary with my experience?

Hello, I'm a software developer from Kyiv, Ukraine. I'm planning to move to Poland sometime early next year. At this moment I am able to understand around 70% of spoken or written Polish due to the strong resemblance between Polish and Ukrainian languages, though I am not able to speak or write Polish, but I'm sure I'll pick it up really quickly after moving to Poland. Besides that I speak fluent English, Ukrainian and Russian and average French and German.

As for my IT background, I have around 7 years of PHP development (I have really big and cool projects in my portfolio) and 1 year of C/C++/Objecitve-C development for iOS platform.

As for my education, I posses a Ph.D. degree in computer sciences (have also teaching experience, as when I was doing my Ph.D. I also worked as a lecturer for a university).

My question is: how hard would it be to find a job with my background in Poland. Preferably in Kraków or Wrocław, though I don't rule out other cities. Also can I bring my wife with me right away? I've read on several ukrainian forums, that I can bring my wife to Poland only after working for 2 years and to be honest this isn't an option to me.

Another question is: what kind of salary (netto) a guy with my experience could expect in Poland?

Just start applying and you will see. I think there are many positions where knowing of Polish language is not necessary.
In this post I linked to salaries in IT:

remember about 30- 40 % difference between gross and net pay.
I think that for most companies your teaching experience will be disadvantage, except if you're planing to teach here. As to PHD it depends if the topic was relevant to the business of company. Anyway for some companies it could be plus, suggesting that you're smart person, for other just less real working experience.

Should be very easy to find any job for a polish person with your experience. I don't know how companies are ready to ask for Visa for you and this could be working against. But perhaps you could find a job through this 6 months in a years working permission for Ukrainians (Is IT included to that? ) and then when you work for them and see that you're good will request for Visa for you.

Register on goldenline.pl and linkedin.com, as location write Kraków, and start asking headhunters on this sites. Fill there your experience, and maybe they will contact you.

Start sending your cv to adds offered on job portals:

google.pl/search?q=praca+w+it+polska
google.pl/search?q=praca+w+polsce

Probably Skype interviews are possible and then you can see (by number of invitation to interviews) how wanted worker you are and how much salary you may demand. And remember that there are substantial differences in salaries depending on city what you can read in my 1st link here. Good luck and have fun :)

I am quite sure that if you get working visa then your wife gets one automatically also. Ask polish embassy in Ukraine.

I think you should find some job quite easily but by some job I mean a standard position of a developer, which means sitting together with 20 other guys in an open space, doing rather boring job and making 3500-5000 PLN a month, which I doubt is more (or at least not much more) than you can make at home. Generally, unless you have some experience, which you didn't mention, like holding a managerial position at some international company etc. or some very rare skills, forget about making really good money here straight away, Ph.d. will not help much either.


I'm not much into such regulations but sounds too bad to be true.

Yeah, that's true. According to:

payscale.com/research/UA/Country=Ukraine/Salary
payscale.com/research/PL/Country=Poland/Salary

IT salaries in Ukraine are even higher than in Poland. How accurate is this data? Also I've heard that in Belarus IT salaries are quite good, because employees of IT sector doesn't have to pay income tax and Ukrainians can work in Belarus without Visa.

blog.ciklum.com/2012/07/it-salaries-in-ukraine-may-2012/ - another link also suggests that it doesn't have sense for Ukrainians to emigrate. What percentage of gross salary is net in Ukraine, let's say from 2000 USD per month?

Thank you for all the answers. Here is some clarification:

I do have managerial experience as I am holding a Team Lead position right now. I don't expect to get into team lead's seat right after moving to Poland, but at the very least I'd be looking for a Senior Developer position. I also have deep hands on knowledge and extensive experience with Drupal CMF. I don't know about Poland, but in Ukraine people with Drupal experience are hard to find and usually are better paid than an average PHPer.

Thank you for suggestions about job search, I'll of course go this way, but I don't want to do this right now, because I am going to move not earlier than January-February 2014, or may be even a little later and there is no point in talking to companies at this very moment.

Yes I am aware of the fact that IT salaries in Ukraine are higher than in Poland but it isn't the money I am after. If it was about money, I'd be looking for positions in the USA or Germany. But I'm ok with making less than I do in Ukraine as long as my salary allows us to maintain the same standard of life we are accustomed to in Ukraine (from my experience cost of living in Poland (perhaps except Warszaw) is a little bit (10-15%) lower than in Kyiv).


In Ukraine they usually speak about net salaries. So when you see $2000 it usually means $2000.

Also the majority of software developers in Ukraine work with companies not as employees but as independent contractors. The tax for independent contractors is 5%, so even if it was brutto, the netto amount would be $1900. Not much of a difference.

Try applying with Templeton in Poznan. In the past year or so they opened a large office there. They are very international and perhaps they are still hiring in your field.

Try Mikrobit in Lublin :)

Thank you for suggestions I'll check them out :)

I disagree, as long as he will be able to sell it as an experience for making presentations for a clients, internal trainings etc. then it is an advantage. It is not common in IT teams to find a person who will not forget a name in front of couple of dozens of people.

Hi Alex,

There are some definite needs with your background. Are you familiar with some of the cloud development projects using PHP for portals and VMware/Parallels on the back end? Your experience fits nicely with these type of cloud projects and some projects let you work remotely provided you have a high speed internet. Just a thought you might be interested in. Thanks Sean

Merged: Applying for a junior web developer position from abroad to work in Poland

I have received the B.S. in informatics this year, and is from Ukraine. I want to know if it possible to apply for junior developer or even trainee position (as seen such one on vaccancies web-page) without actual work experience in Poland. I tried to apply here in Ukraine but competition is very high even for preparation course so maybe polish option could be apt for taking initial experience

hi, pls send your cv to us , and we will send you offer, partly poland and partly belgium /holland ,
send cv to jobs@xtech.be
We can make direct arrangement

Hi Everyone

I am posting this message to check for iOS developers based in Ukraine

Triphop is a Mobile App first company based in USA & Jordan. We develop our own Apps for Travel. Currently we are in the process of expanding the company by hiring a development team in Ukraine

If you are interested and willing to join our dedicated and creative team, please contact me on samer.khawaja@triphop.com

Regards
Samer Khawaja
COO

It is relatively easy to grow, develop and expend for a software developer in Ukraine. And how about Poland? Are there any governmental support programs, and what is the hiring and taxation process? Thanks in advance!

Go to Germany Berlin.