Moscow Launches an Online Platform to Assess the Skills of IT Specialists
The new service covers 40 IT roles — from mobile developers to digital product designers — and is expected to expand further. For job seekers, it offers a unified way to validate their skills; for employers, a standardized tool to evaluate real competencies.
Certification, Moscow-Style
Starting a career in IT from scratch is rarely easy, yet the field offers countless challenges where even newcomers can contribute meaningfully. “To enter IT, you need courage, a deliberate choice of profession, a clear goal, and steady movement toward it,” says Elena Sokolova, former product manager for the Career Track of the “IT Recruiter” program at Yandex Practicum. After gaining basic skills, candidates can undergo testing on i.moscow’s new service called “Career in IT.” The platform helps digital specialists objectively measure their knowledge and gives employers a transparent view of candidates’ competencies.
Testing covers about 40 roles — from mobile app developers to digital designers. On average, the assessment takes around 120 minutes and closely resembles a professional qualification exam: theory, practical tasks, and over 100 questions per specialization. Participants receive detailed analytics and a certificate valid for two years.
According to the developers, the testing methodology has already been recognized by over 30 major Russian companies. This indicates employers’ readiness to trust a unified evaluation tool that simplifies hiring and reduces errors. For specialists, such certification becomes a practical confirmation of skills, especially relevant for remote work or cross-regional employment.
A Test Drive for Professionals
The Moscow model can become a blueprint for regional platforms. That would create a rare effect for the IT sector: standardized competency assessments and a clearer labor market for both junior and senior professionals.
In 2026, the platform will be upgraded with real-world coding assignments and case studies simulating business challenges. This will shift the service closer to a full-fledged qualification exam, where practical problem-solving is as important as theoretical knowledge. Employers gain a reliable assessment instrument that may eventually become a mandatory hiring step. Specialists, in turn, receive an opportunity to build a verified digital portfolio based on demonstrated competencies.
From Newcomer to Team Lead
Over the past several years, Russia has built a solid foundation enabling services like “Career in IT” to emerge. The country has tested various skill assessment models, even beyond the IT field. The national Skill Passport system introduced demo exams across colleges and vocational institutions, covering around 160 competencies by 2021. While not IT-focused, it became an important step toward independent skill evaluation.
Meanwhile, online schools such as SkillFactory helped make IT education mainstream, offering mass-scale programs in programming, analytics, and design. In 2021, SkillFactory joined the federal “Digital Professions” initiative, reflecting national support for retraining in the tech sector.
The federal program “Code of the Future” expanded access to digital learning through online and offline courses in web development, software testing, and neural network tools. Yet even these large-scale initiatives did not solve a crucial issue — the absence of a unified, publicly accessible IT certification system.
Internationally, such models have long existed. Platforms like HackerRank and Codility became standard for developer skill assessment, earning strong trust from employers.
Thus, the logic was clear: education existed, programs existed, but a standardized certification mechanism for IT skills was missing. The new Moscow service finally addresses that gap.
Fail More, Move Faster
The launch of “Career in IT” is a step toward greater transparency in Russia’s IT labor market. Certification can give specialists an advantage and help businesses save time when recruiting. In the coming years, the model may scale nationwide or inspire a federal analogue.
And if someone doesn’t pass on the first attempt, there’s no reason to panic, says Yandex Practicum expert Nikolai Fedoseev: “The IT field is incredibly dynamic: technologies change rapidly, new directions emerge, and new professions follow. Failure isn’t something to fear. Every mistake is a chance to rethink your approach and grow stronger. It’s okay to fail faster and more often — as long as you reflect and move forward.”
