There’s a shortage of tech (and female) crypto talent: Report

The supply of engineering and information technology talent in the blockchain industry is not meeting the demand.

Maturing digital asset markets have shifted corporate needs to technical roles – especially when it comes to security – according to a new study from crypto exchange OKX and LinkedIn.

Finance talent accounts for 19% of blockchain-oriented employees, the report found. Engineers, meanwhile, make up 16%. And employees in business development, information technology and sales make up about 6% each.

The analysis includes research data samples from LinkedIn covering 180 countries from January 2019 to January 2022.

The most sought after jobs are crypto traders, software engineers, analysts, support analysts and account managers – which tend to come with relatively higher compensation.

But the finance category ranked sixth in hiring demand in June, according to LinkedIn job postings. Instead, people in engineering and information technology fields are most in demand as companies build out blockchain capabilities, followed by professionals in product management, marketing and human resources.

The study examined both crypto-native companies and traditional entities vying to establish a foothold in digital assets.

The fastest-growing title was for a “quality assurance analyst,” which saw a growth rate of 713% from June 2021 to June 2022. Cryptologic technicians and compliance specialists ranked second and third, growing 350% and 253%, respectively, over that span.

“The blockchain industry is moving from being highly financial to being highly technical,” the report said. “It will fully utilize the combination of technical and economic characteristics of blockchain to gradually develop into an important part of the digital economy.”

Emily Landon, CEO of The Crypto Recruiters, told Blockworks that her firm is seeing a lot of requests for marketing, investor relations and developer roles — including front-end developers, as well as those well-versed in the Rust and Solidity programming languages.

But finding tech talent has become increasingly difficult as candidates don’t always market themselves well on LinkedIn, she added. Others have deleted their LinkedIn accounts because of spam from recruiters, Landon said, and flocked to Twitter and Discord instead.

“That makes it challenging to find them on these platforms,” ​​Landon said. “Basically, these developers have gone incognito.”

Other numbers in an instant

LinkedIn data shows that the total number of members of the platform working in the blockchain industry grew by 76% year-over-year through June. The US has the most people working in space, followed by India and China.

In terms of job postings, blockchain-related talent demand is most concentrated in the US, China, France, India and Germany.

The average tenure of global blockchain talent is 1.2 years, according to the report. Apart from the influx of people from finance and technology companies into the space, the industry’s flow of talent is primarily from the segment.

Despite the year-on-year growth, overall female talent remains scarce. The segment has about four times more men than women, according to the report.

“[We’ve had] an incredibly difficult time, especially finding women in the space,” Landon said. “We want to help more women get into tech roles.”

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