The growth of Blockchain Jobs in 2018
The prominence of blockchain technology is alluring eyeballs from large organizations across the world. The decentralized ledger technology is said to have a potential to be as revolutionary as the internet. Blockchain’s domino effect is evident in the job markets.
Today, Blockchain related jobs, as techcrunch reports, is the second fastest growing vertical in the labour market. It is estimated that there are fourteen new job openings for every one blockchain developer. To meet this stellar demand, we have seen initiatives from several top institutes to establish blockchain courses. Blockchain Lab India, has partnered with top indian institutes to enable blockchain courses across India and abroad, for the benefit of all the developers and enthusiasts.
Upwork, a freelance talent marketplace, saw a 6,000% increase in blockchain job growth over last year, making it the fastest-growing skill out of more than 5,000 skills on Upwork, according to its Skills Index.
It quoted, “Blockchain appears to be the next uncharted, highly talked about technology similar to what the ‘cloud’ was back in the mid-2000's,” the Upwork report says. “Its growth exceeded 2,000% for three quarters in a row on Upwork.com, and in Q1 it experienced more than 6,000% year-over-year growth, making it the fastest-growing skill out of more than 5,000 skills on the site”.
Developers with hands on knowledge on Solidity — the core programming language for ethereum smart contracts, Ripple development — a payment protocol used for distributed processes for remittances, and hyperledger fabric implementation are in high demand. This somewhat gives a sense on the progressive developments of blockchain technology. The smart contracts and protocols space, as per the current trends, is said to be disrupted first enhancing the the functional efficiency of the blockchain.
The founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, thinks “core developers and researchers should be employed by multiple companies or organizations. The knowledge of the technical considerations behind protocol upgrades must be democratized, so that more people can feel comfortable participating in research discussions and in debates criticizing protocol changes.”
This rise in the blockchain-related jobs is also credited to the success of various pilot runs involving several state and central governments. Moreover, large organizations are dedicating a new vertical altogether for aggressive research in the blockchain domain. This approach, has enforced small to medium sized companies open up to the blockchain potential to stay par with the trend. Also, the number of blockchain related startups have skyrocketed in recent times and have successfully found investors backing their optimistic projects. Investments in the first quarter of of 2018, in Blockchain backed projects, exceeded the total amount of investments in the same for the entire last year (Hyperlink — Phenomenal Growth of Blockchain Article). These events are proof enough to justify the boom in Blockchain-related jobs.
The median income for a full time blockchain developer in the high-tech regions like silicon valley is anywhere between $1,50,000 to $1,80,000, roughly 30% higher compared to the software developer for that region. Though the demand is yet to spread to non top-tech regions, the projected estimates of Blockchain enabled future has set off a gold rush.
