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The fast growing blockchain technology sector has created a high demand for talent and this has consequently resulted in blockchain engineers being among the best remunerated in the technology sector.
According to CNBC, the average pay for blockchain engineers in the United States is between US$150,000 and US$175,000 making it comparable to what developers who specialize in another high demand field such as artificial intelligence. The two fields now currently offer the highest earning specialized engineering roles. Typical software engineers make an average of US$135,000.
This comes at a time when the job postings requiring blockchain technology skills have increased considerably. For example, Hired, a division recruitment company based in San Francisco California, which provided CNBC with the salary stats in the technology sector, has witnessed a 400% increase in the job postings seeking employees with blockchain technology skills since late last year.
“There’s a ton of demand for blockchain. Software engineers are in very short supply, but this is even more acute and that’s why salaries are even higher,” Hired’s CEO, Mehul Patel, expressed to the business news TV channel.
This is comparable to a finding by jobs site Glassdoor which saw job listings related to blockchain and digital currencies increase by 300% in August 2018 compared to the same period last year. In the United States, most of the blockchain related professions are located in New York City (24%) and San Francisco (21%). Outside the United States the top-five cities with the highest number of blockchain related job openings were London (16%), Singapore (7%), Toronto (7%), Hong Kong (6%) and Berlin (4%).
Per Glassdoor, some of the top hires are startups such as Circle, Coinbase, ConsenSys, Figure, and Kraken though established firms such as Accenture, IBM, KPMG and Oracle are also in the top ten.
The findings by Hired and Glassdoor also echo a similar conclusion drawn by leading freelance jobs website Upwork. As CCN reported two months ago, blockchain was the fastest growing freelance skill on the telecommuting platform in the United States for the second consecutive quarter.
The 2018 Q2 Upwork Skills Index also showed an increase in demand for individuals talented in the programming languages and frameworks that are essential to fill blockchain developer or engineer positions.
Tags: Blockchain Technology
