Race for blockchain engineering talent hots up as crypto ban cloud clears

Startups and IT majors alike are angling to recruit the best and brightest in the technology

Harsh Rajat has recently hired a software programmer who has not even completed his engineering degree yet. And is paying the fresher a package of Rs 60 lakh per annum. 

Rajat, who is the founder of blockchain start-up Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS), says that he does not even know which college the programmer is studying at.

“I don’t care which college or city he is from. How does it matter?”

The blockchain gold rush in India has only just begun with startups like EPNS attracting a lot of investor attention from the venture capital (VC) world, say experts. 

“The jobs in this domain are increasing at the rate of 2,000-6,000 per cent annually. A blockchain developer’s salary in India is seen to be 50-100 per cent higher than other developer jobs,” says Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of edtech platform Great Learning.

“The average salary of a blockchain engineer with two years of experience is around Rs 30 lakh annually and a professional with five years of experience can earn up to Rs 60 lakh a year,” he adds.

Moreover, online job portal Naukri currently has over 1.1 million jobs postings for blockchain engineers, blockchain architects, and application consultants across Hyderabad, New Delhi, and Bengaluru. 

And a lot of this is being fuelled by the rise in blockchain investments in the country. According to data from Tracxn, Indian Web3 start-ups (including blockchain and crypto) attracted $638 million in funding in 2021 across 48 rounds. 

And with the cloud of a possible crypto ban being cleared, thanks to the tax on gains made on virtual assets announced in the recent Budget by the government, the tide is only set to rise higher. This is evidenced by the fact that this week blockchain platform Polygon became the highest-valued VC-funded blockchain start-up in the country with a $450 million round – an amount more than two-thirds that the sector raised in India last year.

But can they pay the sky-high compensation packages that the likes of Swiggy and BharatPe are offering tech talent?

“I think top blockchain start-ups pay at least on par with the top tech companies in the country if not more. Moreover, a crypto exchange like us has to be a lot more sophisticated in terms of engineering for the security of users’ data and funds,” says Siddharth Menon, co-founder and chief operating officer of WazirX.

However, throwing money at the talent problem is not a sustainable solution in the long-term, the blockchain world has figured. So, they are organising a lot of blockchain hackathons in college campuses and hiring good engineers and training them in-house.

“Last year, we hired several engineering freshers on a salary of Rs 4.5 lakh annually and trained them to pick up blockchain technology. The best of that lot have already been snapped up by other companies this year for salaries in the Rs 25-40 lakh range. This year we are hiring more freshers at a salary of Rs 6.5 lakh,” says Arjun Reddy, chief technology officer at non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace GuardianLink. 

However, it is just not the start-ups but IT majors like TCS and Infosys who are taking a similar approach in the search for blockchain talent.

“Companies like ours have invested significantly in enabling and skilling and reskilling their people, especially since the past two years, and that is the only way you augment talent. There are only three ways you can augment the talent base, one is to train people at the fresher level or entry level and work with universities and institutes on it,” says Narsimha Rao Mannepalli, Executive Vice President, Head of Cloud Infrastructure and Security Solutions, Infosys.

“Second is to reskill and move people across tech platforms. And third is few people who are well versed in a technology you amplify their reach within the company by deploying them across projects,” he adds.

At Quartz, a startup incubated by Tata Consultancy Services that builds distributed ledger systems for industry applications, a programmer can use an internal tool called Quartz DevKit to program in the Java programming language on a low-code platform.

“It is not easy to hire talent in blockchain. This is because there are several different Blockchain technologies to grapple with, and the experience in this field is low. That is why we have created the Quartz DevKit,” says R Vivekanand, global head of Quartz.

“We are also planning to take this concept in Quartz to educational institutions soon, and get people certified to build a larger talent pool,” he added. The company did not give the exact number of people with such talent, Vivekanand said "We have a few hundred engineers working on Blockchain technology. We do not have a specific number for how many we look to hire this year, but we will develop talent using the Quartz platform, thereby simplifying our hiring need. Quartz Devkit, in our estimation, gives a productivity benefit of about 40%, so we need that many fewer engineers."

However, it is not just a bed of roses. Rajat of EPNS says that at least in the start-up world, blockchain technology is in a state of flux and an engineer needs to be always on his toes.

“There are times when we have marathon development sessions of 24 hours to 48 hours. And this is not something everyone can cope up with. We can’t afford that and such people are also let go off quite quickly,” he says.

Talent on the block

• Technology job openings in the blockchain sector are increasing at the rate of 2,000-6,000 per cent annually
• A blockchain engineer’s salary in India is seen to be 50-100 per cent higher than other developer jobs
• Online job portal Naukri currently has 11 lakh jobs related to blockchain listed on its platform
• Tracxn, Indian Web3 start-ups (including blockchain and crypto) attracted $638 million in funding in 2021 across 48 rounds
• Blockchain start-ups and IT majors are hiring good engineers and upskilling them with in-house training due to scared availability of blockchain talent