Blockchain = Bitcoin? We are way past that. You don’t have to be a financial services provider anymore to get amazing business advantages by adapting the technology for your own use. Blockchain is essentially a way to supersecurely log transactions — not necessarily money-related. Companies worldwide start to utilize it across all sorts of industries, including health care (safe sharing of medical data between patients and medical providers), as well as in supply chain management (secure tracking of shipments).
Some of the most important business advantages of blockchain include:
- Improved cybersecurity.
- Elimination of the middlemen = lower costs + increased efficiency.
- Better traceability of transactions and goods.
- Protection against any potential change to or destruction of once logged transaction — with blockchain, data is decentralized and stored on an enormous amount of devices which means the alteration of all of them is virtually impossible.
- Automation — thanks to the smart contracts used in blockchain, specific actions (e.g. money transfer) can be automatically performed after preplanned conditions are met.
How can you achieve all these amazing improvements for your business? You have to hire a blockchain developer who can take your product to the true Web 3.0 level.
What does a blockchain developer do?
Blockchain developers are sometimes divided into two groups: Core Blockchain Developers and DApps Developers. The first ones take care of building and maintaining whole blockchain platforms and infrastructures — such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. This means that when you want to hire blockchain developers, you’re most likely looking for DApps devs.
DApps developers are responsible for building apps on top of available blockchain platforms. DApps (sometimes spelled also as dApps) itself is short for distributed application — one leveraging the full potential of blockchain and running always on numerous devices. Such apps are powered by the concept of smart contracts responsible for the automation of transactions between the two sides participating in them.
How to hire a blockchain developer that delivers? Look for the right hard skillset!
Becoming a blockchain developer requires both the understanding of core software development mechanics as well as techniques and terms related strictly to the world of blockchain. Because of this, the technical skillset of a blockchain developer should include the following:
- Knowledge of blockchain-related programming languages
The great thing about blockchain is that many different programming languages can be used for its development. These include both some of the most popular languages (e.g. Java, C++, JavaScript, C#) as well as more unique ones that are rarely used outside of blockchain development (like CX or Solidity). Knowledge of the latter gives you a hint that your candidate is really into the technology — meaning they will be the perfect choice when you want to hire blockchain developers.
- Experience with blockchain platforms
There are several blockchain platforms available on top of which blockchain apps can be built. Most of them support multiple programming languages too. The most popular platforms are Bitcoin, Hyperledger, Ethereum, Hedera Hashgraph, and EOSIO.
- Understanding of data structures and operations on databases
From the understanding of LinkedList and HashMaps concepts to basic data pool management — all this will come handy in blockchain development. Remember also about knowledge of SQL and noSQL.
- Experience with distributed computing
As blockchain is a distributed, decentralized technology, experience with operations on such is crucial to successful blockchain development.
- Experience with web development
As DApps are essentially web applications, it’s useful for you to hire a blockchain developer with full-stack experience in web development. This covers both the front-end and back-end knowledge.
- Focus on writing clean code and thorough testing
In blockchain apps development, building perfectly working software is probably more important than in any other part of the IT world. This is because DApps, when once launched, will forever operate as they have been initially programmed to and there is no way to simply edit/fix them — instead, a new DApp would need to be released.
The most important soft skills in blockchain development
Don’t look only on the technical skillset — hire blockchain developers who also strive to perfect their soft skills. This will guarantee fruitful cooperation between the blockchain team and others across the company, powering innovation and more effective work.
Specifically, look for the following soft skills in your candidates:
- Willingness to constantly learn
To adapt well to the ever-changing world of blockchain and always know the most recent and innovative solutions on the market.
- Focus on business development
To always strive to provide the best, most fitting blockchain solutions for the company.
- Creativity
To look for new ways blockchain can be improved and data across the company stored more securely.
- Teamwork
To actively cooperate with colleagues across the company and understand what blockchain solutions the company really needs.
Who can become a blockchain developer?
There are not many university courses focusing strictly on blockchain just yet. As the technology itself requires lots of complex mathematical knowledge, people who end up being blockchain experts often have a math educational background. This means they graduated in majors like applied mathematics, statistics, computer science, or data science.
There also aren’t many people who go right into blockchain development after graduation. The huge majority of blockchain experts on the market have transitioned to the role after years of working in other IT fields. This means that when you hire blockchain developers, you'll end up seeing a lot of resumes from people who have worked for years as software developers, web developers, or data scientists. And that’s actually great for your business, as effective blockchain development requires all the core programming knowledge too.
What about developers who have jumped into the blockchain hype train really early and now have years of experience in the field? You most often can hire them as blockchain consultants who can plan and coordinate your business’ blockchain transformation.
Technical job interview — the key to hiring amazing blockchain developers
Asking the right questions and giving insightful coding tasks is the only way to hire a blockchain developer who will deliver amazing results. As being a blockchain developer requires both deep theoretical knowledge and vast practical experience, a blockchain developer job interview should be run by a person who knows all the ins and outs of this technology. If you are not such an expert yourself, you should be assisted by someone who will provide you with the technical context for the interview. This person can be either another blockchain developer (you can hire a blockchain consultant if you don’t have any colleague knowledgeable in the technology), an IT project manager, or a software consultant.
To give you a taste of how a blockchain developer job interview looks like, we listed below some of the popular questions asked during such meetings. Feel free to use them!
- What is a Merkle Tree? How is it related to blockchain?
- What’s checksum?
- What’s the Byzantine Fault Tolerance?
- How is a P2PKH bitcoin address constructed?
- When an orphaned transaction can occur?
- What is dust in Bitcoin? Why is it problematic?
- What is little endian and big endian? How is it connected to the world of blockchain?
- What are popular consensus algorithms? Give a few examples.
- How is hard fork different from soft fork?
- What is a blind signature?
How to hire blockchain experts fast?
With a limited number of blockchain developers on the market, we understand that finding one to join your company might be a time-consuming endeavor. That’s why we have established our Ideamotive network of top IT talents looking for new job opportunities. With us, you can easily hire blockchain developers to take care of your DApps development as well as hire blockchain consultants to oversee your blockchain transformation.
And if you are currently hiring for other IT roles as well, we can help you find the right experts too! Our network is filled with talented software developers, web designers, funding consultants, data scientists, and all the other experts you might need.
What’s more, we always make sure to connect you only with the talents that truly fit your unique project needs and requirements.
Get in touch with us today and build a blockchain-powered tool of the future.
