Blockchain industry yearns for new talent

Blockchain-based projects in all kinds of sectors promise enticing income opportunities, Photo: FOTA

Vietnam is emerging as one of the blockchain hubs in Southeast Asia and across the globe as the number of startups in this field increases significantly. At the Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai last month, two non-fungible token (NFT) games developed by Vietnamese enterprises were in the top 10 GameFi projects with the highest revenue in the Binance ecosystem.

Often bringing in billions of dollars in profits, blockchain is becoming a fertile land that attracts investors and developers, and also those who have the need to find new job opportunities.

A report from LinkedIn confirmed that the hiring demand for blockchain programmers will continue to explode in 2022. Positions such as blockchain engineer and blockchain programmer alone account for 15.6 per cent of all LinkedIn job openings, proving the undeniable attractiveness of the blockchain industry in the market. The data shows that job postings with the keyword “blockchain” increased by 395 per cent on-year during 2020-2021.

In Vietnam, Google will quickly return more than 11 million results for the keywords “blockchain jobs”. In addition to new investment areas such as GameFi, blockchain technology is also applied in many key sectors of the economy including financial services (more than 83 per cent), supply chains (40 per cent), and public services (30 per cent).

Most of the staff working in the blockchain field come from the IT industry, while Vietnam needs 1.2 million IT workers by 2025, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Huy Nguyen, CEO of KardiaChain said, “If a country needs 1 per cent of its population to develop new industries, Vietnam needs at least a million workers. However, the current number of workers can only meet 1-2 per cent of the market’s demand.”

Trinh Ngoc Duc, CEO of game Fight of the Ages (FOTA), shared that human resources are another challenge that cannot be ignored.

“The rapid development of blockchain has led to an increase in the number of developers in the market; however, the number of developers who can understand the power of blockchain is small. The personnel recruitment process faces a lot of difficulties, while Vietnam does not have many training programmes to meet the needs,” Duc said.

Because of the scarcity of blockchain developers, the development of a product may easily be interrupted, Duc added. This seems contradictory as Vietnam has been recognised as a country with abundant cheap human resources and quick absorption of new technologies, especially in the field of blockchain games.

Nguyen Xuan Yen, vice guild master of Djinn Guild Game, who manages 50 professional gamers in the blockchain industry said, “Vietnam has a large gaming community of all ages; however, many gamers are still young and have not had many opportunities to access relevant knowledge.”

Thus, the biggest problem with the shortage of blockchain personnel lies in the training stage, when this field is still not widely taught in science and technology universities in Vietnam.

D.lion, a newcomer in the Vietnamese blockchain game solution market, has chosen a sustainable development strategy by prioritising many resources for training.

Founder and CEO Jennie Hoang Phuong said she and the members of the leadership team have had the opportunity to meet many talented young people who are very passionate about blockchain, but they need a professional environment to learn and practice before becoming real warriors.

“D.lion’s doors have always been open to new talent. We also focus on fostering and developing personnel, thereby creating a strong and comfortable corporate culture,” said Phuong.

“D.lion is ready to recruit employees who are passionate about the profession, offer re-training or new training completely free of charge, and even prepare free accommodation, creating an environment for them to study and work comfortably.”

According to expertise-based salary statistics conducted by VietnamWorks on over 1,000 IT employees, engineers in the field of new technologies such as blockchain are receiving the highest income, in which blockchain software development engineers can earn an income of over $2,200 per month.

Open job opportunities in a potential market like blockchain have also attracted personnel working in other fields that have a need to switch jobs.

Tran Huy Vu, CTO of Kyber Network said, “The salary for blockchain personnel is often 20-50 per cent higher than traditional IT workers, while the required number of years of experience is often shorter. A worker with three years of experience in this field can be equivalent to 6-9 years in other industries.”