Blockchains penetrate into every single field in computer science. Fields such as borrowing, lending, web3, crypto gaming, NFTs, DAOs, trading — to mention just a few — experience a rapid growth in recent years.
Both developers and users flock to decentralized, open, permissionless protocols: Blockchains.
The exploding interest in Blockchain development brings opportunity to coders like you. Incomes in the field become more and more unreasonable.
If you’re idealistic and ambitious, and you like the ideas of decentralization & democratization, you’ll love the rapidly growing crypto field!
This article shows that many “traditional” job descriptions can easily be morphed into an exciting new “crypto job”. Get your job in crypto!
Blockchain Developer
Blockchain Engineer Definition: A blockchain engineer operates, designs, develops, analyzes, implements, and supports a distributed blockchain network. Blockchain engineers manage specific business models dealing with blockchain technology.
The average annual income of a Blockchain engineer is between $105,180 and $108,560 according to Glassdoor (source).
But is there enough demand? Let’s have a look at Google trends to find out how interest evolves over time (source):
But are clients actually searching for blockchain engineers? A simple analysis of the search volume for the term "hire blockchain" gives us the answer (source):
🌍 Learn More: Blockchain Developer — Income and Opportunity
Solidity Developer
A Solidity developer creates, edits, analyzes, and debugs code in the Solidity programming language used to develop smart contracts for modern Blockchain ecosystems such as Ethereum.
The average annual income of a Solidity Developer is between $60,000 and $180,000 with an average of $100,000 per year (source).
🌍 Learn More: Solidity Developer — Income and Opportunity
Crypto Bot Developer
Trading bots are software programs that talk directly to financial exchanges. Crypto trading bots are programs that talk to crypto exchanges.
A crypto bot developer develops those programs. Crypto trading bot developers tend to be very proficient in trading, financial algorithms, APIs, and web services.
The average annual income of a Crypto Trading Bot Developer is similar to algorithmic traders of $104,422 (source).
However, due to the novelty of the industry, there’s little official data. If you assume an hourly rate of $50 and an annual 2000 hours worked, the annual income of a crypto trading bot developer would be $100,000.
Do you want to become a Crypto Trading Bot Developer? Here’s a learning path I’d propose in five steps to get started:
- Step 1: Introduction to Computer Science (~40 hours)
- Step 2: Create Your First Crypto Trading Bot (~20 hours)
- Step 3: Introduction to Solidity and Ethereum (~10 hours)
- Step 4: Advanced Solidity (~10 hours)
- Step 5: Mastery Crypto Trading Bot Strategies (~20 hours)
🌍 Learn More: Crypto Bot Developer — Income and Opportunity
Web Developer
A web developer is a programmer who specializes in the development of websites or applications viewed on web browsers, mobile devices, and large desktop screens that are transported over private or public networks such as the Internet.
Web developers either work independently as freelancers or as employees for companies, government organizations, or non-profits.
Lately, many web developers have started to work for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) in the crypto ecosystem due to their expertise in native web technologies and philosophies.
The average annual income of a Web Developer in the United States is between $68,732 and $110,438 with an average income of $88,054 and a median income of $90,000 per year according to our meta-study of 11 aggregated data sources such as Glassdoor and Indeed.
🌍 Learn More: Web Developer — Income and Opportunity
Security Engineer
A security engineer is a “white-hat hacker”, i.e., an IT professional who analyzes computer systems and computer networks to ensure they are running securely.
This involves proactive analysis and understanding of possible security threats and attack vectors and designing the system to minimize the exposure to these threats.
You need to understand networking, computer security systems, databases, HTTP, and web protocols, as well as an intimate understanding of distributed systems.
The average annual income of a Security Engineer in the United States is between $75,732 and $144,874, with an average of $108,851 and a statistical median of $105,928 per year.
This data is based on our meta-study of ten (10) salary aggregators sources such as Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and PayScale.
| Source | Average Income |
|---|---|
| Glassdoor.com | $111,691 |
| ZipRecruiter.com | $120,708 |
| Zippia.com | $100,165 |
| Talent.com | $119,946 |
| Salary.com | $138,822 |
| PayScale.com | $95,953 |
| Builtin.com | $144,874 |
| Indeed.com | $75,732 |
| Comparably.com | $90,120 |
| SalaryExplorer.com | $90,500 |
🌍 Learn More: Security Engineer — Income and Opportunity
Computer Science Researcher
A computer science researcher and scientist identifies and answers open research questions in computer science.
They apply scientific reasoning and research techniques to push the state-of-the-art forward in various fields such as machine learning, distributed systems, databases, algorithms, and data science.
And the crypto industry as one of the fastest-growing research areas—just visit one CS conference these days and you’ll find crypto everywhere!
The median annual income (=50th percentile) of a computer science researcher was $131,490 in May 2021. The bottom 10% (=10th percentile) of computer science researchers earned less than $74,210 and the top 10% (=90th percentile) earned more than $208,000.
🌍 Learn More: Computer Science Researcher — Income and Opportunity
Distributed Systems Developer
A distributed system is a computer system spread across multiple computing devices connected via a communication network. Each participating device takes over part of the overall work performed by the system. By means of the collaboration of individual units, the system can provide services that each individual system component couldn’t provide on its own.
Some examples of distributed systems are:
- Ethereum is a distributed system of Ethereum nodes connected via the Internet and a specific communication protocol.
- Bitcoin is a distributed system of Bitcoin nodes connected via the Internet and a specific communication protocol as defined by the open-source Bitcoin protocol.
- The World Wide Web is a distributed system of servers connected via IP to provide a coherent web experience via browsers and an HTML-like web experience.
- A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a distributed system of individuals that collaborate via a system written as a smart contract in a first-layer Blockchain such as Ethereum.
A distributed systems engineer designs, implements, and debugs distributed systems for data storage, crypto & web3, or analytics. The idea is to design a distributed system that can provide a service to users that couldn’t be provided by a centralized system (e.g., providing a decentralized, censorship-free monetary network).
The average annual income of a Distributed Systems Engineer in the United States is between $97,000 and $169,656, with an average of $126,894 and a statistical median of $130,000 per year.
🌍 Learn More: Distributed Systems Developer — Income and Opportunity
JavaScript Developer
The average annual income of a JavaScript Developer is between $62,000 and $118,000 with an average of $84,000 per year according to Daxx.com and PayScale (source).
A JavaScript developer creates dynamic web applications focusing mostly on the front-end logic—but recently some back-end JavaScript frameworks emerged as well. If you like web development and programming user interfaces, you’ll love the work as a JavaScript developer.
The crypto industry is full of good old JavaScript developers — and many crypto frameworks such as web3.js are based on JavaScript.
🌍 Learn More: JavaScript Developer — Income and Opportunity
Quant Developer
A quantitative developer (i.e., Quant) is a financial programmer focused on financial modeling and quantitative finance and trading.
Quants use their profound knowledge of
- statistics and math,
- finance,
- data structures,
- algorithms,
- machine learning,
- scientific computing,
- data science,
- chart technique, and
- data visualization
to create models for financial prediction, backtesting, analysis, and implementation of trading and financial applications (e.g., for risk management).
The expected annual income of a Quantitative Developer (Quant) in the United States is between $86,528 and $170,000 per year, with an average annual income of $127,375 per year and a median income of $136,321 per year.
🌍 Learn More: Quant Developer — Income and Opportunity
Conclusion
Many fields now incorporate Blockchains. Borrowing, lending, web3, NFTs, trading, and many more fields see a rapid growth in recent years—in developer and user interest alike.
The exploding interest in Blockchain development brings opportunity to coders like you. Incomes in the field are unreasonable.
And if you’re idealistic, you like decentralization and democratization, you’ll love the rapidly growing crypto field!
This article has shown that many “traditional” job descriptions can easily be morphed into an exciting new “crypto job”. Get your job in crypto!
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