Crypto Hiring Is Coming Back. Slowly.

There are signs of life in the crypto hiring market again.

I wouldn't call it a recovery yet, and definitely not a boom. But after a very beginning of the year, we're seeing more companies willing to hire again.

Slowly.

I've been recruiting in crypto since 2017, so I've seen a few versions of this market by now. The ICO years, DeFi summer, NFTs, the madness of 2021, and then the fairly brutal correction that followed.

This time feels different.

Companies are hiring, but they are much more careful about it. Teams are smaller. Searches take longer to approve. And instead of hiring five people because they might need them in six months, companies are much more likely to hire one person they really need now.

That changes who gets hired.

The jobs coming back are different

Engineering is still a big part of the market. Good protocol, backend, infrastructure and security engineers remain difficult to find.

But some of the more interesting searches we're seeing don't fit neatly into the old definition of a "crypto job."

Trading is probably the best example.

We're increasingly looking at people from HFT firms, hedge funds and traditional prop trading businesses for crypto trading roles. For a good systematic trader or quant researcher, previous crypto experience isn't always the most important thing anymore.

If someone can actually generate alpha, a crypto firm can teach them the market.

The same thing is happening elsewhere.

Stablecoins and crypto payments need people who understand payments, treasury, compliance, product and institutional BD. Those people don't necessarily come from crypto.

Some of the best candidates might come from fintech, banks, trading firms or traditional technology companies.

That's quite a change from a few years ago, when having "crypto" on your CV could almost be a qualification by itself.

It isn't anymore.

Being crypto-native isn't enough

This is probably one of the biggest changes I've noticed.

Companies still value people who genuinely understand crypto. But they increasingly want that on top of something else.

A very good engineer who understands crypto.

A very good trader who understands crypto.

A strong compliance executive who understands crypto.

Not someone whose main skill is simply having worked in the industry for a few years.

For candidates coming from outside crypto, I actually think that's good news.

I've always thought the industry was sometimes too obsessed with hiring people already inside it. As it gets bigger, that becomes harder to justify.

There is a lot of talent in traditional finance, fintech, payments, cybersecurity and HFT that crypto companies should be competing for.

We're already seeing that happen.

Smaller teams change the equation

There's another factor here: companies have learned they can operate with fewer people.

Part of that came from the bear market. Part of it is better infrastructure and tooling. And yes, part of it is AI.

I don't think AI means crypto companies suddenly stop hiring.

But I do think founders now expect more from each hire.

That makes life harder for average candidates and probably better for very good ones.

If you're going to run a 20-person team instead of a 40-person team, the quality of those 20 people matters a lot more.

We're seeing that mentality in searches already.

Candidates are more skeptical too

The market changed candidates as much as it changed companies.

During the last bull market, a big token package and a good story could do a lot of the selling.

Today, experienced candidates ask much better questions.

How much runway does the company have? Who funded it? Is there actual revenue? Is anyone using the product? What's the token worth if liquidity disappears?

After watching enough projects disappear, people have learned.

And the strongest candidates can afford to be selective.

This is something companies sometimes underestimate. A difficult job market can produce hundreds of applicants, but that doesn't necessarily make the person you actually want easier to hire.

There are plenty of candidates.

There still aren't that many exceptional protocol engineers, traders, technical founders or senior operators.

What I'd do as a candidate right now

I wouldn't try to become more "crypto."

I'd try to become very good at something crypto companies need.

Distributed systems. Trading. Security. Payments. Compliance. Product. Sales.

Then understand the industry well enough to apply that expertise here.

The market is becoming more open to people coming from adjacent industries, particularly when they bring skills that are genuinely difficult to find.

That's a much stronger position than simply having spent five years working for various Web3 projects.

And for companies

Don't confuse a slow market with an easy hiring market.

Yes, there are more people looking.

But if you're hiring a CTO, a senior protocol engineer, a quant researcher or someone expected to open a major new market, you're still competing for a fairly small group of people.

The difference now is that companies are making fewer of those hires.

Which makes getting them right even more important.

So, is crypto hiring back?

Not yet.

But it's moving.

We're seeing searches open that probably wouldn't have opened 6 month ago. We're seeing companies invest in senior talent again. And we're seeing hiring expand into areas like trading, payments and institutional infrastructure that barely resemble the crypto hiring market of 2017.

I don't think we're heading back to 2021.

Maybe the next bull market proves me wrong.

For now, though, the recovery looks slower and considerably more selective.

And after what happened last time, that's probably not a bad thing.