How Software Engineers become Blockchain Developers

4 min readAug 21, 2020

A number of new opportunities are arising for software developers as the blockchain technology and its numerous applications are getting more and more popular. One of the leading job positions in the industry is the blockchain developer. Yet due to being such a unique profession, the position is not as defined as other tech positions that have been in the market for many years. That is because any software engineer that is capable of working with blockchain technologies can be considered as a blockchain developer.

In recent years, blockchain has become a very desirable skill. Moreover, it is the most in-demand hard skill in 2020 according to LinkedIn. This is owing to its main features: transparency, decentralization, and immutability. Blockchain has developed a lot since the Bitcoin boom, and currently, cryptocurrency is one of its least significant uses.

As a result, there are so few professionals in the space that four out of five positions are left unfilled regardless of the highest salaries in the tech industry. An average salary for a blockchain developer is $70K for entry-level to $175K for more experienced professionals. Thus, if you are curious about entering the sphere of blockchain development, this is the perfect time for you.

Moreover, if you are a software engineer or developer based in Armenia, Nooor can guide you through your journey of becoming a blockchain developer. Learn more about the opportunity here.

Career Paths

Any software engineer can turn into a blockchain professional. In fact, the majority of blockchain professionals worked at first as programmers or software developers. Therefore, you can get the typical software engineer education and cover several specialized courses on blockchain technologies afterwards. Alternatively, if you don’t have any tech skills, you can learn programming languages that you will use for blockchain development later. These languages include JavaScript, Python, C++, and SQL. Now let’s look at the leading positions in the blockchain industry.

Back-end or core blockchain developer

In software development, some developers create actual programs and tools, while others make applications and websites. The same is in the blockchain: some developers create the core structures of blockchain technologies like cryptocurrencies or the Ethereum platform.

Back-end or core blockchain developers create and manage blockchain systems and protocols for other developers to use later. They have a deeper understanding of the technology and build the foundations where the blockchain applications will lay. Decentralized app developers and smart contract engineers depend on the technologies that core blockchain developers design.

Smart contract engineer

Smart contracts are agreements in the form of computer codes that fulfill themselves when the terms they were programmed with are met. This has a huge potential to transform the way we make transactions. Generally, if two parties want to make a deal, an authorized third party takes part in making sure everything is transparent and fair.

A third party will not be necessary with smart contracts since they only work if the pre-agreed conditions are met. Furthermore, they are available to the participating parties to access and to the network to store. This is due to the fact that they are programmed on blockchain technology. To illustrate, they are contracts with iron-clad security.

Smart contracts are becoming more popular because they have plenty of applications, specifically in the fintech industry. Some banks and companies in real estate are already using them for crucial transactions. You can learn how to create Smart contracts during the 1st Ethereum and Solidity development course.

Decentralized app developer

We all use centralized apps on our devices. That means they are in a server and if it crashes, the app will crash too. Decentralized apps (Dapp), on the other hand, work on blockchain. In other words, they don’t have only one source but are stored in different nodes of the network.

Decentralization makes apps very immutable and transparent. The whole system will know if someone changes a variable.

Dapp developers should publish the source code so other people in the blockchain can verify it. Moreover, dapps can’t have one administrator, the community should administer them. Golem is an example of a Dapp. It is a supercomputer powered by many computers in the world based on Ethereum.

Qualifications

According to Glassdoor’s most recent open positions for blockchain developers, these are the main common qualifications:

Proficiency in C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python
3+ years of experience in software development
Experience in Blockchain platforms like Ethereum
Degree in Computer Science
Experience in developing smart contracts
Experience with cryptocurrencies

In Conclusion

Software developers have passed half of the path for becoming blockchain professionals. Now they only need to transform their mindset to learn programming for decentralized systems and master a couple of skills. They also have leading roles in developing blockchain technologies, which will give them a lot of opportunities. Taking into consideration the shortage of blockchain developers, this is the perfect time to enter the industry.

Contributor: Artur Meyster

Artur Meyster is the Founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Career Karma. It is an online marketplace that helps people eager to become software engineers by matching them with the right coding bootcamp and supporting them throughout their careers. Get in contact with Artur via LinkedIn.

Originally published at https://nooor.io on August 21, 2020.