Top Careers to Choose in Blockchain and Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT)
By: Victor Magneto Ugochukwu
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Careers, Remote Working

Image Credit: Unsplash

As with many technologies, the blockchain and decentralized ledger technology are in high demand both by individuals and enterprises. With the vast ocean of opportunities it presents to individuals who seek to forge a profitable career out of it, institutions are equally leveraging it to key into the technology which together with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing and other revolutionary technologies have been touted to be the driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

With Blockchain ranking as the most sought after hard skill in 2020 and this new decade whether you’re surfing through Google or LinkedIn, the race seems to be on by those who would want to build a career out of this industry but have questions like “Which Career is the best to major on in Blockchain?” whether asked on Google or Quora. This article presents a list of career options to select from as an aspiring professional. The interesting part is that all these skills can be employed to work remotely from home especially at this moment where organizations are now beginning to understand the necessity of remote work with the global outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020. I must state however that this list is not in any way exhaustive and would, therefore, appreciate if you can contribute by commenting on other careers, I might have missed out you think deserves to make the list.

Cryptocurrency Trade Analyst

Cryptocurrency, no doubt is the most popular application of blockchain and decentralized ledger technology. Bitcoin as the first successful case of cryptocurrency after numerous attempts at launching a digital version of currency failed, has seen widespread acceptance in popular quarters whether the global economy or within political spheres. With the unabated proliferation of other forms of cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Ripple, EOS and even TRON, there has been a constant growing opportunity for those seeking to make meaning of the “wild west” as it is often called. As a Crypto Analyst, you need to be vast in the concept of digital assets trading. You must be very conversant with Technical Analysis (TA) and Fundamental Analysis (FA). Crypto like other asset classes has what makes them tick. Market sentiments, Project Team expertise, Events as they unfold within the industry among others contribute to the growth or death of any cryptocurrency. As an analyst, you should learn how to trade these digital assets even in extreme cases of volatility which has remained as one of the enduring characters of cryptocurrencies. Knowing which exchange to trade, navigating your way around either centralized or decentralized exchanges when to open and close a trade, which cryptocurrency project has a short, medium- or long-term prospect or even a mix of any of these falls under your purview. Margin and Futures trading is also handy expertise that is very much in huge need within the industry.

With several job openings advertising opportunities with the ability to trade coupled with hands-on risk management skills as a major part of the job description, it is without doubts those with this skill should be able to make decent fortunes for themselves if they land good gigs.

Traditional financial institutions such as banks like JP Morgan have been reported to have rolled out its cryptocurrency strategy by launching the first US bank-backed cryptocurrency which is a detour from its earlier hard-line stance where its CEO, Jamie Dimon called bitcoin “a fraud”. There has to be something very interesting in this industry. This, therefore, should interest anyone who intends to build a career and become a cryptocurrency analyst. As a dedicated career pursuer, you should familiarize yourself with several cryptocurrency projects. There are well over 5,170 cryptocurrencies reported by Coinmarketcap as at the time of publishing of this article. This directory is a good place to start with as it reports in real-time the gains & losses, market cap, the daily and historical trade volume of these cryptocurrencies and several other useful indicators that will aid your work as a Cryptocurrency Trade Analyst.

Community Manager

As you may well know, no project operates in a vacuum, this is very true for cryptocurrency projects which depend hugely on its army of community. Cryptocurrencies are on a frantic race for mass adoption which means efforts whether technical or promotional are being made to ensure the right persons hear and also use crypto for their daily transactions. Building a grassroots community has been the norm. Crypto projects and Startups constantly grow their community across several social media channels to help their goal of wide adoption. This means there is always the demand for those who possess the social and technical skills of managing these communities.

As a Community Manager, you are saddled with responsibilities such as: Manage Telegram — keep it alive with conversations around the specific project and industry happenings, post in Forums/ Facebook groups, Subreddits, working closely with other community managers or ambassadors to help portray the specific project in good light, work with project teams to get major announcements/Press releases out on all major crypto forums/finance forums, blogs, social media channels, and must have experience launching community initiatives such as bounty programs, ambassador program, creating an event series and writing email newsletters, etc. In a nutshell, you must ensure virtually no question goes unanswered within the community whether you’re responding with original answers or links from the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) repository.

Knowing your way around proper and friendly construction of conversations is a huge need. Also knowing how to minimally program chatbots comes in handy. Becoming an expert at using TTDR is a must. By the way, TTDR stands for Telegram, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit. These are platforms that drive high volume day to day traffic on cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects. Having a decent following on these platforms for yourself is also a huge plus. Most projects employing a community manager to help with the maintenance of their community on Twitter, for example, tend to favour a twitter user with decent followership. Reddit records 330 million monthly active users and has features such as Subreddits. As a community manager who will most likely be tasked with the responsibility of sparking and maintaining conversations across a project’s Reddit channel and other public channels on Reddit, it is important you familiarize yourself with how Reddit as a platform works.

Not to forget Discord, the popularity of this platform is beginning to show remarkable growth which used to be thought of as a platform exclusive for gamers. Discord possesses cool features such as creating channels as you have on Slack, and just like Telegram, it permits the linking of other tools such as website, social media accounts for its updates to be gotten by the community in real-time on Discord without having to switch applications. It also has Voice Channels where platforms can organize meetings and AMAs (Ask Me Anything), a popular activity observed by most cryptocurrency projects. This is a cool feature that will contribute to user adoption of Discord platform, especially among tech-savvy crypto community and enthusiasts.

Copywriter

Organizations are constantly on the lookout for those (individuals or corporate agencies) who can write articles or short-form essays that can eventually land the next sales. A typical copywriter takes a client’s advertising brief and generating original copy ideas that grab the attention of the target audience. This can include straplines, slogans, body copy, jingles, and scripts. This is what copywriting entails. As a copywriter who understands basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, a professional play on words, you can build a career around the blockchain and crypto-based projects when you are hired to come up with copies according to the needs of the hiring projects.

Copywriters work closely with marketing/sales departments to come up with campaigns that help in achieving marketing and sales goals. You should, therefore, familiarize yourself with some of the technical terms of cryptocurrencies and also the trend that characterizes the industry. Copywriters who are good at their art earn good pay for their skills.

Programmer

Good programmers are constantly on high demand in any tech-powered industry. The genius behind bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto who demonstrated his wizardry in coding by implementing a network that incentivizes the various actors within it, keeping it at bay from the controlling reach of any central government. But must you be a genius like Satoshi before you can build a successful career as a programmer in the industry? I think not.

Whether you are starting as a new or an already experienced programmer, startups seeking to offer value to their target customer or audience within the industry have needs of those who understand the technical angle of blockchain and decentralized ledger technology such as Decentralized Acyclic Graph (DAG) and Tangle which the IOTA network is powered on.

There are of course programming language skills that are vital for those who seek to major as developers for blockchain technology. C++ is the language Bitcoin was initially written on and therefore comes in handy for programmers in the blockchain industry. Java, Python which is one of the most popular programming languages between 2019 and 2020 are among the few a developer should be highly proficient in. Ruby, Ethereum’s Solidity, Go, C# and Javascript are also good

There’s a reason blockchain developers are the most paid in the industry, it is reported that about 0.3 percent of the global workforce know how to code. Therefore, anyone who seeks to build a career in this industry and has the built-in patience and rigour to advance his or her skills as a programmer stands a good chance of earning a good income whether you want to work as a freelancer or with firms that seek to employ developers full-time.

Designer

Designers are not just those who understand how to craft and churn out nice promotional banners to push publicity they are also those who understand how and what a good tech product entails.

First, even if your design skills are one who is only able to design digital banners and e-cards, you can still easily employ that to build a career around the blockchain technology. Crypto companies are in constant demand for those who can customize banners, come up with creative logos, GIFs and all sorts of banners for social media campaigns and community engagements. If you possess these skills, then you should be on the lookout for opportunities that need your service in the industry.

Furthermore, blockchain technology is not an end itself. It is the technology that powers innovative products such as Crypto Wallets, Digital Asset Exchanges, Decentralized games, and protocols, etc. which require intuitive front-end designs. This borders around UI/UX — User Interface and User experience. While User Experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company its services and its products, User Interface’s goal is to visually guide the user through a product’s interface. The common denominator between these two is the comfortable experience it affords the users of tech products. As a UI/UX designer, your skills will be employed in a vast array of products and services of companies employing the blockchain and other decentralized ledger technologies to service its users.

Research Analyst

There are several aspects of crypto and blockchain technology that demands careful study and documentation. With myriads of events happening in the Cryptocurrency industry, individuals and firms are always on the lookout for research materials that have been properly reported to have just the right perspective of the industry concerning a specific subject matter. This requires a bit of experience in the standard methods of carrying out researches. It can be conducted on an individual scale or embarked upon under the auspices of an agency.

The interesting part is that you could even be employed by conventional crypto exchanges, crypto news outlet or even a marketing agency that is focused on servicing technology firms. This is a fairly technical career choice that is in top demands. Even if you decide you want to be a solo research analyst there are avenues for you to showcase your skills and perhaps land a job as a crypto/blockchain research analyst. One of those ways would be through becoming a contributing author/writer to tech-focused publications out there. There are several of them that accepts contributing authors as long as your work depicts quality. One such is Hacker Noon, Data Driven Investor, The Startup, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Cryptocompare, etc.

Research Analysts are responsible for researching, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data related to cryptocurrency markets, specific or general operations, finance/accounting, economics, customers, and other information related to the crypto industry. In a nutshell, they help to make meaning of raw data presets available.

Crypto Journalist

Crypto is known for its extreme volatility prompting harsh criticisms and even the discrediting of this industry by several Finance Experts. There are always incidents of Wallet hacks, Exchange hacks, Futures approval, Crypto legalization by national governments and much more. These events are newsworthy events to report on in real-time. This is another good career option to pursue if you seek to make a career out of the crypto/blockchain tech industry.

Several of the news sites out there accept guest writers and contributing authors. Some may even pay you once they observe the quality of your work meets their standard. And if you have the drive to set up a website and understand basic SEO, you could even take it a step further by setting up your crypto and blockchain news website doubling as the editor of the blog. And just like I have already said, several people are on the lookout for websites and news media agencies, you might just have your capacity as a news site bolstered by accommodating contributing writers who are willing to work for free or with minimal pay depending on your terms.

Becoming a journalist in crypto and helping to report on the news round the clock is a credible career option in the blockchain and decentralized ledger tech industry.

Vlogger/Influencer

YouTube influencers are becoming increasingly popular. With more than one-third of global searches passing through this google owned social media giant, it is clear there are several opportunities in this area. There are popular crypto-focused YouTubers such as Crypto Lark, Doug Crypto, Suppoman, Ready Set Crypto and several others. Growing your fanbase and monetizing it comes with huge opportunities. Take, for instance, YouTubers were known to have made good fortunes during the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) boom of 2017 where they helped promote upcoming crypto startups and projects.

Asides the normal promotion of a product, as a Vlogger on YouTube, you could conduct independent reviews of projects within the cryptocurrency industry for your followers, giving them your opinion or assessment of specific projects. This may mean you earning based on traffic and ads watched by your followers on YouTube in the start or middle of a video as the YouTube algorithm positions it.

This demands huge work on your part as you will need to be fairly consistent in your video production and release and strategies with which you grow your fan base. You will also need to have editing skills to help make your videos appear professional and enjoyable to your audience.

Business Developer

This is one area that remains evergreen irrespective of the industry one finds itself. As the title suggests, businesses are developed intentionally to improve the organization’s market position to achieve financial growth by business developers. As a business developer, you would need to have at least a formal education not limited to disciplines like Economics, Business Administration or even a professional certification in areas such as Marketing and Sales.

Generally, a business developer looks for ways to bring in more revenue to a company. This can mean anything from looking for new markets, partnering with other companies, selling new products to existing markets, or developing new products or services for a global market.

The business developer must, therefore, keep abreast of competitor’s strategies, such as their marketing plans and new products. Also, the developer must have an in-depth knowledge of his company products, marketing strategies and key demographics that is crucial for driving measurable pointers such as sales volume or revenues. If you think your skills are tailored for this, then building a career by working with cryptocurrency startups or other established organizations employing the blockchain and decentralized technology is a good way to earn and build your career path.

All these skills like outlined can be employed remotely either as a freelance worker or as part of a formal team working for a company. They all afford the flexibility needed to function effectively in any of these roles and worth exploring.

I write and consult with tech startups employing blockchain, AI and other technology to build great products. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter