Your blockchain recruitment specialists
The blockchain recruiters at Nexus IT Group focus tightly on protocol-level staffing services and understand what it takes to attract the deep technical talent this sector demands. Blockchain engineering sits at the intersection of distributed systems, cryptography, game theory and software engineering, which means the candidate pool is genuinely small relative to the explosion of companies hiring. Demand for engineers who can build consensus mechanisms, design zero-knowledge circuits, write secure smart contracts and architect scalable Layer 2 systems has far outpaced supply. Our recruiting teams combine in-depth knowledge of the blockchain ecosystem with an extensive network of engineers ready to take on a new role, with the right competencies and experience to meet your business needs. This includes passive candidates your in-house teams won’t find through traditional job boards.
Why blockchain engineers are in such high demand
Blockchain has moved well beyond cryptocurrency. Financial institutions are deploying private permissioned networks for trade settlement, supply chain companies are building track-and-trace systems on distributed ledgers, healthcare organizations are exploring patient data infrastructure and governments are piloting central bank digital currencies. Each of these use cases requires engineers who understand how to design and operate systems where mistakes are immutable and expensive. The work demands rigor that most software engineers have never been trained in, which is why the strongest blockchain engineers are often poached before their previous roles have even been announced as ended. Our staffing services connect companies with candidates who can design protocol architecture, write production-grade smart contracts in Solidity or Rust, build node infrastructure, audit for security vulnerabilities or stand up enterprise blockchain platforms on Hyperledger or similar frameworks.
How Nexus solves blockchain hiring challenges
Context matters enormously when hiring blockchain talent, and the technical depth required varies dramatically across roles. An engineer building infrastructure for a Layer 1 protocol needs very different skills than one writing smart contracts for a DeFi application, and a cryptography engineer working on zero-knowledge proofs operates in another world entirely. Generic IT recruiters often can’t tell the difference, which leads to mis-staffed teams and wasted hiring cycles. Nexus IT’s blockchain recruiters provide guidance and expertise throughout the journey from candidate assessment to onboarding, helping companies avoid expensive mis-hires and speed up their hiring process. We give the same support during the candidate experience, ensuring the opportunities we present are a good fit for their careers and then coaching them through technical interviews, offers along with salary and equity negotiation.
Whether you’re a hiring manager with a difficult blockchain role to fill or an engineer considering a career shift, we would love to chat about your needs and how Nexus can help. Similar to technology roles across industries, the blockchain sector is evolving quickly, and having an experienced professional on your side can help you successfully navigate this changing landscape. Even if you just want some insights into how our recruiters help connect talent with blockchain opportunities, we hope you’ll reach out so we can share our expertise and help your company or career continue to move forward.
Join the many companies that staff their roles with our blockchain talent
Nexus IT Group will quickly staff your open blockchain roles with high-quality committed candidates
81%
of our successful candidates are submitted within one week
92%
of our candidates will accept your offer
96%
of our candidates are employed with your firm after 12 months
Four ways to hire blockchain engineers from a protocol lead to contract audit support
Executive Search (Retained)
We run retained searches for blockchain leadership, including Head of Protocol, VP of Engineering and the senior engineers whose arrival determines whether a chain or a product ships at all. Token holders, investors and founders all tend to weigh in, so the shortlist has to be defensible to an unusually wide audience. Our retained placements hold a 96% candidate retention rate.
Direct Hire
The population of engineers who have shipped production smart contracts holding real value is small, and public credentials are easy to overstate. Our recruiters work outbound and deliver a vetted shortlist within 4 days of taking the requirement, screened on deployed contracts and audit history rather than on a chain name in a profile.
Contract Staffing
Audits, migrations and launches are bounded pieces of work with hard deadlines attached. We act as both the recruiter and the W2 employer for the contract term, so co-employment risk stays with us and conversion stays open. Our contract placements hold a 94.3% quality of hire ratio.
Recruitment as a Service
Protocol teams scaling from a founding group need engineers, security people and infrastructure specialists in parallel. Our Recruitment as a Service subscription handles candidate marketing, sourcing, screening and delivery on a monthly fee. We generate an engaged pipeline for a named blockchain role in under 7 days.
The blockchain disciplines we recruit across
Blockchain hiring turns on proof rather than claims, because public credentials are easy to overstate and the population that has shipped production contracts holding real value is small.
Smart contracts and cryptography
Architecture and consulting
Infrastructure and quality
Security
What our blockchain clients have said about working with Nexus IT Group
The great thing about nexus IT group is that it has a smaller family feel, but they are able to deliver IT candidates better than the largest IT staffing suppliers that we work with. They have delivered high quality cybersecurity professionals for several years to our firm.
I’ve been in Talent Acquisition for 15 years and have used many IT staffing firms over the years. I highly recommend Nick and nexus IT group over any other IT staffing services. nexus’ commitment to quality and delivery is top tier. They take the time to understand your needs, provide thorough screening, and make sure that candidates have a positive on-boarding experience.
Working with nexus IT group has made my job much easier. Having a recruiting firm who specializes in IT and within my industry, and who understands our specific culture and hiring needs has been instrumental in our talent acquisition talent strategy.
Capital One has used nexus IT group’s recruitment services for a number of IT positions at varying levels, over the past 4 years. We’ve had a high success rate working with nexus IT group which is a testament to the caliber of their work and their internal sourcing and vetting practices.
I’ve dealt with a lot of hiring firms in my 18 years in the investment banking profession, and the majority of them have been awful to mediocre at best. Dealing with Nexus IT Group, on the other hand, was a breath of fresh air. After only one one opening, I was blown away by the quality and quantity of resumes I received. Nexus IT Group pays close attention to my demands and requirements. As a result, the individuals who were referred to me were excellent fits for our open positions. I appreciate the personal and professional expertise you offer to the process.
SAIC provides government services to several federal agencies across the US. We needed to recruit several new cybersecurity talent for our growing practice area. Travis quickly understood our business and the requirements of each cybersecurity need. nexus IT group showed patience, flexibility, and expertise in the search process. If you’re looking for good cybersecurity recruiters then you can’t go wrong with nexus IT group.
It is hard to put into words what nexus IT group has done for our organization. nexus IT group knows exactly what we look for and they get the right candidates 99% of the time. Anyone looking to hire tech talent would be lucky to have nexus IT group on their side. They have great work ethic, responsive, and a wide array of market knowledge.
We’ve enlisted the help of a number of IT recruiting firms in the past. Nexus IT Group has contributed to the success of many great hires by working professionally, diligently, and efficiently. We contacted Nexus IT Group after being introduced to them, and we were instantly impressed by their promptness and ability to focus on our needs. We received 3 resumes the same day and 3 more the next day, and we were able to hire four people in less than a week. We added an additional individual through Nexus IT Group a few weeks later as a result of vast network, service and professionalism. I highly recommend working with Nexus IT Group.
Our blockchain staffing skills keep our clients coming back
Principal Blockchain Engineer
A Layer 1 blockchain project preparing for mainnet launch needed a Principal Blockchain Engineer to lead consensus engineering ahead of their token generation event. The role required experience designing or significantly contributing to a production consensus mechanism, which immediately narrowed the candidate pool to under 300 people globally. Our blockchain recruiters built a target list by mapping core contributors across major L1 protocols, sourced 124 candidates through GitHub, academic publications and conference talks then made warm introductions through mutual contacts where possible. We submitted five engineers, the client conducted deep technical interviews with all five and made an offer to a candidate previously working on consensus at a top-ten chain by market cap.
Zero Knowledge Engineer
A privacy-focused infrastructure startup retained our blockchain recruiters to hire two Zero Knowledge Engineers with experience implementing zk-SNARK or zk-STARK circuits. The ZK talent market is one of the smallest in technology, with maybe a few hundred qualified engineers worldwide. Our recruiters worked through cryptography research networks, academic publications and ZK-focused hackathons to contact 89 candidates. The outreach was deliberately substantive since this audience expects technical depth from anyone reaching out. We submitted four candidates, the client interviewed three and made offers to two, both of whom accepted within a week.
Director of Blockchain
A Fortune 500 financial services firm asked our blockchain recruiters to find a Director of Blockchain who could lead their growing distributed ledger initiative across trade finance, settlement and tokenized asset projects. The role needed someone fluent in both enterprise blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and public chain ecosystems along with the regulatory landscape governing institutional crypto. Our team mapped 167 candidates across consultancies, enterprise blockchain teams at large banks plus crypto-native firms that had hired traditional finance leaders. We presented a shortlist of six, the client conducted full panels with four and made an offer to a candidate who had previously led blockchain at a global custodian.
Senior Solidity Developer
A growing NFT infrastructure company needed to fill three Senior Solidity Developer roles within a quarter to support a new product launch. They had been working with two other staffing firms for four months with zero hires made. Our blockchain recruiters took over the search and immediately changed the outreach approach, emphasizing the company’s traction, the technical interestingness of the problems and the equity-plus-token compensation. We contacted 296 candidates over six weeks, screened 41, submitted twelve, the client interviewed nine and hired three within the original deadline. Since this initial engagement we have placed an additional five engineers and one product manager at the same client.
Nexus IT Group recruits nationwide including these cities
Frequently asked questions about blockchain recruiting
To nexus IT group placement is an art, one that requires the proper alignment of talent with opportunity, experience with need, personality with environment, and aspirations with value. The blockchain hiring space is fast-paced, highly competitive recruiting environment that offers big opportunities for blockchain candidates. Our full-cycle recruiting system is a 51 step touchpoint process from start to finish. Our engagement process starts with a discovery call to understand the needs of the role and the technical specifics of the protocol or platform. With this series of questions our blockchain recruiters are able to build a sales cadence that we will use to deploy a multi-touch recruiting cadence precisely and accurately to hundreds of candidates that fit the expectations of the role. Once our targeted search is executed, we spend a series of 3 calls to get to know the candidates’ needs, wants, and future career interests. Once we’ve created a shortlist of qualified and fully vetted candidates, we will deliver our top 3 to 4 candidates to the blockchain hiring manager. Once the interview process starts we work with the candidate and the hiring team to make sure communication is responsive and transparent. Once a candidate is placed, we stay in touch with the placed candidate for 2 years just to see how things are going.
Our candidate sourcing can be described in 3 words: Identify. Engage. Toolstack. Typically, the best job prospects are those who are passive. This indicates that they are not actively seeking employment. As a result, they are not surfing the Internet in search of online job postings. And because they are not viewing online job postings, we have developed a robust and 100% outbound recruiting strategy. We begin our sourcing strategy by creating a candidate persona. Once we have successfully created the candidate persona, we will then create a content strategy that will attract top talent in the blockchain space. Once we’ve developed our cadence we will use a number of sources to scour the web to get our message in front of the right candidates. Strategies include searching our database, sourcing for referrals, sourcing from specific organizations, LinkedIn, GitHub, academic publications, ETHGlobal hackathon alumni, Devcon attendees, conference speaker lists, cryptography mailing lists plus many other specialized blockchain sites. We craft highly personalized messages that drive above industry reply rates. Our recruiting strategy is to begin conversations with passive candidates to learn about their future career interests, needs and wants then align those needs with future openings with a high-touch approach.
Currently our 1 year retention rate with our blockchain clients is running right at 95.62%.
The blockchain hiring environment moves fast so our team of blockchain recruiters are trained to work quickly and accurately. The time required to send qualified candidates to the blockchain hiring manager varies based on the position you are seeking to fill and the challenges we will face such as lower than market compensation, token vesting concerns, slow feedback, regulatory considerations and other variables. We can deliver applicants on the day of contract signing, within a few days, or within a few weeks.
We’ve spent a great deal of time recruiting in the blockchain space and have had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with teams building genuinely novel financial and computing infrastructure. The engineers we work with are wrestling with fundamental questions about trust, ownership, coordination and computation that have no equivalent in traditional software. Helping put the right people in front of these problems is some of the most intellectually interesting work in technology recruiting.
Blockchain recruiters specialize in a specific market sector. Every day, our blockchain recruiters contact a specialized set of candidates working with Solidity, Rust, Go, cryptography, distributed systems, smart contracts and protocol design. When starting a new search, our team has a pool of personally-known candidates to call immediately. The point is that specialized blockchain recruiters sprint out of the gate more effectively than staffing firms that go back to the drawing board for each search.
When employers receive a resume from a blockchain recruiting firm, there is a high probability that they are familiar with the individual. Our clients trust that we have thoroughly screened the candidate over a series of multiple conversations and that they will be worth the hiring manager’s time to interview.
Another benefit of using a specialized blockchain recruiting firm is you will experience less of a “resume broker” relationship and more of a “sector expert.” We spend countless hours every day conversing with blockchain prospects and hiring managers, making us more “in the know” about the blockchain space. Blockchain recruiters can provide insight into the landscape of employment, token economics, equity, compensation as well as the most recent candidate hiring and retention challenges.
Ultimately, blockchain recruiters have access to a concentrated pool of candidates, resulting in increased efficiency during the hiring process and the ability to establish long-lasting relationships with the industry’s top talent.
Though we have several different practice areas such as cloud staffing, cybersecurity staffing, data science staffing, devops staffing, digital marketing staffing, private equity staffing, government IT staffing and software development staffing, our blockchain recruiters are hyper focused on clients in the distributed ledger and protocol space. Our blockchain recruiting team has successfully worked with clients ranging from early-stage Layer 1 protocols to Fortune 500 enterprises building permissioned networks.
Whether you’re recruiting for a Senior Blockchain Engineer, Smart Contract Developer, Protocol Engineer or Cryptography Engineer, our recruiting solutions have you covered. Our hires range from just about anything you can imagine that a company would need when hiring blockchain talent, including non-tech roles like Head of Blockchain, VP of Engineering, Director of Blockchain and many more, with a niche focus in blockchain staffing.
Our blockchain recruiters use a series of stages to make sure we minimize candidate fall out during the recruiting cycle. Our recruiters will perform an in depth conversation where they work to uncover the needs, wants and desires of the candidate’s next career move. We ask candidates specific skillset questions covering consensus mechanisms, smart contract security, cryptographic primitives and the specific protocols they have worked on. Where relevant we review GitHub contributions, audit reports and on-chain deployments. If the team feels that there’s a fit then another person from our team will speak with the candidate. If the 2 nexus reps feel that there’s a good fit then we ask the candidate to complete a 4 question feedback form so we can better understand if the role is a good or great fit. Once we receive the candidate’s feedback we will perform a “Lockdown” conversation where we ask a series of questions around counteroffers, interview stages, target salary expectations and much more. If this goes well then we will submit the candidate for client review.
First, it is incredibly difficult for blockchain hiring managers with little time to receive responses to job ads. Second, an increasing number of professionals do not respond to recruiters, particularly in the blockchain field where the talent pool is small and highly networked. They prefer to hear directly from the founders or core engineers, which brings us to the third challenge: recruitment is a full-time, highly specialized profession for which blockchain hiring managers do not have time.
Our blockchain recruiting fee is 22% to 25% of the candidate’s first year base salary. We do our best to find a payment structure that works best for your team, including arrangements that account for token-based compensation components.
Our blockchain recruiters are paid by the companies for which they place candidates. Your blockchain recruiter does earn a commission if you are hired, but the commission is paid by the company that hires you. Our recruiting fee isn’t taken out of your salary and it doesn’t lower the salary that you would be offered. Another misconception is that if you are presented by a recruiter, and another candidate is not, that you would be at a disadvantage because you have a fee associated with you getting that role. In our experience companies are seeking the best person for the job and they are not concerned about a fee being paid at that point. In fact, candidates that work with recruiters actually tend to make more than those who job hunt alone.