Your web3 recruitment specialists
Nexus IT Group is your trusted recruiting partner for Web3 hiring, connecting companies with the developers, product builders and community leaders driving the next generation of the internet. Web3 talent operates differently than traditional software talent. Many of the best builders are deeply embedded in Discord servers, governance forums and open source protocols rather than browsing LinkedIn job listings. Our Web3 recruiters live inside these communities, building genuine relationships with engineers, product managers and operators across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, infrastructure and DAO ecosystems so that we can introduce your team to people who would otherwise be impossible to reach through traditional sourcing.
Why Web3 professionals are so difficult to recruit
The Web3 talent market has its own culture, its own incentive structures and its own technical vocabulary. Compensation often includes token allocations, vesting schedules and treasury-denominated bonuses on top of base salary, which adds complexity to every negotiation. Candidates evaluate opportunities based on the credibility of the founders, the strength of the protocol, the token economics and the community traction as much as the title or the cash compensation. In-house recruiters and applicant tracking systems struggle to keep up since the right talent rarely surfaces through conventional channels. Our Web3 staffing team understands how to evaluate experience across mainnet deployments, audited smart contracts, on-chain reputations and contributions to widely used protocols, giving you a clear signal on who can actually deliver.
How Nexus solves Web3 hiring challenges
Whether you’re a Web3-native startup, a traditional company building a crypto strategy or a venture-backed protocol scaling your engineering team, our recruiters can help you navigate the unique dynamics of this market. We coach hiring teams on how to structure competitive offers in a token-driven environment, how to evaluate Web3-specific resumes and how to interview for skills like smart contract security, tokenomics design and DAO operations. We coach candidates through the unique aspects of Web3 hiring conversations including treasury health, token vesting cliffs along with how to assess the long-term viability of a protocol they’re considering joining.
Whether you’re a hiring manager with a difficult Web3 role to fill or a builder considering your next move, we would love to chat about your needs and how Nexus can help. Similar to technology roles across industries, the Web3 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 Web3 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 web3 talent
Nexus IT Group will quickly staff your open web3 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 staff a web3 team from a founding engineer to contract security review
Executive Search (Retained)
We run retained searches for web3 leadership, including CTO, Head of Engineering and the founding technical hires that investors want to meet before committing further. These searches are as much about persuading a candidate as assessing one, since the strongest people in this market have several credible options at any moment. Our retained placements hold a 96% candidate retention rate.
Direct Hire
Web3 hiring is full of profiles that describe involvement rather than delivery, so screening has to reach the actual contribution. Our recruiters work outbound and deliver a vetted shortlist within 4 days of taking the requirement, checked against deployed work and verifiable contribution history.
Contract Staffing
Launches, audits and integrations arrive as projects with fixed windows rather than as permanent seats. We act as both the recruiter and the W2 employer for the contract term, which keeps co-employment risk off your side and leaves conversion open. Our contract placements hold a 94.3% quality of hire ratio.
Recruitment as a Service
A web3 company hiring after a raise is usually filling engineering, security and infrastructure roles simultaneously. Our Recruitment as a Service subscription covers candidate marketing, sourcing, screening and delivery for the whole plan. We generate an engaged pipeline for a named web3 role in under 7 days.
The web3 disciplines we recruit across
Web3 hiring covers protocol engineering, product and community at once, and the strongest people in this market are rarely the ones looking.
Smart contracts and security
Product and design
Growth, community and marketing
Trading and tokenomics
What our web3 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 web3 staffing skills keep our clients coming back
Senior Solidity Developer
A DeFi protocol with over $400 million in total value locked tasked our Web3 recruiters with finding a Senior Solidity Developer who could lead the build of a new lending product on top of their existing platform. The candidate needed deep experience writing gas-optimized contracts, navigating audit cycles with firms like OpenZeppelin and Trail of Bits plus a strong on-chain portfolio. Our team sourced 156 candidates across Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism ecosystems by working through Discord communities, GitHub contribution histories and on-chain governance participation. We submitted four developers, the client interviewed all four and made an offer to a candidate previously contributing to a top-five lending protocol. The hire closed in 19 days.
Head of DeFi
A traditional fintech expanding into decentralized finance retained our Web3 recruiters for a Head of DeFi role that would build out their on-chain strategy from scratch. The challenge was finding someone with both deep DeFi credibility plus the ability to operate inside a regulated financial services environment. Our Web3 recruiters ran a confidential executive search, mapping 89 potential candidates across protocol leadership, crypto venture firms and traditional finance professionals who had crossed over. We presented a shortlist of six, the client met with four and extended an offer to a candidate who had previously led product at a major DeFi protocol and earlier in their career worked in derivatives trading at a global bank.
Web3 Product Manager
A consumer-facing Web3 gaming studio needed a Senior Product Manager who understood both free-to-play game mechanics plus token-based reward systems. Pure game industry PMs lacked the Web3 fluency and pure Web3 PMs lacked the consumer product chops. Our recruiters targeted PMs at hybrid Web3 gaming companies and reached candidates through a custom outreach that highlighted the studio’s IP, its publisher partnerships and the equity-plus-token compensation structure. We contacted 234 candidates, screened 22, submitted seven and the client hired one within five weeks.
Smart Contract Auditor
A boutique smart contract security firm was scaling rapidly after a string of high-profile audits and needed to hire three Smart Contract Auditors with experience reviewing complex DeFi protocols. The auditor talent pool is famously small since most strong auditors are already running their own consultancies or working at top firms. Our Web3 recruiters tapped into security researcher networks, including past Code4rena and Sherlock contest leaders, contacting 178 candidates. We submitted nine, the client interviewed six and hired three over the course of two months, with all three accepting offers that included token allocations from client engagements.
Nexus IT Group recruits nationwide including these cities
Frequently asked questions about web3 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 Web3 hiring space is fast-paced, highly competitive recruiting environment that offers big opportunities for Web3 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, the protocol’s traction and the compensation structure including any token component. With this series of questions our Web3 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 Web3 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 Web3 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, on-chain analytics, Discord communities, governance forums like Snapshot and Tally, ETHGlobal hackathon alumni, Crypto Twitter, Farcaster plus many other specialized Web3 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 Web3 clients is running right at 95.84%.
The Web3 hiring environment moves fast so our team of Web3 recruiters are trained to work quickly and accurately. The time required to send qualified candidates to the Web3 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 questions 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 Web3 space and have had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with builders shaping financial systems, gaming economies and creator platforms from first principles. The Web3 community thinks deeply about coordination, ownership and incentives in ways that few other technology sectors do. Helping put thoughtful builders in front of these problems is some of the most interesting work we do.
We’ve spent a great deal of time in early-stage recruiting and have had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with a number of amazing VCs and founders. From our perspective, the Musks of the world represent the future of technology, and we are major believers and investors in technology because, of course, it is the future. The startup revolution is particularly exciting as we help companies build teams that are shaping the next generation of innovative products and services. However, recruiting for Seed and Series A/B early-stage firms presents a distinct set of obstacles.
Web3 recruiters specialize in a specific market sector. Every day, our Web3 recruiters contact a specialized set of crypto-native candidates working with Solidity, Rust, smart contracts, DeFi protocols, NFTs, DAOs and infrastructure. When starting a new search, our team has a pool of personally-known candidates to call immediately. The point is that specialized Web3 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 Web3 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 Web3 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 crypto prospects and Web3 hiring managers, making us more “in the know” about the Web3 space. Web3 recruiters can provide insight into the landscape of employment, token compensation, vesting structures as well as the most recent candidate hiring and retention challenges in a volatile market.
Ultimately, Web3 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 Web3 recruiters are hyper focused on clients in the crypto and Web3 space. Our Web3 recruiting team has successfully worked with clients ranging from early-stage protocols to publicly traded crypto companies.
Whether you’re recruiting for a Senior Solidity Developer, Web3 Product Manager, Smart Contract Auditor or DeFi Protocol Engineer, our recruiting solutions have you covered. Our hires range from just about anything you can imagine that a company would need when hiring Web3 talent, including non-tech roles like Head of Web3, VP of Crypto, Tokenomics Specialist and many more, with a niche focus in Web3 staffing.
Our Web3 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 and where relevant we review on-chain activity, public GitHub contributions, audit reports they’ve authored and protocols they’ve shipped. 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, token allocations and much more. If this goes well then we will submit the candidate for client review.
First, it is incredibly difficult for Web3 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 crypto field where pseudonymous reputations and warm intros are the norm. They prefer to hear directly from the founders or core contributors, which brings us to the third challenge: recruitment is a full-time, highly specialized profession for which Web3 hiring managers do not have time.
Our Web3 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 Web3 recruiters are paid by the companies for which they place candidates. Your Web3 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.