Hire Web3 Developers: Successful Entrepreneurs Guide

As the Web3 ecosystem matures, more and more businesses are looking to hire web3 developers that can build on this new and emerging technology. If you’re trying to hire developers for Web3 technologies like blockchain and distributed ledgers you may find that it takes time and requires specialised skills. That’s why we created this guide for entrepreneurs who want to hire web3 programmers in the industry—and we hope it helps!

Who Are the Web3 Developers?

Web3 developers are the developers of decentralized applications that run on top of Web3.0. Web3 Developers believe that the web is in need of some fundamental changes. They want to break from the current system and replace it with a decentralized model, where users own their data and have more control over how it is used.

Skills, Roles, and Responsibilities of a Web3 Developer for Hire

When organizations of all kinds—from startups to large enterprises—need web3 developers for hire, they’re faced with a unique challenge: finding an expert with the right skills to tackle the specific project in question (like building a dApp with Web3). This section will explore the role of Web3 developers and what skills they need to fulfill their responsibilities on the job.

The most important skill required for Web3 developers are:

• Programming languages such as JavaScript and CSS
• Experience working with Solidity and Rust
• Smart Contract web development
• Blockchain and cryptocurrency knowledge
• Test-Driven Development
• dApp development with Ethereum
• Strong analytical skills
• Good communication skills
• Version Control Systems: Gitlab/Github
• Blockchain architecture for networks & Protocols: TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, JSON RPC APIs

Here’s a list of roles and responsibilities filled by Web3 developers:

Front-end Developer:

This engineer builds the user interface (UI) for the dApp, which includes the look and feel of the application itself. They should be able to work with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Back-end Developer:

These blockchain engineers build the servers that host the dApp’s UI. They should be able to work with NodeJS or other server-side languages (Python, Ruby, etc.).

Full-stack Developer:

These engineers are often backend developers who also have frontend skills or vice versa. They’re able to take an idea from concept to production on both sides of the stack (frontend/backend).

Mobile App Developer:

They create mobile apps that run on the Web3 platform and allow users to view, manage, and interact with information on the blockchain. They ensure that their apps work well across different operating systems and platforms, including iOS and Android devices.

Data Scientist:

They analyze large datasets to identify trends in Web3 users’ behavior and performance. They also forecast how these trends could impact the future of Web3.

Machine Learning Engineer:

They develop algorithms that help make predictions based on trends they’ve identified through analytics software. These predictions are used to improve performance and user experience on the Web3 platform

DevOps Engineer:

They are responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of the entire Web3 system. They make sure that all components of the system are working as they should.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring Web3 Developers of different levels

As a successful outstaffing company, we’ve seen the pros and cons of hiring web3 developers of different levels. From fresh-out-of-school rookies to experienced veterans with multiple successful launches under their belt, there are reasons to hire at all levels. So, which level is right for you?

Junior Web3 Developers

Pros

• The main benefit is cost savings
• They can be more committed than senior developers
• More eager to learn and less set in their ways
• They are easier to mold into your company’s style and culture
• Enthusiastic and eager to take on tasks

Cons

• They can be overconfident and make unnecessary mistakes
• Limited knowledge about coding standards and best practices
• They may lack creativity since their experience is very limited
• They need more time for tasks than experienced developers

Mid-Level Web3 Developers

Pros

• More experience than junior developers
• Can take responsibility for important aspects of development
• Flexibility to go beyond their job description
• Self-motivated and don’t require a lot of direction
• Less likely to make mistakes that could be costly for your business

Cons

• Despite some experience, there may be gaps in their knowledge
• They still need someone who can сreate a task for them

Senior Web3 Developers

Pros

• Better problem solvers
• They have more industry knowledge
• Mentor to junior and mid-level developers
• Highly experienced and accomplished in their field
• Strong leadership skills for managing teams or individuals

Cons

• Being inflexible and unwilling to try new things
• Expensive hiring costs
• They may be overqualified for certain roles

When You May Need Web3 Developers for Hire?

The answer to this question depends on what kind of startup you are. If you are building a product that runs on the blockchain, then it makes sense to hire a web3 developer who has experience with the blockchain. If your goals are not related to these technologies, maybe you just want to implement Learning Management System, then a web3 developer is not what you need.

If you have a team of experts handling your blockchain development, they’ll be able to help you identify the blockchains and tools that make sense for your project.

The beauty of working with distributed systems is that there are many ways to approach any given problem—Web3 offers particularly exciting opportunities for startups to tackle these problems from new angles. As Web3 grows and evolves over time, it will become increasingly important for startups to be able to pivot their strategies based on these changes and opportunities.

Where You Can Find a Web3 Expert for Hire?

If you’re looking for a Web3 expert, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that your business needs some external experts to help you achieve your goals. More so, since the local market can’t produce as many developers as the burgeoning number of companies need now, it’s better to look towards alternatives.

So, let’s have a look at the main options when it comes to hiring Web3 experts: an outstaffing company, freelance websites, hiring agencies, and an outsourcing company.

Outstaffing Company

Outstaffing agencies take care of recruiting, vetting, and onboarding new talent. This is one of the most popular methods for finding Web3 experts (or if you want to find NFT developers or cryptocurrency developers for hire they still can help). It may be not as fast as hiring a freelancer, but an outstaffing company provides you guarantees, which freelancer can’t offer. Also, outstaffing less overhead than recruiting through an agency or outsourcing company.

However, it’s important that you look for an outstaffing agency that has blockchain developers in their talent pool because they will know how to match you with the right candidate for your project. ProCoders, for one, has built a respectable base of talented blockchain experts that can help supercharge projects via outstaffing.

Outstaffing Gains:

• Project flexibility. You can work around the developers’ schedule.
• Cost-effectiveness. You pay only for code delivered, not hiring costs or other recruitment expenses.
• Time savings. Outstaffing has a faster hiring process than trying to hire in-house developers (even if you want to hire Solidity developers, which are in very high demand now).

Outstaffing Pitfalls:

• Management is on your side. You need a tech lead or PM who can manage your project because an outstaffing company usually doesn’t do such a thing.

Freelance

Another option is to hire web3 coders directly through one of the many freelance marketplaces available such as Upwork, Fiverr, etc. You’ll have access to a wide variety of skill sets, but will need to vet each candidate before deciding if they’re right for your project or not. The upside is that they’re typically cheaper than hiring an employee full-time, but the downside is that they might not have enough experience working with blockchain technology yet, which means training costs on top of the app developer hourly rate could be higher.

More so, freelancers are often not as reliable and dependable as companies may wish; this affects startup especially because they have to move with speed.

Freelancing Gains:

• Freelance developers often have more variability in their experience, which leads to a better demonstration of expertise.
• Hiring freelancers can save companies money, especially when compared to hiring full-time employees.
• Freelancers can help fill in during busy periods or if an employee calls in sick.

Freelancing Pitfalls:

• When you hire a freelancer, you don’t have much control over what they will do or how fast they will do it.
• Limited knowledge about the candidate’s skills, experience and personality.
• No guarantee of quality work.

Hiring Agency

If you’re looking for a full-time employee, an agency can be a great option. But be prepared: agencies often have high rates, and there’s no guarantee that the person they send you will have all the skills you need—or even any of them. Plus, they’ll take your money whether the candidate ends up working out.

Hiring agency gains:

• The company can focus on their core business and not have to worry about finding and interviewing candidates who fit the job description.
• It saves time since they will not have to spend time interviewing, screening and testing candidates.

Hiring agency Pitfalls:

• The developer might not be the right tech fit for your company.
• The developer may have been placed by an agency that does not match with the company’s culture or vision.
• Hiring costs are rather high.

Web3 development outsourcing company

An outsourcing company is similar to an agency in that it can supply a full-time employee, but it’s usually more cost-effective and there are fewer risks involved. If your project needs change, you can just move on without paying for someone who isn’t doing much work anymore. The downside here is that you don’t always get access to the best talent; it’s up to the company to decide who gets hired based on their own criteria.

Companies like ProCoders apply the most rigorous criteria to assemble teams, though. At Procoders, for instance, we have a supercharged discovery phase that helps us make a full plan for the implementation of a project idea. Moreover, with our dedicated teamwork model, you can hire our developers to not just map out the plan but also implement it after the research.

Outsourcing company gains:

• Outsourcing can help you gain tech stack skills with industrial expertise. This results in robust software solutions
• You as the client have full workflow control and management of the project
• You can save costs by finding an outsource company in a cheap location or that specialise in the specific task you are looking for

Outsourcing company pitfalls:

• You may not be able to communicate directly with your developer, which makes it harder to solve problems quickly.
• Many outsourcing companies may be limited in their ability to meet your specific needs
• Some outsourcing companies may be inflexible to meet your needs, compared with outstaffing companies

Questions to Ask Web3 Developer for hire

The hiring process for your next Web3 developer is a big deal. Not only will you be interviewing them, but it’s likely that they’ll interview you, too! Both of you need to make sure you’re the right fit for each other—and that involves asking some tough questions. So what should you ask? We’ve rounded up our top questions to ask any prospective Web3 developer:

• What is your experience with Ethereum protocol?
• How much time have you spent working in Solidity?
• How to develop blockchain applications?
• How to make a smart contract and what tools do you use to test it?
• Do you know any other languages or technologies besides Solidity and Truffle?
• What is their previous experience with web3 development?
• How do you stay up-to-date on Web3 design trends?
• What type of websites or apps have you built in the past?
• What were some challenges that came up during those projects? How did you handle them?
• Are there any specific tools, platforms, or programming languages that you prefer using? If so, why do they work well for your needs?
• Are there certain things that you do not understand or do not know how to do?
• Do you have any experience working remotely? If so, how did it go?

14 Steps of Hiring a top-notch Web3 Developer

To hire web3 coder is an important step toward expanding your company’s web presence and taking it to the next level. By hiring a developer, you can create a website that stands out among the competition and increases conversions. To ensure that you find the right developer for your needs, consider these steps.

Determine your business task for Web3 developers

This includes setting goals for the role, researching industry trends, and analyzing your inner processes.

Identify your hiring requirements

Among other things, think about the type of Web3 developer you need: junior or senior, full-time or part-time, on-site or remote. Other requirements to consider include the tech stack for the project and the required experience. For example, more complex projects require the input of more senior developers. If you are building a very niche product, you should consider industrial expertise as part of your hiring requirements as well.

Create a job description

Write a clear and informative job description that will capture their attention and help pick out suitable candidates from the crowd. An effective job description will include a specific job title, a descriptive but concise job summary, an outline of responsibilities and duties for the candidate, the qualifications and skills required, as well as salary range and other benefits the position attracts.

Analyze Web3 developers’ rates and hiring environment

This information will help you set up a budget, assign a Web3 Developer Salary for your future hire, and choose an appropriate hiring model. Remember that these rates are broadly based on the developer’s experience level, that is, junior, middle and senior developer. However, other factors come into the play as well, most especially the location of developers as well as living conditions. So, hiring from Estonia is cheaper than hiring from the United States, for instance, even if both developers are similarly qualified.

Check Web3 developers’ availability by level and location

Using the reports on job marketplaces like Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn

Assign a budget

Calculate the cost of hiring a full-time developer for each position you need to be filled, using salary data from sites like Glassdoor and Salary.com. An helpful hint is to remember that developer’s salary and hiring costs are based on the hiring model. For instance, using an agency costs more than outstaffing, while in-house staffing is often the most expensive hiring model. If you are working with a minimal budget, then you can consider outstaffing or outsourcing.

Build your hiring funnel

Build out an effective funnel that leads candidates from discovery all the way through onboarding and beyond. The key stages in between include the interview stage, technical assessment, and setting agreements. In this case, an outstaffing model helps greatly to smoothen the stages and save costs in between. For instance, much of the assessment stage would have been completed by the oustafffing company so that you the client can be assured of getting the best developers.

Choose a hiring model

There are various models (outstaffing, outsourcing, freelancing, hiring agency) of hiring that you can consider when choosing a web3 developer for your project. Oustaffing can be your way if you’re looking for some developers and you have a specific task for them or will collaborate them with your in-house team. It can be effective as urgent hiring when you need developers to start asap.

Hiring costs are quite low with a right staff partner. On the other hand, outsource is your gainful model if you need a specific solution. Application or program product to delivery without your management and in-house developers. Freelance can be reliable in low-budget and small urgent tasks. Hiring costs are low, though risks are quite high.

However, a hiring agency can work for you when you’re looking for someone really robust and with a specific tech stack or C-level staff. Hiring costs, in this case, is rather high, usually some percentage of a month salary.

Optimize your hiring process

Startups usually require a faster-paced hiring process because of the great emphasis on a hastened time-to-market. Therefore, your hiring process must be optimized towards the speed that high competition requires, particularly in the Web 3 world and especially if yours is an SBM. This can involve going for alternative hiring models such as outstaffing that allow you to hire a full team within weeks or even days, depending on the complexity of your project.

Checkpoints to define and neutralize the pitfalls

A potential job candidate should undergo several stages of candidate selection before they get hired. A common pitfall is hiring a technically-proficient candidate whose personality and working model simply isn’t a great fit for your company. That’s why prior interaction with the developers before hiring is important, even when you choose outstaffing or outsourcing.

Prepare an offer

Provide clear information about the salary, perks, and benefits, as well as any other added bonuses you can offer.

Advertising

Advertise the position on job boards, social media platforms (Facebook/LinkedIn) or ask connections directly if they know good developers in their network. Otherwise, you may reach out to the outstaffing company with your job description and let the company find a candidate (if you need, for example, find Defi developers) that fits your company project’s needs.

Interviews

An effective interview covers questions related to technical proficiency as well as soft skills, where you can assess the candidate’s personality. In many cases, two or three interviews are required. However, too many interviews, especially when you have to quickly fill a post can be draining. To reduce interview time, you can hire an hiring agency or an outstaffing company.

However, only the latter would truly give you access to your development team before the project begins.

Clear onboarding process

A clear onboarding process after a candidate has been hired will ensure that they rightly understand and can adapt to the company’s vision, processes, and values. This will foster teamwork and enable them to make meaningful contribution for the delivery of a robust solution.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Web3 Developer

Whether you’re looking to build your first web3 app or improve the quality and experience of your website, hiring a web3 developer can take your project to the next level. This section will help you understand how much it costs to hire a web3 developer.

Web3 Developers’ Salary 

	Junior (Annual)	Mid-Level (Annual)	Senior (Annual)
Estonia	$32,200	$75,510	$98,108
Germany	$69,369	$94,334	$114,584
United States	$70,419	$100,029	$124,047
India	$12,796	$21,901	$32,542
Brazil	$21,254	$29,956	$37,440

Web3 Developers Hourly Rates

Country	Average Hourly rates (all levels)
Estonia	$45
Germany	$60
United States	$61
India	$33
Brazil	$40

Hire Web3 Developers with ProCoders

At ProCoders, we do not just focus on supplying coders. Our focus is on supplying talents and contributors who will make meaningful additions for your team. Located in Central Europe which is one of the most outstaffing-friendly countries, especially for the tech industry, our developers have experience working across a range of time zones. ProCoders’ development process is optimized to give clients faster turnaround times and expert processes and infrastructure.

What is the flow of hiring with ProCoders?

We are always in a constant process of hiring developers in our company, and in our team. Every coder we provide is our employee, regardless if we hire him, especially for your project or if he already was our team member.

The process of hiring with ProCoders from our point of view consist of 4 stages:

Research

We gather developers with marketable skills, who are proficient in English and have an affordable price for their work. Our recruiters try to connect with these potential candidates to invite them for interview. Our research process is supercharged by an efficient discovery process, whereby we match developers based on the demands of the project at hand. This ensures that the development team we assemble can rightly understand project requirements and work with our clients efficiently.

Pre-screen and English check

Our recruiters talk to candidates in English to check their English-speaking level and find out whether this person can understand English speech and freely explain their thoughts or not.

Also, recruiters try to check the soft skills and mindset of the candidate. We hire not just orderly coders, we try to find the best troubleshooters who can solve any challenge in their work. That is why recruiters try to find out which tasks are the most interesting ones for the developer, whether he likes to work in a team or by himself, what his motivations are, and what he wants from his life.

We try to pick up people with a friendly attitude, wide experience, and high motivation. Also, we check problem-solving strategy – if he/she tries to find everything on the internet by himself, or asks for help, how much time his research will take, and which sources he is using. So, we are trying to find out how much time this person will spend until he’ll ask for help if the problem is still unsolved.

Hard skills

This requires an interview with tech lead. Our tech leads have a lot of experience, so they know how to check the level of knowledge. Our tech leads always work with up-to-date technologies, so they know what questions are hot right now. Such technical questions help to reveal the actual proficiency of the developer and whether it corresponds to what should be expected based on their experience level. This applies to how they handle various tech stacks, their knowledge level, and their familiarity with the latest updates in the field.

Interview with the client

This process is completely on client-side. Therefore, it’s our client’s decision whether he like our developer or not. This entire process could take 2 weeks on top. However, on the client-side, it looks a bit different. After the client comes to us, we make NDA contract and after that client provides us with all requirements (dev level, tech stack, some unique details, which challenge this developer should solve).

Afterwards, we send you the CV of the developer who fits your requirements, and then you pick up those in whom you are interested and interview them

Are developers available, or they will be hunted for my project?

In the case of ProCoders, both applies. Usually, we try to have 15% of our employees on the bench, that way if new clients come to us, we’ll have developers to provide. That is why we are usually hiring fresh staff. However, our reputation and quality of our work is the reason our partners recommend our services to their friends. Due to that, we always have a flow of new customers.

So, sometimes, when we have too many new clients, we are running out of developers we can provide. Sometimes the situation is, that our developer will be available in a few weeks (he needs to finish his current project) and if our new client is not in a hurry this is a possibility. But if our client can’t wait, we can hire a new developer specifically according to client demands.

This new employer will be part of our staff and when he’ll finish his contract with the client, he’ll still be our employee, our responsibility, and we’ll eventually provide him for the new project. That is why we always pay attention to the quality of our employees.

Legal, intellectual property guarantees

We want to produce the best fit for our clients, so before we even start to search for a suitable developer for your project, we should know what challenges this developer should solve on your project, and what are the key features of that project. That is why we need to know some details about the project.

However, we are careful to respect the concerns of our future clients about their confidential information, so we never start to talk about the project before NDA and NSA. We have our own template, but we also can collaborate on a client’s document.

An NDA is about protecting confidential information; that is, we’ll never talk about your project without your permission. NSA is useful when we collaborate with an intermediary company – we promise not to poach a client you are working with.

How are ProCoder’ developers different?

ProCoders’ hiring flow combines an efficient discovery phase composed of in-depth research with a speedy development process. Since we have developers in our employ already, assembling a team of developers for any project should not take more than a week, as we have done for other projects.

So, we are not just going to be hunting for new developers. We only assign developers to a team according to their expected delivery performance and fit for each project. More so, unlike in freelancing where there is no much legal guarantee for the developer, ProCoders is a professional business operating according to industry best practices. Before starting a project, we ensure that the necessary business agreements are in place.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways

• Web3 offers particularly exciting opportunities for startups to tackle problems from new angles. For this reason, startups will benefit from hiring web3 developers.
• Hiring web3 developers is typically expensive, but you can lower costs by hiring an outstaffing outsource company
• You should consider optimizing your hiring process tailored to the web3 technology as well as your company’s specific goals
• Procoders’ team has helped multiple startups and SMBs to hire web3 programmer and implement tech solutions for their clients that have improved their processes and made them more efficient. We also know how to build a DeFi app, create your own NFT marketplace, and how to make your own crypto token from scratch and can help you with this aim as well!