Want to Work in Blockchain? Read Through!

By Kapil Gauhar

No denying! Blockchain is now a massive area of the tech industry. But how do you get a job in it? Let’s find out.

Amongst the best parts of working in this industry is how it’s evolving with no breaks. This means that people working in the sector can easily upskill, move around and take on entirely new roles.

There’s so much to learn, but many of the skills are transferable at the same time, which means that individuals seeking a new challenge can do so with little or no previous experience in that domain. It’s all about how they can implement their current skills to learn a new role.

One such instance in this regard is of Eduardo Andrade, who’s currently working in Mastercard Labs in Dublin as a team member tasked with building and augmenting blockchain.

Andrade works on a modern Java development platform focusing around cryptography and software security. Eduardo Andrade interestingly said that he had no background in blockchain before taking on this role.

He said –

“I originally joined Mastercard five years ago as a software engineer to develop and scale a global payments platform, which had its inception in Mastercard Lab.”

He continued –

“Blockchain was definitely a topic I wanted to know more about so I took a course that explained in greater detail how blockchain work and the properties they have, along with some of the use cases they can be utilised upon. I found it very interesting and it certainly made me more curious about technology and its potential.”

His interest in blockchain drove him to the role he has now, but how did he get it with no previous experience in the area? That’s the question!

The answer to this question is his transferable skills. Yes, his transferable skills from working as a software developer were the key, as the model he as well as his team followed in that role was quite similar to how a startup operates.

He said –

“It felt really good to be able to develop rapidly, as part of a team working in different time zones, always pushing new features out to our customers. I used these skills to apply for the blockchain role last year.”

As a matter of fact, Andrade said most of his time working in blockchain is similar to a general Java software engineer working on a greenfield project, which is the work that doesn’t follow prior work.

Andrade said –

“This includes reading specifications, designing and implementing features, writing various types of tests, collaborating with other team members, and discussing ideas and approaches. Every day will bring you a new challenge to deal with and that is one of the reasons why this job is so appealing – you’re never bored!”