MyJob 2025 Web3 Employment Market Annual Review

— A Year Defined by Technology Dominance, Compliance Expansion, and Structural Maturity

2025 marked the year when the Web3 job market truly completed its post-bubble transition. From cautious hiring at the beginning of the year to structural recovery toward year-end, the market shifted decisively away from headcount expansion and toward technical depth, compliance capability, and real business execution.

Drawing on MyJob’s Web3 Employment Insights weekly reports from Week 40 through Week 51 of 2025, this annual review provides a comprehensive analysis of the Web3 hiring landscape through four lenses: job structure, compensation trends, industry focus, and evolving talent profiles.

1. Market Overview: Technical Roles Remain Dominant as Polarization Deepens

1.1 Technical Roles Maintain Long-Term Leadership

Across Weeks 40–51, technical roles consistently dominated Web3 hiring demand:

• Technical positions accounted for 50%–85% of weekly job postings
• Week 51 reached a yearly peak, with development roles comprising 85% of demand
• Blockchain Engineers, Smart Contract Engineers, Golang Engineers, and DevOps Engineers appeared week after week

This signals a fundamental shift: the Web3 industry has fully moved beyond narrative-driven experimentation into a phase of infrastructure consolidation and protocol-level execution. Capital is no longer chasing ideas—it is paying premiums for deployable expertise.

1.2 Experience Mismatch Becomes a Defining Pattern

One of the most striking trends of 2025 was the persistent mismatch between job labels and expectations:

Many roles labeled “Entry Level” required 5–7 years of experience.

This pattern appeared repeatedly across Solidity, Blockchain, DevOps, and Security positions:

• Week 49: 42% of “entry-level” roles required 5+ years of experience
• Week 50: Solidity roles demanding 6 years of experience classified as entry-level
• Weeks 47–51: Core engineering roles universally expected immediate productivity

This is not mislabeling—it reflects a structural reality: Web3 companies no longer have the margin to train from scratch. They are hiring engineers capable of assuming protocol-level responsibility from day one.

2. Compensation Trends: Accelerating Polarization and Rising Ceilings

2.1 High-End Salaries Continue to Break Records

Throughout 2025, salary ceilings for Web3 roles continued to climb:

• Standard technical roles: $2,000–$4,000 / hour
• Mid-to-senior engineers: $5,000–$9,000 / hour
• Elite roles:
  • Steakhouse Financial: $20,000 / hour
  • BitFuFu executive roles: $23,000 / hour
  • Deepcoin compliance positions: $12,000 / hour

Notably, compliance and risk roles officially entered the high-compensation tier, challenging the long-held assumption that only developers command top salaries.

2.2 The Logic Behind Salary Divergence

Three structural principles defined Web3 compensation in 2025:

1. Protocol-layer > Application-layer > Operational roles
2. Lower substitutability commands higher premiums
3. Roles directly affecting capital security and regulatory survival hold pricing power

This explains the sustained demand for Golang engineers with high-concurrency experience, specialists in Move, Vyper, Cosmos SDK, and the rapid ascent of compliance, AML, and risk control professionals.

3. Three Defining Keywords of 2025

Keyword One: Hardcore Technical Specialization

Technical hiring in 2025 moved decisively toward specialization:

• Golang, Rust, Move, and Vyper featured prominently
• High-concurrency systems, gas optimization, MEV defense, and cross-chain communication became baseline expectations
• NFT indexing, on-chain data infrastructure, and standardized data pipelines gained importance

In this environment, “knowing how to write smart contracts” is no longer sufficient. Employers increasingly seek engineers who understand protocol architecture and on-chain economic systems.

Keyword Two: Compliance Becomes a Core Capability

2025 marked the true breakout year for Web3 compliance roles:

• Regulatory frameworks such as FATF Travel Rule, MiCA, and SFC moved from theory to enforcement
• Exchanges, RWA platforms, and infrastructure providers expanded compliance hiring simultaneously
• Role requirements evolved from legal background alone to on-chain literacy plus tooling expertise

Compliance is no longer a cost center—it has become a core survival function for Web3 organizations.

Keyword Three: Return of Real Business Value

Unlike the 2021–2022 cycle, hiring decisions in 2025 prioritized:

• Operational efficiency
• System security and capital protection
• Regulatory risk reduction
• Measurable user and revenue growth

As a result, Exchanges, DeFi, RWA, and infrastructure projects dominated recruitment, while purely narrative-driven projects faded from the market.

4. Three Takeaways for Web3 Job Seekers in 2026

4.1 For Engineers: Build at the Core, Not the Edge

The 2025 data is unequivocal: protocol-layer and infrastructure roles offer the highest long-term ceilings.

4.2 For Non-Technical Talent: Move Toward Compliance and Protocol-Level Product

The most resilient non-technical paths are compliance, risk, AML, and product roles deeply integrated with protocol design.

4.3 For Everyone: Web3 Is No Longer a Low-Barrier Experiment

Web3 is no longer a shortcut for fast career transitions, but a highly specialized, long-term competitive arena.

2025 Was the Year Web3 Careers Truly Matured

The Web3 employment market did not experience explosive recovery in 2025, but it underwent a far more important transformation:

• From narrative-driven hiring to capability-driven selection
• From rapid expansion to precision recruitment
• From short-term speculation to long-term construction

Through its ongoing Employment Insights series, MyJob will continue documenting the most authentic signals in Web3 talent flows. The story of Web3 continues into 2026— but the spotlight now belongs only to those truly prepared.