The blockchain industry in Vietnam is facing a shortage of local talent, despite the sector’s growing presence in the country.
While the blockchain sector in Vietnam booms, the country is struggling to source local talent to enter the market and is seeking foreign talent to fill this gap. Although Vietnam is home to a large quantity of software engineers, those qualified for blockchain jobs, such as having distributed ledger technology qualifications, barely meet a fifth of the demand.
The talent shortage has resulted in project delays for many firms, with the potential to hamper the growth of not only Vietnam’s blockchain industry, but also finance, education, healthcare, logistics, and agriculture sectors that are integrating this technology.
Trinh Ngoc Duc, the CEO and Co-founder of Meta Djinn, the game developer behind blockchain game Fight of the Ages, shared that recruitment has been difficult in Vietnam, and at the same time the country does not have enough programmes in place to train workers.
“The scarcity of experienced blockchain programmers affects the product development process and leaves many potential projects unimplemented,” Duc added.
Kevin Tung Nguyen, the CEO of AI-powered recruitment and talent management platform, Jobhopin, commented that competition is high and “the market is thirsty for blockchain programmers,” having lost three employees who had received attractive offers three times their current compensation.
According to recruitment platform Vietnamworks, out of a thousand workers in the local IT industry surveyed, blockchain engineers received the highest salaries. In the United States, blockchain job postings increased by almost 400% over the past couple of years, demonstrating the talent shortage is a global issue.
As the sector continues to grow, if local talent cannot catch up, this will be a major road block, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung from Vietnam’s National Innovation Center (NIC) shared, noting that blockchain companies are already recruiting internationally from the United Arab Emirates, India, South Korea, and Europe. She added that “one of the reasons is that Vietnamese universities are not teaching blockchain and innovation centres and successful startups should launch their own short-term courses for students along with expanding international cooperation.”
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