How to Hire an Engineer for the Metaverse

If you’re looking to hire an engineer for the metaverse, it’s important to break down the process into a few simple steps. You’ll need to have a clear understanding of what your company is building (are you hiring for a blockchain engineer, an augmented reality engineer, a virtual reality engineer, an NFT engineer, etc.) and which programming languages the engineer will need to know. You’ll need to actually begin the hiring process (whether it’s through creating a job listing, meeting engineers in the real world or virtual worlds, or connecting with an engineer on Twitter or Discord), and, finally, you’ll go through the entire interview and onboarding process.

What will the metaverse engineer be building?

If you’re launching an NFT drop, you’ll want to hire an engineer with some background in a language like Solidity (Ethereum) or Rust (Solana). Many of the popular NFT projects are built on those 2 blockchains, with more being adopted as the technologies advance. Whether the engineer will be developing for the metaverse with smart contracts or programs, they’ll need to have a firm grasp on common practices, frameworks, and tools they can use to help you launch your company, product, or project. 

If your company is building a virtual world like Decentraland or The Sandbox, or building AR games like the ones Niantic creates, or building hardware like Looking Glass Factory or Infinite Objects, or something in the DeFi spaces, then the requirements will start to look very different. 

Where to find metaverse engineers

The truly awesome thing about the metaverse is that you can meet people in virtual worlds. There are so many 3D/virtual spaces with conferences, meetups, and just general hangouts happening every single week. Places like Twitter and Discord are such amazing tools for finding a community and the crypto/NFT community in both of those platforms have seen massive growth in 2021 and going into 2022. 

If you’re creating a job listing somewhere, you’ll receive a larger number of applications if your post is as detailed as possible. The most important things to remember to include are:

• Company name & description 
• Job description (including a role overview, job responsibilities, and job requirements)
• Location (including if its a remote job)
• Job type (full-time, part-time, contract, internship, etc.)
• Job category (design, product, engineering, sales, etc.)
• Job industry (augmented reality, gaming, NFTs, crypto, etc.)
• Salary (while this is usually optional for most job boards, it will greatly increase your number of applications)
• Application link (of course)

The interviewing process

Once you’ve started the interview process, be sure to remember that the engineer you’re hiring not only should have the technical know-how on how to build, or at least the capability to learn the tools needed to build, but they’re also a good fit for your company. The NFT space has been moving so fast you'll probably want someone who's familiar with the culture of NFTs. Metaverse gaming is set to really take off in 2022 and beyond so if uou're starting a gaming company you'll want any new hire in the metaverse to probably be familiar with both more traditional games and blockchain based games. The worlds of augmented reality and virtual reality will allow even more people to experience the metaverse, but they can also be great tools for the interview process. Perhaps you can conduct an interview in VR in a virtual space, or play an icebreaker during the interview using a tabletop AR game.

The metaverse is an all encompassing term that meets at the intersection of so many different industries, whether you’re building an AR fashion company, a VR gaming company, a company working with legal NFTs, a virtual world for hanging out with friends, or something else entirely, it’s the most exciting paradigm shift in technology since the invention of the internet, and hiring the right person will take you that much further.