How to Recruit Niche Tech Talent: Go, Rust & Blockchain Developers for Hiring Managers

Recruiting for niche tech stacks is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve ever tried to hire a Go, Rust, or blockchain developer, you already know the pain: endless resumes that don’t fit, candidates who can code in Java but have never touched Go, and blockchain “enthusiasts” who disappear after the screening call. The market is flooded with job seekers, yet somehow the exact skill set you need feels almost impossible to pin down. You don’t need more noise—you need sharper ways to identify, evaluate, and close the right candidates quickly. The good news? With the right strategy, you can stop wasting hours on unqualified applicants and start building a repeatable process for landing the rare engineers that make your projects move forward.

Table of Contents Why Niche Tech Hiring Is So Challenging

The Market Outlook for Go, Rust, and Blockchain Developers

Proven Strategies to Source Specialized Talent

How to Assess Candidates Beyond the Resume

Retaining and Engaging Niche Developers

Key Takeaways

Why Niche Tech Hiring Is So Challenging Hiring managers often face two opposing realities:

A crowded job market with too many applicants.

A shallow qualified pool when it comes to niche skills.

Rust, for instance, has topped the most-loved language list for 9 years in a row, yet only about 709,000 developers use it as their primary language worldwide ( zenrows.com ). That’s a fraction compared to JavaScript or Python.

Blockchain is even trickier: while the hype is massive, actual engineering talent is scarce, which inflates salaries and competition.

Your next step? Accept that you’re not just hiring against local competitors—you’re hiring in a global market where every startup, bank, and Web3 project is hunting for the same people.

The Market Outlook for Go, Rust, and Blockchain Developers Go developers are highly sought after in fintech, cloud services, and high-performance backend systems.

Rust continues its surge in safety-critical domains like cloud infrastructure, embedded systems, and blockchain platforms.

Blockchain developers saw 517% growth in demand in recent years ( thecryptorecruiters.io ), with crypto-related postings up 118% year over year in 2023 ( recruitblock.io ).

Expert insight: “When you’re looking at hiring niche developers, you’re not just competing on salary—you’re competing on vision and culture. These professionals want to work where their skills matter most.” — Andrew Flowers, Labor Economist at Appcast.

Proven Strategies to Source Specialized Talent Go where they are

Rust devs are active in communities like Rust Users Forum and Reddit r/rust .

Go developers gather in Gophers Slack or Golang Bridge.

Blockchain talent often engages in hackathons and GitHub repos tied to DeFi.

Partner with niche recruiters Generalist recruiters often miss the mark. Specialized talent marketplaces and niche-focused platforms save weeks of screening.

Leverage open-source contributions Check GitHub activity. A candidate with consistent commits in Go projects is far more valuable than someone with “Go” listed on their resume.

Use pre-screening and search automation Searching and Screening manually wastes time. AI-powered platforms like Scaletwice.com help finding the right talent through a network of specialized recruiters and filter candidates upfront, so you only spend time on those with verified skills.

How to Assess Candidates Beyond the Resume Don’t get fooled by buzzwords. Instead:

Practical coding challenges : Focus on real-world scenarios, like writing a blockchain smart contract or optimizing a Go routine.

Portfolio and GitHub review : Look for active contributions to relevant projects.

Scenario-based interviews : Ask how they would solve scaling issues in Rust or debug a Go service under high load.

Data to consider: A HackerRank report found that 59% of hiring managers say portfolio work is a stronger indicator of success than resumes alone ( hackerrank.com ).

Retaining and Engaging Niche Developers Recruiting is only half the battle. Retention is where ROI happens.

Offer continuous learning : Rust and blockchain evolve fast. Give budget for conferences and training.

Align with meaningful projects : Developers in niche stacks want impact, not maintenance tickets.

Competitive compensation : Salaries for blockchain engineers, for example, often exceed $150k/year in the U.S.

Failing here means going back to square one—expensive and disruptive.

Key Takeaways Niche hiring is hard because qualified Go, Rust, and blockchain talent is small compared to demand.

Communities, GitHub, and specialized platforms are your best sourcing grounds.

Resumes aren’t enough—real-world projects and challenges reveal true ability.

Retention requires more than money: vision, impact, and growth opportunities keep developers engaged.

Want to stop drowning in unqualified resumes and start connecting with the right developers? Explore scaletwice.com to streamline your niche tech hiring.