Complete Hiring Guide
Everything You Need to Know
DeFi development requires two skills most job descriptions don't mention: protocol economics design and the specific attack vector knowledge that prevents the $3.8B/year in documented DeFi losses.
The DeFi Developer Profile That Actually Matters
What most DeFi job descriptions ask for:
Solidity, Hardhat, OpenZeppelin, DeFi protocol experience.
What a production-ready DeFi developer actually needs:
- Economic intuition: can they model token emission schedules, identify sink mechanism weaknesses, and identify scenarios where the protocol becomes insolvent?
- Flash loan attack knowledge: can they design AMM pricing and lending parameters that are resistant to single-block capital attacks?
- Oracle dependency awareness: do they default to TWAP oracles for collateral pricing? Do they know why spot prices are dangerous?
- Upgrade pattern expertise: do they understand the storage collision risk in transparent proxy patterns and how UUPS mitigates it?
- Composability attack awareness: does your contract call external contracts? Do they understand that any external call is a potential attack surface?
What to Verify
- Describe a DeFi exploit from the last 2 years and explain the mechanism.
- Design the liquidation mechanism for a lending protocol — specifically, how does it handle a cascade event?
- Explain how they would choose between a spot oracle and a TWAP oracle for a collateral asset.