Career Development

Building Your Portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer

Do you want to break into the blockchain world as a Rust engineer? Your portfolio is your ticket to standing out. It’s your chance to show off your skills, projects, and passion for coding.

Kristian Quirapas

Kristian Quirapas

— 6 min read
Building Your Portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer

Do you want to break into the blockchain world as a Rust engineer? Your portfolio is your ticket to standing out. It’s your chance to show off your skills, projects, and passion for coding. Whether you're just starting or leveling up your career, this guide will help you build a portfolio that grabs attention and opens doors in the exciting world of Rust and blockchain.

In this article you will be able to:

  1. Understand why having a portfolio is important as a Rust Blockchain Engineer;
  2. Be aware of the critical factors needed when building your portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer, and;
  3. Get actionable steps on how to build your portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer

The Importance of Having a Portfolio

As a thought exercise think of your answer to the following question below:

Would you trust a chef to give you an open heart surgery?

Trust. That's the keyword.

Here's why...

There is an abundance of people around the world who know nothing about you.

To them, you are a stranger with an unknown background.

And for most people? It takes a great deal of work before they can trust a stranger.

This is normal for humans because our brains are wired for self-preservation.

If you're applying for a job, aren't you going to be interviewed and assessed by the same humans who have a default mechanism to be cautious around strangers?

Then it shouldn't be surprising that they are initially cautious and untrusting because they're humans!

So what does this mean for you?

The initial hurdle you must cross is the initial gap in trust.

In the real world and a highly-rational industry such as the blockchain industry, a portfolio is one of the most effective ways to bridge this trust gap.

Your publicly verifiable portfolio with referenced production projects can build trust by demonstrating undeniable skill.

Trust. That's the keyword.

Critical Factors to an Effective Portfolio

I used to think that a fancy website, a beautiful landing page, and a ton of strong visuals would tremendously help in my portfolio.

In reality?

They do help, but not as much as you think.

So what factors helped tremendously in crafting an effective portfolio?

Verifiability, Risk, Difficulty, and Humanity

Verifiability - How easy it is for anyone to verify your information and skills

It strongly contributes to your portfolio because an open, easily verified, easily reviewed, and easily cross-referenced portfolio allows hiring managers to sell themselves on hiring you.

A visible set of production projects builds strong trust because it gives them ultimate clarity on your skills, makes them appreciate your transparency, and removes the friction and effort needed to get to know you, but openly serving it to them on a plate.

Risk - How much risk (responsibility) did you previously handle

It strongly contributes to your portfolio because it naturally verifies what you're capable of.

The more risk you previously took, the easier it would be to build trust with your hiring manager because your colleagues trusting you with big risks means you are someone reliable.

It means you have strong social proof of reliability.

This is why small personal projects and localhost projects don't work as effectively as you might want because it doesn't show enough of a risk taken for an effective measure of your reliability.

Ensure that you highlight the risks you took while working on the project or in that role (e.g. Built the X Rust block ingestion service for Y with a Z million daily active users).

Stating that you've created a service with Z million daily active users means you had to ensure everything was working and properly managed for that amount of risk.

Difficulty - How much effort did you exert to get a certain project to the finish line

It strongly contributes to your portfolio because difficulty communicates a handful of important characteristics one should possess to succeed with difficult work.

A non-exhaustive list would be grit, discipline, and work ethic.

Why?

It requires grit to tough it out when doing difficult work.

It requires discipline to stay the course when doing difficult work.

It requires a great work ethic to see difficult work to its fruition.

In summary?

Difficult work requires a different beast and that beast just so happens to be an attractive one for most hiring managers!

Humanity - How were you as a person? (Soft Skills)

It strongly contributes to your portfolio because how you behave around your colleagues establishes a strong picture of your soft skills.

One of the biggest complexities a company has to deal with?

Human Emotions.

In general, human emotions are very complex and non-deterministic in most cases.

Because of its complexity, navigating it has been a big factor in most hiring pipelines.

After all, you will be working with...

You guessed it! Humans.

A competency in the art of navigating your behaviors and the behaviors of the people around you allows you to be an efficient and effective professional.

If you’ve taken on leadership, business, or mentorship roles, be sure to highlight them in your portfolio.

Actionable Steps on How to Build a Strong Portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer


One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when applying for roles is the notorious Catch-22.

Source: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/catch-22_n?tab=meaning_and_use&hide-all-quotations=true#1258640160

The hiring Catch-22: you can't get experience because landing a job for experience requires experience.

This would stop most in their tracks, but not you...

Because you'll get actionable steps to build a strong portfolio as a Rust Blockchain Engineer.

The 2 fastest and most accessible for most:

  1. Client Projects
  2. Opensource Projects

Client Projects

  1. Find people who have businesses/startups and need a solution built. The harder the better.
  2. Do it for free.
  3. Ask for a selfie video testimonial after.

Opensource Projects

  1. Find a Rust Blockchain opensource repository that has open issues and is actively maintained and used
  2. Contribute
  3. Get your PR merged

I'll explore these in separate articles, so subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated!

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