INDIANAPOLIS — The number of companies seeking metaverse experts is soaring, with thousands of openings across the U.S. and the number steeply climbing, according to new research from smarter job search engine Adzuna.
The research analyzed millions of jobs available on Adzuna over the last three years, revealing trends in the monthly number of U.S. job postings featuring the keywords “metaverse,” “crypto,” and “cybersecurity.”
February 2022 saw 3,339 advertised vacancies for metaverse positions, up from 1,892 in January and 1,016 in December. The number of metaverse vacancies has more than quadrupled in four months, increasing 379% from just 697 jobs in October, the month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded the company to Meta and announced a $10 billion project to build a parallel metaverse universe.
Metaverse opportunities range from openings for user interface (UI) and animation designers to developers, user experience (UX) designers, writers, and data scientists. At a sector level, the top five industries currently hiring for metaverse experts are IT (1,705 jobs); creative and design (566 jobs); public relations, advertising , and marketing (361 jobs); engineering (272 jobs); and sales (202 jobs).
Although the recent rebranding of Facebook to Meta has catalyzed a rise in openings, the first metaverse posting was in April 2019, showing the concept has existed for several years as a niche rather than a mainstream term.
In the beginning of the year, other big tech brands started investing in the metaverse. For instance, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video game developer and publisher, which will allow the company to develop Microsoft-backed games and software in the metaverse in the coming years. Google is starting to invest again in augmented reality (AR) to get its foot back in the door within the metaverse, investing millions in a private equity fund for future metaverse projects.
Crypto and Cybersecurity
Two further areas have also seen rapid growth in job postings: crypto and cybersecurity. The number of job vacancies mentioning the keyword “crypto” has risen sharply, accounting for 5,302 advertised vacancies in February 2022, up from 2,662 in October and 409% higher compared to 1,042 a year ago. Similarly, there were 64,659 cybersecurity jobs in February 2022, up from 48,183 in October — more than doubling from 27,267 a year ago.
“Hiring metaverse experts is the latest recruitment trend to show exponential growth,” said James Neave, head of data science at Adzuna. “The last few months have seen a surge in job openings related to the metaverse with demand catalyzed by Zuckerberg’s Facebook rebranding and refocusing exercise. Metaverse experts are the new hot ticket with related roles ranging from developers to data scientists, writers, and creatives. This follows booming interest in crypto and cybersecurity roles throughout 2021 and we continue to see the tech sector growing and strengthening during this time.”
