JPMorgan Posts 34 Blockchain Jobs as It Beefs Up JPM Coin

U.S. mega-bank JPMorgan Chase has 34 open blockchain job positions posted on its website.

It’s quite possibly a record for any company in the crypto market (JPMorgan has been noted for its enthusiastic blockchain hiring in the past).

The majority of the job openings, posted this month and last, are in the U.S., India and Singapore. Many of the jobs relate directly to Onyx, the division created last October to oversee JPM coin, the bank's wholesale payments token. 

A number of the blockchain engineer roles are focused on integrating both JPM coin and Liink (previously known as the blockchain-based Interbank Information Network, and which now counts more than 400 other banks as participants) into JPMorgan’s payments architecture.

When Onyx was launched, JPMorgan said the new division had about 100 jobs. 

JPMorgan did not respond to requests for comment by press time. 

Recently, big banks have been making noise about entering the cryptocurrency market, looking at areas such as crypto custody and potentially the trading of digital assets. While JPMorgan has been relatively quiet on those fronts, clearly it has a lot going on behind the scenes with payments. 

In contrast to JPMorgan’s 56 “blockchain” job search results, Goldman Sachs, which recently told Reuters it was restarting its crypto trading desk, has just two blockchain/cryptocurrency job openings. Morgan Stanley also has two blockchain jobs open, and BNY Mellon shows four positions with blockchain and digital assets in the title.

Thirteen of the JPMorgan jobs relate to Onyx and Liink, with three based in Bangalore, India, two in Singapore and the rest in the U.S. Also listed are open positions for a marketing manager for Liink, as well as a blockchain adjacent position in commercial real estate based in Palo Alto, Calif.

JPMorgan engineers developed the Quorum blockchain protocol, a privacy-centric version of Ethereum aimed at banking use cases. JPMorgan is building its JPM coin and Liink system on Quorum, which has now been handed over to New York-based Ethereum hub ConsenSys.