Maths for Blockchain Jobs: The Only Topics You Actually Need (& How to Learn Them)
If you are targeting blockchain jobs in the UK whether that is smart contract development, protocol engineering, security auditing, data engineering, blockchain infrastructure or Web3 product roles the maths can feel like a hidden barrier. Job adverts often ask for “strong fundamentals” or “cryptography knowledge” without saying what you actually need day to day. The good news is you do not need a maths degree worth of theory to start applying. For most roles you can get job-ready by mastering a small set of practical topics that show up again & again: Modular arithmetic & number theory basics (the backbone of public key cryptography) Probability & simple statistics (security assumptions, block times, risk reasoning) Discrete maths & data structures (Merkle trees, hashing, complexity, graphs) Cryptographic primitives at a “working engineer” level (hashing, signatures, commitments) Basic optimisation thinking (gas cost, performance, trade offs) This guide is written for UK job seekers who want a clear scope, a 6-week plan & portfolio projects that prove you can translate the maths into working code.