Security hiring research, from the Research Factory.
Every day the Research Factory reads about 200,000 job postings. Each piece answers one question about how security work is changing, with its ratings and the tests behind it.
Every piece includes a full research paper, with references and a citation.
- 01 Read about 200,000 postings a day from about 2,200 job boards done
- 02 Keep about 17,000 security and engineering postings since July done
- 03 Score labels against one to three frontier model families done
- 04 Recompute every figure from source before publishing done
- 05 Publish only when every control passes done
Ten questions, each answered with rated findings.
Detection and response, identity and general security roles moved toward engineering.
Too close to call. Manager titles were 7.7% of postings in spring 2024 and 6.8% in 2026.
Likely range −3.0 to +1.0 pointsSecurity+ and CISSP come up less often in entry-level security postings.
Senior individual contributors are asked to secure AI more often than peers and managers.
The median asks for five years of experience at every size. Startups ask for eight or more years less often than enterprises.
More often. Manager postings that expect AI ask for hands-on work more often than those without.
The typical AI-first company posts 7 engineering openings for every security engineering opening. Elsewhere it is 5.
Median posted pay for security roles rose from $142k in spring 2024 to $181k in fall 2026, up 27.4%.
Analyst and specialist titles fell from 28% to 13%, and other titles from 30% to 23%. Architect titles barely moved, 8% to 6%.
A few employers now name identity checks or camera-on interviews.
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This is not a live chat. Accepted questions become new pieces, published in a later release.
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- 01 You ask, with the decision it would inform You done
- 02 We check job postings can answer it Our team next
- 03 Approved questions join the reader queue Our team queued
- 04 Agents write the analysis, ratings and piece Research Factory queued
- 05 Every answer runs our standard controls Our controls queued
- 06 Published and tagged, credited if you want Research Factory queued