How much can I make in cybersecurity?

Introduction: The cybersecurity job market

Cybersecurity is a growing field, and with the shortage of specialists expected to grow and the prospect of up to 3.5 million unfilled job positions by 2021, it’s a good time to enter the profession.

In the cybersecurity labor market, there’s an increasingly high demand with a relatively low supply, so the potential for a lucrative career is definitely there. This is true, however, only for professionals that are able to develop the highly specialized skills that employers are looking for today. 

Not all cybersecurity positions will earn you stellar salaries. As the cybersecurity demand grows, in fact, so does the job specialization with roles that are evolving and becoming more and more specific: security analysts or consultants, security architects or engineers, security administrators or software developers.

It is obvious that entry-level positions will be on the lower end of the IT pay scale, while security managers and executive level positions will command higher salaries. Job titles also have a role in a vacancy’s starting salary, as well as the skills you possess and how well they match what the employer is looking for.

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Top cybersecurity roles

When Frederick Scholl scanned one of the most used job boards looking for positions available in cybersecurity, he found that many roles that employers were actually looking to fill are not even included in the comprehensive list of 52 listed by the 2017 Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. In addition, when looking at the top 24 positions within cybersecurity, sales professionals were at the forefront; they were followed by project managers, technical writers and, only then, security engineers and application security professionals. Sales engineers (SEs) could earn “higher salaries than tech workers,” confirmed Dark Reading, pointing out that this is the result of “the global cybersecurity (Read more...)