Cybersecurity Role Demand Snapshot (August 2026)
5,236 live cyber roles. Where demand sits across engineer, GRC, analyst, and SOC, plus posted USD bands and the entry-level squeeze.
Everyone has heard the shortage story. Fewer people have a clean answer to a harder question: where is hiring actually concentrated right now, and what are employers putting on the posting?
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We pulled 5,236 live cybersecurity listings on Cybersecurity Jobs List as of 3 August 2026. Below is the demand map by role group, posted USD yearly ranges where employers disclosed them, and the remote/seniority mix. This is board inventory from real ads, not a workforce-gap press release.
About the data: Posted ranges are employer asks, not accepted offers. Role groups come from job titles (SOC, security engineer, analyst, GRC, and so on). Small salary samples are labeled on purpose. Sales and go-to-market titles that show up beside security products are left out of the core practitioner picture.
The board in one table
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Open cybersecurity roles | 5,236 |
| Roles with a usable USD yearly range | 1,172 |
| Remote | 617 |
| Hybrid | 1,321 |
| On-site | 3,290 |
| Senior-labeled roles | 2,930 |
| Mid-level | 1,494 |
| Entry-level labels | 315 |
Plain English: demand is real and uneven. On-site still dominates. Senior labels outnumber entry labels by about 9 to 1 (2,930 vs 315). That single ratio explains more career-changer frustration than another essay about "passion for security."
National context still matters. BLS puts information security analysts at a $124,910 median (May 2024) with much-faster-than-average projected growth. CyberSeek-scale maps show hundreds of thousands of U.S. openings over a rolling year. Those sources say the field is large. This snapshot says what the listings in front of you looked like in early August.
Where open roles concentrate
Each listing is counted once in the first matching specialty group. Uncategorized titles are large (leadership-adjacent names, specialized strings, odd variants), so the chart focuses on named practitioner buckets.
| Role group | Open jobs | With USD/yr | Avg posted min | Avg posted max | Median min | Median max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security engineer | 785 | 252 | $119,704 | $178,408 | $117,000 | $174,150 |
| GRC / compliance / risk | 485 | 94 | $115,365 | $167,576 | $112,000 | $167,005 |
| Security analyst | 478 | 116 | $93,852 | $138,180 | $90,000 | $133,625 |
| SOC / cyber ops | 369 | 60 | $105,498 | $155,618 | $100,615 | $137,750 |
| Leadership (CISO / director+) | 243 | 71 | $187,701 | $258,120 | $172,000 | $250,000 |
| Security architect | 89 | 16 | $122,140 | $199,638 | $126,100 | $208,500 |
| IAM | 44 | 9 | $121,029 | $207,871 | $124,000 | $213,542 |
| Incident response / detection / DFIR | 42 | 8 | $108,575 | $194,600 | $106,800 | $187,600 |
| Cloud security / DevSecOps | 30 | 10 | $129,903 | $167,905 | $123,500 | $150,000 |
| Pentest / red team | 23 | 4 | $117,365 | $175,493 | $120,600 | $178,800 |
| AppSec / product security | 13 | 4 | $113,075 | $189,363 | $110,000 | $190,000 |
| Other (uncategorized titles) | 2,635 | 528 | $128,859 | $192,675 | $120,000 | $182,100 |
What actually matters in that table:
- Security engineer is still the deepest named IC path (785 roles). Median posted band sits around $117k-$174k when yearly USD is disclosed.
- GRC edged analyst volume in this cut (485 vs 478). If you have been told GRC is a consolation prize, the listing market disagrees.
- SOC remains a major doorway into hands-on defense (369 roles). Median posted band near $101k-$138k on the disclosed subset. That is not Tier-1 everywhere, and it is not fake internet money either.
- Leadership packages look huge because director and CISO postings publish wide executive ranges. Do not compare those medians to an IC offer letter.
- Cloud, AppSec, pentest, IR stay strategically important and thinner in raw count here. When n is under 20 on salary, stay humble.
Posted salary shape
These are posted bands. Use them to calibrate expectations and reject nonsense, not to predict your exact package after equity, bonus, locality, or clearance.
- Analyst and SOC sit below engineer and leadership. That tracks how most ladders work.
- Versus the July salary snapshot, engineer and analyst stayed dominant and SOC held in the mid-300s of open roles. Month-to-month noise is mostly listing turnover, not a sudden wage collapse or boom.
Remote, hybrid, and the entry squeeze
- On-site still wins headcount (3,290) over hybrid (1,321) and remote (617). Remote cyber work is real. It is not the default in this inventory.
- Entry is scarce relative to senior demand. 315 entry labels against 2,930 senior labels. That matches what serious career-changers already feel: the field hires, but not evenly across experience.
- If you are breaking in, stop waiting for perfect junior titles alone. Watch SOC and analyst filters, true entry tags when they appear, and adjacent IT experience that maps cleanly into security work.
If you are job hunting this month
- Operations path: SOC analyst roles, including U.S.-focused SOC filters.
- Early career: entry-level listings plus the practical paths in How to get into cybersecurity in 2026.
- Already mid-level: security engineer and GRC are the thickest non-leadership buckets here. Architect and cloud pay well when they appear; volume is thinner.
- Salary sanity check: pair a national median (BLS-style) with these posted bands for the specific title family you want.
Go deeper:
- SOC Analyst career guide 2026
- How to get into cybersecurity in 2026
- July 2026 salary and role snapshot
How we built this snapshot
- Source: live published cybersecurity listings on Cybersecurity Jobs List, 3 August 2026.
- Role groups from job titles; each job counted once in a primary specialty group.
- Salary math: USD yearly posted minimums and maximums only; extreme outliers outside roughly $25,000-$450,000 excluded; averages and medians reported separately.
- Board inventory snapshot, not a government labor survey and not accepted-offer data.
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