Security Skills in Demand

Security teams protect systems and data, from detecting and responding to incidents to reviewing designs and meeting compliance standards. Certifications carry more weight here than in most engineering families.

We analyzed 70 U.S. job descriptions from 17 employers for Security roles. The most requested skills were NIST (29%), CISSP (24%) and Incident response (23%).

680open U.S. roles tracked
3 yearstypical experience asked for
$155,800median advertised pay, from 40 roles that state it

Security

  • NIST29%
  • CISSP24%
  • Incident response23%
  • Identity and access11%

Business tools

  • SAP21%
  • Excel14%
  • PowerPoint9%

Cloud & infrastructure

  • CI/CD9%

Updated November 7, 2026, using job descriptions collected since September 26, 2026. Shares show how many of the sampled descriptions mention a skill, so a low share can still be a firm requirement in the roles that list it. We sample a limited number of descriptions per employer so that no single company dominates, and we only report figures backed by several employers. Advertised pay comes from a different group of roles than H1B filings, so the two are not directly comparable.

All job families