Also called: Honeypot Engineer, Cyber Deception Specialist
Plants fake passwords, servers and files inside a company's network as bait, so any hacker who touches them sets off an alarm.
You set up a fake payroll database that looks juicy but that no real employee would ever open. Then you scatter decoy logins on laptops and wire them to the security team's alarms. When one fires at 2 a.m., you watch the intruder poke around the trap while responders close in.
Estimated from detection engineer pay.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in cybersecurity or computer science, plus security operations experience.
Ways in: 4-year college, Certification. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology.
Growing faster than average. Grows with company security budgets; a small niche inside larger teams.
Medium risk for 10 years. AI can generate realistic decoys, but outthinking attackers and placing traps cleverly stays human.
Classes: Computer science, Psychology, Math.
Official data: O*NET occupation 15-1212.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.