Defending computers, networks, power grids, and people from hackers, scammers, and spies, and sometimes hacking legally to find weaknesses first.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Information Security Analyst: Protects an organization's computers, networks, and data from hackers. Typical pay $129k.
Penetration Tester: Is hired to legally break into companies' systems to find weaknesses before criminals do. Typical pay $120k.
Security Architect: Designs the overall security of an organization's systems: firewalls, identity, encryption, and cloud defenses. Typical pay $170k.
Chief Information Security Officer: The top security executive who answers to the CEO and board for protecting the whole organization. Typical pay $240k.
Malware Analyst / Reverse Engineer: Takes apart viruses and ransomware to understand how they work and how to stop them. Typical pay $135k.
Cryptographer: Designs and tests the math that keeps messages, passwords, and money secret. Typical pay $155k.
Application Security Engineer: Works with software teams to find and fix security bugs in code before it ships. Typical pay $150k.
Cloud Security Engineer: Protects the apps and data a company runs in Amazon, Microsoft or Google clouds. Typical pay $150k.
Incident Responder: The cyber firefighter who rushes in when hackers break into a company. Typical pay $125k.
Detection Engineer: Writes the rules that automatically spot hackers hiding inside a company's computers. Typical pay $140k.
Threat Hunter: Searches through a company's networks for hidden hackers that no alarm has caught yet. Typical pay $140k.
Privacy Engineer: Builds software so that people's personal data is protected and only used the way they agreed to. Typical pay $165k.
Hardware Security Engineer: Protects computer chips and devices from being hacked physically, like by zapping or probing them. Typical pay $165k.
Ransomware Negotiator: Talks directly with criminal hackers who have locked a company's files, buying time, checking their claims and pushing the ransom down. Typical pay $120k.
Automotive Cybersecurity Engineer: Hacks cars on purpose to find weak spots in their computers, radios and apps before criminals can steal them or control them remotely. Typical pay $135k.
Deception Engineer: Plants fake passwords, servers and files inside a company's network as bait, so any hacker who touches them sets off an alarm. Typical pay $125k.
AI Security Engineer: Protects AI systems from attacks like prompt injection, poisoned training data and model theft, and makes sure AI tools don't leak private data. Typical pay $165k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Threat Intelligence Analyst: Tracks hacker groups and predicts what attacks are coming next. Typical pay $105k.
Digital Forensics Examiner: Recovers and analyzes evidence from phones, computers, and cloud accounts for police, courts, and companies. Typical pay $90k.
Security Awareness Trainer: Teaches employees how to spot scams and avoid getting hacked. Typical pay $78k.
Vulnerability Management Analyst: Finds weak spots in a company's software and makes sure they get patched before hackers exploit them. Typical pay $100k.
Vulnerability Disclosure Coordinator: Acts as the go-between when a hacker reports a security hole, making sure the company fixes it and the public is warned at the right time. Typical pay $105k.
Starter: fastest way in
Bug Bounty Hunter: Finds security flaws in companies' websites and apps and gets paid a reward for each one reported. Typical pay $52k.
Cybersecurity Apprentice: Learns cybersecurity on a paid team through a structured apprenticeship. Typical pay $50k.
Identity & Access Specialist: Manages who gets access to which systems, creating and removing accounts and permissions. Typical pay $54k.
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.