security operations jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-30, security operations appears in 633 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Security Engineer has the most postings mentioning security operations, with demand share up 9.1% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-30
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Frequently asked questions about security operations
+Is security operations in demand in 2026?
Yes. security operations appears in 633 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30. Security Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning security operations (16.0% of all postings mentioning security operations).
+What jobs require security operations?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning security operations are Information Security Director (32.5% of that role’s postings mention security operations), Security Solution Architect (28.6% of that role’s postings mention security operations), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) (27.6% of that role’s postings mention security operations).
+What skills are commonly paired with security operations?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-30), security operations most often appears alongside incident response, vulnerability management, SIEM, Cloud Security, Python.
+Where is security operations most in demand?
As of 2026-09-30, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring security operations are New York City, London, Bengaluru, Seattle, Boston, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new security operations content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning security operations alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new security operations content from your Skillenai account.
+Which skills come before and after security operations?
The skill-flow chart shows skills documented in adjacent positions across observed employer changes. An outgoing skill is documented in the following position but not the preceding one. These are ideas to explore, not proven prerequisites, acquisition dates, or levels of mastery. Each ribbon counts employer moves with that skill pair; one move can contribute several pairs.
Weekly indexed postings requiring security operations — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Career paths around security operations
Skills documented before and after this skill across employer changes.
Historical career profiles · all locations
Skills before security operations
Skills after security operations
How to read this chart · view counts
Each side is an independent set of observed employer moves, not the same people followed through three stages. Ribbon widths compare move counts within that side. Internal moves are not included.
The following position documents a skill that the preceding position does not. Skills must be linked to both positions, with clear dates and no overlap. One move can connect several skill pairs. These patterns suggest skills to explore; they do not establish prerequisites, when a skill was learned, or a higher skill level.
Source: Skillenai talent graph, historical career profiles. Historical descriptions and coverage can change. Only the leading published connections are shown.
| Connection | Moves |
|---|---|
| Before: SIEM | 2 |
| Before: security audits | 1 |
| Before: Access control violation investigation | 1 |
| Before: TableTop Exercise (TTX) training | 1 |
| Before: advanced firewalls | 1 |
| Before: Vulnerability Management | 1 |
| Before: pKi | 1 |
| Before: consolidation | 1 |
| After: threat detection | 1 |
| After: Network Infrastructure | 1 |
| After: Vulnerability Management | 1 |
| After: SOC 2 | 1 |
| After: data classification | 1 |
| After: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) | 1 |
| After: data centers | 1 |
| After: analytics and visualization | 1 |
Roles most likely to require security operations
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| Information Security Director | 13 | 32.5% |
| Security Solution Architect | 6 | 28.6% |
| Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) | 8 | 27.6% |
| Security Solutions Architect | 5 | 22.7% |
| Cybersecurity Director | 6 | 22.2% |
| Security Operations Engineer | 13 | 20.6% |
| Chief Information Security Officer | 12 | 20.0% |
| Business Information Security Officer | 3 | 13.0% |
| Head of Information Security | 3 | 12.5% |
| Safeguards Enforcement Analyst | 3 | 11.1% |
Roles with the most security operations postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Security Engineer | 101 | 16.0% |
| Cybersecurity Engineer | 25 | 3.9% |
| Security Analyst | 21 | 3.3% |
| Information Security Analyst | 16 | 2.5% |
| Cybersecurity Analyst | 14 | 2.2% |
| Information Security Director | 13 | 2.1% |
| Information Security Engineer | 13 | 2.1% |
| Product Manager | 13 | 2.1% |
| Security Operations Engineer | 13 | 2.1% |
| Chief Information Security Officer | 12 | 1.9% |
Top companies posting jobs requiring security operations
Employers ranked by indexed job postings in the last 90 days.
| Company | Postings · 90 days |
|---|---|
| CrowdStrike | 10 |
| Simility, a Paypal Service | 10 |
| Paypal | 8 |
| Palo Alto Networks | 8 |
| Zscaler | 7 |
| Cisco | 7 |
| Stripe | 6 |
| Devoteam | 6 |
| Kyndryl | 5 |
| Mastercard | 5 |
Job postings indexed over the past 90 days, grouped by resolved employer. Counts are postings, not hires. Companies without a published page appear without a link.
Top metros hiring for security operations
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | 24 | 3.8% |
| London | 14 | 2.2% |
| Bengaluru | 11 | 1.7% |
| Seattle | 11 | 1.7% |
| Boston | 10 | 1.6% |
| San Francisco | 10 | 1.6% |
| Sydney | 10 | 1.6% |
| Pune | 8 | 1.3% |
| Singapore | 8 | 1.3% |
Skills commonly paired with security operations
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Explore related pages
- Information Security Director
- Security Solution Architect
- Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
- Security Solutions Architect
- Cybersecurity Director
- Security Operations Engineer
- Chief Information Security Officer
- Business Information Security Officer
- incident response
- vulnerability management
- SIEM
- Cloud Security
- Python
- Threat hunting
- threat intelligence
- AWS
How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning security operations by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s security operations postings by all security operations postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills). Adjusted posting share: 0.2% to 0.2%. Demand share change is the relative percentage change between these adjusted shares. Each employer-and-ATS group has at least 10 postings in each 90-day window; its earlier posting count supplies the same weight in both windows. The panel includes 2,596 identified employers and covers 68% of earlier and 72% of latest indexed postings. Windows: 2026-06-02 to 2026-08-31 and 2026-06-30 to 2026-09-28 (UTC; end dates excluded). The windows overlap by 62 days. Dates reflect indexing, not the employer’s posting date. This measures posting mix, not total hiring or market-wide demand. Matching excludes entrants and exits; changes in crawl completeness within an employer or ATS can still affect the result.
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- 6149caea06b81fc2
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-30
- window_days
- 90
The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.
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