Who Is Hiring Security Engineers — And What They Pay

Security Engineers earn a median of $132,265 per year, with most postings between $107,225 and $167,500. From 299 job postings that disclosed pay, across 98 companies, August 2026.

These are ranges employers published in their own job postings — not salaries people typed into a form years ago.

Who is hiring Security Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

Amazon Web Services
$202,550 4
Amazon.com
$200,150 6
Metrostar Systems
$200,000 4
Google
$199,750 4
M&T Bank
$186,300 3
RealmOne
$179,500 4
Northrop Grumman
$177,800 9
General Dynamics Information Technology
$167,500 6
Wells Fargo
$162,500 4
Lockheed Martin
$157,600 27

Also hiring: Deloitte, Accenture, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, Zantech, Base-2 Solutions, LLC, Humana, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics Information Technology, CrowdStrike, Amazon.com, AIRLIFE.

Which of these would you get past?

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15 companies in this sample have Security Engineer postings open right now.

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What Security Engineers earn

10th $92K 25th $107K median $132K 75th $168K 90th $200K
$80K $215K

Each bar is a pay band; height is how many employers post in it.

What Security Engineer postings actually ask for

Ranked by how many of the 400 posting descriptions mention them.

Security Architecture 23%
Incident Response 22%
Vulnerability Management 19%
Application Security 18%
Threat Intelligence 18%
Threat Hunting 17%
Identity and Access Management 17%
Cloud Security 16%
Endpoint Security 15%
Systems Engineering 14%
Cloud Infrastructure 13%
Indicators of Compromise 12%
Identity Governance 12%
Network Security 12%
Risk assessments 12%
Equal Employment Opportunity 12%
Recruiting and hiring 12%
Intelligence Analysis 11%

Security Engineer vs adjacent roles

Roles people compare this one against, taken from what they search.

  • security analyst
  • software engineer
  • cybersecurity
  • network engineer
  • cyber security engineer
  • security architect

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible
$123,750
Onsite
$132,450

96 remote-eligible postings against 205 onsite. Onsite pays 6.6% more in this sample.

Pay by experience level

Level is taken from the posting title, so only postings that state one are counted.

Mid
$120,520 8
Senior
$150,000 51
Lead / Manager
$167,500 19
Principal / Staff
$193,800 18

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

Remote, US
$132,080 21
Annapolis Junction, MD
$193,800 11
New York, NY
$148,250 9
Washington, DC
$150,100 9
Hanover, MD
$193,800 9
Arlington, VA
$147,225 8
Fort Meade, MD
$142,450 7
Colorado Springs, CO
$140,000 5
Austin, TX
$162,200 5
Charlotte, NC
$132,450 5
Seattle, WA
$186,500 5
Columbia, MD
$151,000 5

Where this data comes from

  • 400 live postings analysed
  • 299 (75%) published a salary range
  • 131 (33%) were remote-eligible
  • 149 distinct employers
  • Requirements read from 400 full posting descriptions
  • Each employer gets one vote in the median, so a company running a large hiring campaign cannot move it
  • Ranges are converted to annual figures; hourly and contract postings are normalised before comparison