Cybersecurity Job Postings Fall 26% as AI Roles Surge

U.S. cybersecurity job postings fell 26.4% to 235,786 from January through September 2026, according to CyberSN’s latest jobs report. The total was down from 320,210 postings during the same period in 2025 and marked a four-year low.

CyberSN compiled the data from JobSpikr, removed duplicate listings and classified job titles into 45 cybersecurity roles across 10 categories. The classification is based on the work described in each listing rather than the title used by the employer.

Postings for AI Security Engineers rose 268.3% from the same period in 2025. Listings for Cyber Data Scientists increased 203.5%.

Just under 15% of cybersecurity postings mentioned artificial intelligence during the first nine months of 2026, compared with 15.1% a year earlier. The share increased during the period and reached 20% in September.

Research had the highest share of postings mentioning AI, at 32.7%, up 11.7 percentage points from a year earlier. AI appeared in 23.3% of Offense postings, 19.8% of Governance, Risk and Compliance postings, and 18.9% of Plan postings.

Remote-work options appeared most often in Sales postings, at 32.8%. The shares were 31.2% for GRC, 24.7% for Offense, 22.9% for Product Security, 22.8% for Educate, 21.9% for Research and 21.3% for Defense.

Several established roles recorded declines. Insider Threat Analyst postings fell 55.6% to 1,088, while Cyber Risk Analyst postings dropped 51.5% to 4,031. Penetration Tester listings declined 45.9% to 3,063, and Cybersecurity Lead postings fell 41% to 4,688.

Threat Hunter postings dropped 40% to 1,013. Cybersecurity Project Manager listings fell 39.4% to 783. Postings for chief information security officers and related titles, including CSO, BSO and ISO, declined 38.9% to 2,832.

The 2026 CISO figure was close to the 2024 total of 2,808, after an unusually strong comparison period in 2025. CISO postings rose 19.5% from the second quarter to the third quarter of 2026.

The report measures changes in job listings and does not determine the reasons for them. “Job titles are noisy,” it says. “This report reads every posting through the CyberSN Taxonomy, so demand is counted by the work being asked for, not by the title on the listing.”