April 2023 Jobs Report

April has been a slow month for both the cybersecurity pre-sales job movement and the industry as whole. Why? Well RSA of course! Kicking off at the end of the month, everyone is heads down preparing for the largest cybersecurity conference of the year. The turnout is expected to be huge since attendance has been low since covid hit. That being said, hiring is still happening, but folks across the board are slow to respond. I expect we will see a lot more activity in May as things return to normal.

It’s a touch slower this month as everyone is heads down preparing for RSA the last week of April.

A Look at the Numbers

With RSA just two weeks away (at the time of publishing this), all is quiet on the western front. Most folks are either heads down or out of office before heading out to California later this month. We will put the debate on hold this month (between Sales Engineer vs Solutions Engineer) and see where things come out next month after the RSA dust settles. I still hold on to my prediction that by the second half of this year we will see a shift in the most popular title for cybersecurity pre-sales.

The Hiring Data

  • This month 105 companies are hiring, out of 250 tracked (42%). Still going strong, still mostly unchanged from the previous month.

  • Out of the 105 companies that are presently hiring, 45 of them (43%) have two or more open roles. This slight dip makes sense as folks are accepting offers and multiple roles are coming off the board.

  • As I mentioned earlier, things are pretty neutral this month. There was a slight drop in open roles bringing us to 270 open roles this month, a 3% increase vs the previous month.

  • Sadly only 40 roles, or 15%, of all open roles have a compensation range listed. While this is slightly better than last month (a 5% increase), let’s not kid ourselves…this needs to change. Those pay transparency laws really need to kick in and be audited.

  • In the most bizarre twist of fate, the remote vs in person numbers remain unchanged for the second month in row! There were 140 open roles listed as remote-first (50%)…just about half. I suspect this will continue as long as interest rates remain high and office space remains insanely expensive.

  • Unsurprisingly, the majority of open roles are for individual contributors (IC). The breakdown this month is 92% IC vs 8% Management across all open roles.

The Geographical Data

  • All of the open roles this month are spread across 30 countries globally. While the US still makes up the largest group, there has been a growing trend in EMEA. The UK and Germany are both coming in strong for cybersecurity pre-sales job growth.

  • The United States only represents just shy of half (49%) of all open roles at the moment. This is a good signal that growth is happening globally, not just isolated to one country.

  • The US continues to dominate in open roles at the moment, but EMEA is slowly climbing each month.

  • The most interesting global opportunity this month is in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Report Methodology

When building the report each month there are a few parameters that we follow to ensure the data is as accurate as possible. Below is an outline of those parameters:

  • The total number of organizations tracked this month was 250
  • There is no limitation on funding to be included in the report, we have organizations from seed stage all the way through publicly traded
  • In order for an organization to be included they must have at least one pre-sales job opening listed
  • Any job listed as “remote” is classified by the ability to work anywhere in the country or the ability to live in a large geographic area (e.g. anywhere in the east coast of the US)
  • If a job requires you to live in a specific state within the US, then the job location is classified as the state, even if you can work remotely within the state itself
  • For organizations that have more than one pre-sales role open, we limit the maximum number of jobs included in the report at ten (although we note the surplus below)

While we try not to change these parameters from month to month to ensure data quality, we are always considering new information as it becomes available.

Monthly Overages

This month, two organizations hit the limit of jobs to be included in the report. They include:

  • Cloudflare: 87 Open Pre-Sales Roles
  • Fortinet: 210 Open Pre-Sales Roles

If you are looking to break into your first pre-sales role, or just looking to change things up, we have several resources that can help. Check out the following to get started:

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