January 2023 Jobs Report

This year is off to a rough start for many, especially in the tech sector. Many companies were holding out that market conditions would change in the second half of 2022, but apparently that wasn’t in the cards. As such, every company came into 2023 in cost cutting mode. While the cybersecurity industry isn’t immune to the current market conditions, we certainly are faring better than our peers in the broader tech community. Something that has definitely stood out already this year is companies aren’t willing to “grow at all costs” anymore. Hypergrowth has become a dirty word and there is a big focus on efficiency. Keep this in mind as you are review job descriptions to see if companies are waking up to this as well.

We also have to account for the fact that many cybersecurity companies like to stagger their fiscal year to end on January 31st. This means any further reductions in staff will most likely be held over until the dust settles and the Q4 numbers are finalized. I also expect to see a re-shuffling of open pre-sales roles once the fiscal year ends as well. For now, I would characterize the cybersecurity pre-sales market as “warm”.

There are a lot of uncertainties right now. Unless you know a reduction in force is coming, hold tight and see where things land in early February.

A Look at the Numbers

Since this is the first time we are publishing a jobs report, we don’t have data from Dec 2022 for comparison. But that’s ok because we can use January as a baseline to set the stage for 2023. Let’s start this report off at the most popular job title within our industry across this month’s hiring data. The title of “Sales Engineer” ranks first, followed closely by “Solutions Engineer” and “Solutions Architect”. All three titles are pretty evenly represented in this month’s data so we’ll have to see if this shifts in the coming months.

The Hiring Data

  • This month 64 companies are hiring, out of 146 tracked (44%). This furthers my earlier comment of the industry being “warm” as we wait for the dust to settle.

  • Out of the 164 companies that are presently hiring, 27 of them (42%) have two or more open roles.

  • There are a total of 133 open roles this month, a decent amount given less than half of all tracked companies are presently hiring.

  • Sadly only 6 roles, or 5%, of all open roles have a compensation range listed. All of the roles with compensation listed are because of the new pay transparency laws in NY, CO, and CA. We need to do better folks.

  • There is a strong showing of remote-first roles at present (61%). I believe this will level out a little, but remain strong throughout this year.

  • Unsurprisingly, the majority of open roles are for individual contributors (IC). The breakdown this month is 90% IC vs 10% Management across all open roles. This is a friendly reminder that climbing the ladder into management isn’t the only way to grow within pre-sales (see this post).

The Geographical Data

  • All of the open roles this month are spread across 16 countries globally.

  • The United States represents a little more than half (57%) of all open roles at the moment. The remainder of open roles are heavily concentrated in EMEA this month.

  • While the US is hiring for the most open roles at the moment, the United Kingdom (UK) is in second place, and Germany comes in third place.

  • The most interesting global opportunity this month is a remote opportunity in Belgium.

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 146
  • 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, five organizations hit the limit of jobs to be included in the report. They include:

  • Fortinet: 179 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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