March 2023 Jobs Report

Everyone is abuzz this month with the SVB mess and the knock on effect that it is going to have both on the broader marketers and the cybersecurity industry. Well, someone forgot to tell the awesome companies hiring right now because it has had almost no impact on the strong jobs report for this month. Similar to last month, we have a large list of pre-sales jobs available and the cybersecurity pre-sales market is looking pretty healthy. Let’s dive into the numbers for this month!

The cybersecurity pre-sales market is still holding strong; smaller growth but jobs are still being added.

A Look at the Numbers

The debate continues to rage on this month on the most popular job title for cybersecurity pre-sales. The “Sales Engineer” title is still holding the lead, but what surprised me more is the classification of job roles. For example, several companies are still using the title of Sales Engineer, but the job falls under the Revenue team or the Go-to-Market team classification. Companies are starting to recognize that a unification needs to happen across Sales, Pre-Sales, Marketing, etc. but are still clinging to the titles of the past. Small steps. 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 101 companies are hiring, out of 250 tracked (40%). This is a very strong ratio given the current market conditions. Strangely the numbers are the same as last month even though the companies are different.

  • Out of the 101 companies that are presently hiring, 50 of them (50%) have two or more open roles.

  • As I mentioned earlier, things are still holding really strong this month. There was a slight uptick in open roles bringing us to 278 open roles this month, a 1% increase vs the previous month.

  • Sadly only 38 roles, or 14%, of all open roles have a compensation range listed. While this is slightly better than last month (a 3% increase), let’s not kid ourselves…this needs to change. Companies need to start getting more transparent about pay.

  • In the most bizarre twist of fate, the remote vs in person numbers remain unchanged for this month! There were 145 open roles listed as remote-first (52%)…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 94% IC vs 6% Management across all open roles. A friendly reminder to last month’s LinkedIn post (see here) that climbing the ladder into management isn’t the only way to grow within pre-sales.

The Geographical Data

  • All of the open roles this month are spread across 35 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. For our friends over in APAC, Singapore is still the place to be!

  • The United States only represents just shy of half (47%) of all open roles at the moment. This is a good signal that growth is happening globally, not just isolated to one country.

  • While the US is hiring for the most open roles at the moment, the UK is in second place, and Singapore comes in strong for third place.

  • The most interesting global opportunity this month is in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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

  • Cloudflare: 77 Open Pre-Sales Roles
  • Zscaler: 42 Open Pre-Sales Roles
  • Fortinet: 250 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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