May 2023 Jobs Report

May started off with a bag as RSA wrapped up at the end of April and the numerous company announcements that usually make the rounds started to die down. Despite continued layoffs in the broader tech sector and some pullback within cybersecurity, the overall market for cybersecurity pre-sales is still doing well. Let’s dive into the numbers for this month!

The cybersecurity pre-sales market is still holding strong despite a slight slowdown in hiring as we approach the summer months.

A Look at the Numbers

I made a prediction at the beginning of the year about the evolution of the pre-sales role and this month, it finally came true. For the first time, the title of “Solutions Engineer” reigns supreme. While “Sales Engineer” is in a very close second, it signals that the industry is finally starting to evolve and see pre-sales professionals as more than just the technical expert. I’m hopeful this trend will continue and by the fall the gap will be even wider. Now if we could only get folks to stop using the term “Solution Architect” to represent Customer Success roles, we’d be all set! Small steps.

The Hiring Data

  • This month 91 companies are hiring, out of 250 tracked (36%). This ratio is starting to slip a little bit as we head into the summer months and hiring generally slows down.

  • Out of the 91 companies that are presently hiring, 45 of them (50%) have two or more open roles.

  • As I mentioned earlier, things are slowing down slightly, but the cybersecurity pre-sales market is still holding fairly strong. There was a slight decrease in open roles bringing us down to 225 open roles this month, a 19% increase vs the previous month.

  • On a very positive note, 81 roles or 36%, of all open roles have a compensation range listed. This is a sizable increase from last month (a 157% increase). Looks like those transparency laws surrounding pay are finally starting to propagate.

  • In the most bizarre twist of fate, the remote vs in person numbers grew slightly this month (even with all of the return to office nonsense going on)! There were 124 open roles listed as remote-first (55%)…slightly more than 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 89% IC vs 11% Management across all open roles. While there is a slight uptick in the number of management roles available, the competition for them has never been more fierce.

The Geographical Data

  • All of the open roles this month are spread across 26 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 represents more than half (63%) of all open roles at the moment.

  • 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 Doha, Qatar.

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
  • Elastic: 24 Open Pre-Sales Roles
  • Fortinet: 177 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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