According to a new report from The New York Times this week, artificial intelligence will continue to upend jobs, notably in the tech sector. Still, it could help “fuel a new wave of hiring for cybersecurity jobs.” The paper of record added that demand is “so fierce” that some search firms are now turning away clients due to a shortage of qualified candidates to fill the openings.
Cybersecurity job postings in the first quarter of 2026 were up by 11%.
One factor is that AI is being used to generate code, which is now prone to introducing bugs and vulnerabilities. That has created a need for cybersecurity experts to plug the holes and address any problems.
“The hiring frenzy shows how A.I. can also help create some jobs, even amid dire warnings that the technology could replace vast parts of the work force,” the paper of record stated.
Demand Will Increase, Roles Will Evolve
It is just AI introducing new flaws, but cybercriminals are also using AI to find exploits in existing systems. Coupled together, there is an increased need for cybersecurity pros, especially those who understand what AI brings to the table.
“We expect the demand for cybersecurity personnel to intensify, not lessen,” said Lydia Zhang, president of Ridge Security.
Zhang told ClearanceJobs that the use of AI and increased automation by bad actors will continue to increase pressure on security teams and spur new spending to address the changing threat landscape.
“Specifically, we see a shift in demand to more penetration testing skills and ‘ethical hackers.’ This is being driven by the established capability of the security-centric AIs – Mythos, Daybreak – to find zero-day exploits and application logic flaws,” explained Zhang. “This combination makes material breaches more likely, which is driving security teams to prioritize offensive capabilities.”
However, we should also expect the roles of cybersecurity experts to evolve as AI adoption continues.
“AI is accelerating software development, infrastructure deployment, and automation, which increases the volume of systems that need to be secured and expands the attack surface,” added Phillip Wylie, chief security evangelist and senior consultant at cybersecurity provider Suzu Labs.
As noted, AI could also lower the barrier to adversaries identifying vulnerabilities, generating exploits, and scaling campaigns.
“That means organizations are not hiring security teams simply to keep up with headcount growth; they’re hiring to manage complexity and reduce risk at machine speed,” Wylie told ClearanceJobs.
We’re in an AI Arms Race
There is already a belief that we’re in an active, escalating AI arms race in cybersecurity, where both attackers and defenders are using AI to gain an edge.
Cybercriminals are utilizing large language models (LLMs) and autonomous agents to scan massive codebases to generate working exploits in minutes. That has shrunk the time between vulnerability’s discovery and its weaponization.
Noelle Murata, chief operating officer at Xcape, Inc.,, suggested that this AI arms race has fundamentally shattered the traditional cybersecurity hiring playbook, shifting the field from a cost center to a core business continuity mandate.
“As frontier models like Anthropic’s Mythos rapidly compress the timeline for automated vulnerability discovery, the massive influx of unverified, AI-generated code is creating an operational crisis that legacy security teams are simply not staffed to handle,” Murata told ClearanceJobs.
It is increasingly clear that the modern market may no longer have room for passive analysts, Murata suggested, warning that it will demand highly technical engineering practitioners with deep expertise in automated threat modeling, reverse-engineering machine learning pipelines, and securing hyper-scale cloud environments.
“While the private sector can absorb these surging compensation spikes through equity incentives, the government sector must rapidly pivot away from rigid, legacy civil service pay scales toward aggressive talent structures like the Cyber Talent Management System, leveraging specialized missions, national security priorities, and long-term public stability to secure the elite technical talent necessary to defend critical sovereign infrastructure,” Murata continued.
Traditional Security And AI Fluency
This is also a brave new world for those in cybersecurity, as it may require knowledge of traditional cybersecurity and a greater understanding of the threats and even opportunities that AI brings to the table.
“The most valuable cybersecurity professionals over the next several years will combine traditional security fundamentals with AI fluency,” said Wylie.
Security engineering, secure software development, cloud security, offensive security, threat modeling, detection engineering, and the ability to evaluate AI-generated code will become increasingly important,” Wylie told ClearanceJobs. “Just as critical are skills that AI does not replace easily: understanding business context, making risk decisions, communicating with executives, and thinking creatively like an attacker.”
The “old ways” employed in cybersecurity don’t need to go away, but they will need to evolve to meet the emerging threats. That will require a pivot across the entire C-Suite or among other decision-makers, as much as by the cybersecurity teams charged with protecting the networks and data within them.
“If your enterprise security strategy depends on waiting for legacy practitioners to audit a fivefold increase in software commits manually, you are missing the reality that AI is writing vulnerabilities faster than your team can read them,” explained Murata. “Throwing millions of dollars at executive headhunters will not solve the underlying talent crisis until organizations realize they need deep infrastructure engineers, not compliance officers, to police the output of frontier AI models.”
This is likely to be a greater challenge in the government sector, where change can move at a snail’s pace. Teams will need to emphasize the need for faster action to mitigate potential threats.
“Government faces a tougher challenge because compensation often cannot compete directly with private-sector packages, especially for highly technical talent,” Wiley continued. “To stay competitive, agencies will need to lean into mission, flexibility, training pipelines, rotational programs, and partnerships with academia and industry. The opportunity for government is that many security professionals are motivated by impact and national service, but retaining talent will require faster hiring processes and clearer career growth.”
