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Hire cybersecurity engineers who have defended a real environment.
TekRecruiter is a cybersecurity staffing and recruiting agency focused solely on technology and engineering roles at tech and SaaS companies. We scope the specialty before we source, so you hire the security engineer who has already closed the kind of gap you’re facing, not a list of certifications with a title on top. Beyond skills and experience, we look for HEARTThe HEART standardHHigh agencyEExecutionAAccountabilityRResourcefulnessTTransparencyWhat we look for, beyond skills →.
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What is a cybersecurity engineer?
A cybersecurity engineer designs, builds and runs the controls that protect a company’s systems, data and identities: hardened cloud and network configurations, access policies, detection pipelines and the fixes for what testing finds. It is a hands-on building role. A security analyst monitors and investigates alerts; a security architect designs the overall security model that engineers implement.
- Security engineer
- Builds and operates security controls in cloud, network, identity and application layers, and fixes what breaks them.
- Security analyst
- Monitors, triages and investigates alerts and incidents, often in a security operations center (SOC).
- Security architect
- Designs the security model and reference architectures across the company, and sets the standards engineers build to.
What companies hire cybersecurity engineers to do.
A penetration tester breaks things; a remediation engineer fixes them; an IAM engineer decides who gets in; a GRC manager proves to auditors that it all holds. Hiring goes wrong when one job description tries to cover all of them.
01 · Offensive testing
Find the way in before an attacker does.
Penetration testers and ethical hackers who test applications, APIs, cloud accounts and networks with permission, and write findings engineers can act on.
- Scoped tests and red-team exercises against real attack paths
- Findings ranked by exploitability and business impact, not scanner severity
- Burp Suite
- Metasploit
- Nmap
- BloodHound
- Cobalt Strike
02 · Remediation and AppSec
Close the finding, and keep it closed.
Engineers who fix what testing and scanning find, and change the pipeline so the same class of bug doesn’t ship again.
- Vulnerability backlogs burned down by risk, with owners and dates
- Code, dependency and container scanning built into CI/CD
- Snyk
- Semgrep
- GitHub Advanced Security
- Tenable
- Wiz
03 · Identity and access
The right people, the right access, nothing standing.
IAM engineers who move a company from ad hoc accounts to policy-based identity: single sign-on, lifecycle provisioning, least privilege and access reviews that pass audit.
- Joiner, mover and leaver automation tied to HR systems
- Privileged access and service accounts under control
- Okta
- SailPoint
- Microsoft Entra ID
- CyberArk
- Active Directory
04 · Cloud and AI security
Secure by default in every cloud account.
Cloud security engineers who build guardrails into infrastructure code, and AI security engineers and architects who secure models, the data behind them and the agents that act on it.
- Posture management, IAM policy and network segmentation in code
- Prompt injection, data leakage and agent permissions treated as design problems
- AWS Security Hub
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud
- Wiz
- Terraform
- OPA
05 · Detection and response
Catch it in minutes, not in the breach report.
Detection engineers and SOC analysts who write detections as code, tune out noise and run incident response from first alert to root cause.
- Detections mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and tested against real techniques
- Alert volume down, true-positive rate up
- Splunk
- Microsoft Sentinel
- CrowdStrike Falcon
- Elastic
- Sigma
06 · GRC and compliance
Pass the audit, and mean it.
GRC managers who own the risk and compliance program, map controls to frameworks and keep evidence current, so a customer security review stops stalling a deal.
- SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and HIPAA programs owned end to end
- Controls monitored continuously instead of once a year
- Vanta
- Drata
- ServiceNow GRC
- NIST CSF
- ISO 27001
What to know before you hire a cybersecurity engineer.
Security hiring is expensive to get wrong. These are the questions worth settling before the search starts.
Which specialty do you need first?
Start from the risk, not the title. An upcoming audit or a stalled enterprise deal points to GRC. Findings piling up points to remediation. Contractors and ex-employees with lingering access point to IAM. A move to the cloud points to cloud security. Alerts nobody investigates points to detection. Most teams need one of these first, not all of them at once.
What does a security engineer cost?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median of $124,910 a year for information security analysts (BLS, May 2024), a category that includes many security engineers. Pay moves well above that for cloud security, IAM architects and application security at tech companies. We price each search from current offers in that specialty and market.
Which certifications matter?
Read them by what they prove. The OSCP is a hands-on exam, so it signals someone who can actually break in. The CISSP requires five years of paid security experience and shows breadth and program knowledge, not hands-on depth. Cloud credentials such as AWS Security Specialty or CCSP show baseline cloud knowledge. Treat all of them as a starting point, then test the work.
How should you interview a security engineer?
Ask them to walk through an environment they secured: what the business protected, the threat or audit that drove the work, what they found, what they changed, and how they knew it worked. Hands-on engineers answer with configurations, commands and trade-offs. Policy-only candidates answer with frameworks and slide decks.
Hire in-house, use an MSSP, or bring in contractors?
A managed security service provider can watch alerts around the clock, but it won’t own your identity model or fix your cloud configuration. Hire in-house for the controls that are core to your product. Use contract engineers for a project with a deadline, such as an identity integration or a cloud migration.
Do you need a security clearance or a compliance background?
A US government clearance can’t be obtained on your own; a sponsoring employer on a government contract must request it, so cleared candidates are a smaller pool and should be scoped early. For fintech and health tech, experience with PCI DSS, SOC 2 or HIPAA controls often matters more than a clearance.
Why security searches go wrong.
Security is one of the hardest skill sets to verify from a résumé. These are the misses we hear about most.
- 01
One job description, five specialties.
Tester, fixer, identity, cloud and compliance, all asked of one hire.
- 02
Policy fluency, no hands on keyboard.
Strong on frameworks, never configured the control they describe.
- 03
Certifications standing in for depth.
A stack of acronyms, and no environment they can walk through.
- 04
Cloud and identity treated as IT.
An IAM or cloud security role screened like a help-desk job.
We start with the environment, not the acronyms.
We’re technical people, and we ask every candidate to take us through an environment they were responsible for: what the business ran on, what threatened it, what they found, what they built or changed, and how they proved it held. The questions change by specialty; the depth we expect doesn’t. Every security engineer we present also meets our HEART standard.
- The whole environment: the cloud, identity stack, applications and data they protected, and why they mattered to the business.
- Find, fix and prove: for testers, how they got in; for engineers, how they closed it and showed it stayed closed.
- Identity and cloud depth: the policies, provisioning and guardrails they built, not the consoles they logged into.
- Risk in business terms: how they explained exposure to leadership and what changed in the program because of it.
| A generalist IT staffing firm | TekRecruiter |
|---|---|
| Writes one "security engineer" job for every need | Scopes the specialty before the search |
| Counts certifications | Walks through an environment the candidate secured |
| Accepts policy experience for hands-on roles | Separates builders and testers from program owners |
| Screens IAM like a help-desk skill | Screens IAM engineers on the integrations and policies they built |
| Contract or permanent, not both | Contract, contract-to-hire, direct hire or CISO search |
The HEART standard
What we look for beyond skills and experience, in every candidate we present.
- High agencyPeople who see what needs to be done and act without waiting to be told.
- ExecutionPeople who turn ideas into results.
- AccountabilityPeople who own the outcome, not just their piece of the work.
- ResourcefulnessPeople who figure things out when the answer isn’t obvious.
- TransparencyPeople who communicate clearly, honestly, and early.
What we screen out.
The patterns that separate an engineer who has secured production from one who has studied it.
Policy-only answers
Names NIST and ISO controls but can’t describe configuring one.
The scanner operator
Runs the tool and forwards the report, with no view on what to fix first.
No cloud identity depth
Can’t explain how roles, policies and trust relationships work in the clouds they list.
Detection measured by alert count
More alerts presented as progress, with no word on false positives or response time.
Security as the department of no
Blocks releases without offering a safer way to ship.
Loose with past findings
Shares a former employer’s vulnerabilities or client details in the interview.
Senior, staff and principal security engineers.
Seniority in security is about the size of the blast radius someone owns.
Senior
Owns a security domain end to end.
- Builds and runs controls in identity, cloud, AppSec or detection
- Leads incident response and remediation in their domain
- Reviews designs and pull requests for security risk
Staff
Sets security direction across teams.
- Defines guardrails product teams build within
- Makes the build-versus-buy calls on security tooling
- Turns audit and customer requirements into engineering work
Principal
Shapes the company’s security architecture.
- Owns the threat model for the whole platform
- Advises the CISO and engineering leaders on risk trade-offs
- Sets the multi-year roadmap for identity, cloud and AI security
For neutral context, the BLS median for information security analysts was $124,910 in May 2024 (BLS, May 2024). Our own 2026 pay data is in the 2026 Salary & Rate Guide.
Security engineer vs. security analyst vs. security architect.
| Security engineer | Security analyst | Security architect | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Builds and runs the controls | Watches, triages and investigates | Designs the security model |
| Typical work | Cloud guardrails, IAM, AppSec pipelines, detections as code | Alert triage, investigations, incident handling in the SOC | Reference architectures, threat models, standards |
| Measured by | Exposure closed and kept closed | Time to detect and respond | Risk reduced across the platform |
| Common credentials | OSCP, cloud security certifications | CompTIA Security+, GIAC analyst certifications | CISSP, cloud architect certifications |
| Hire when | Controls are missing or findings pile up | Alerts go uninvestigated | Security decisions are made one team at a time |
What clients say.
We needed to hire a senior IAM engineer with deep SOC 2 knowledge, and the role had been open for more than three months. Within a week of speaking with Ron, his team sent over three very solid profiles, and we finally found the right fit in just two weeks.
The hiring team needed someone who could build a Java automation framework from scratch, and we had worked the search for six straight months with at least 12 or 13 vendors. TekRecruiter sent one candidate, and he got the job.
Across multiple companies, I’ve hired more than six senior software engineers through TekRecruiter, and every one of them has been an impressive builder.
I got a firsthand look when I needed a software engineer with strong TypeScript skills to join my team. I was happy with the candidates, and I was able to make a hiring decision.
A former colleague referred me to TekRecruiter, and I was very impressed by the caliber of the senior DevOps engineers they presented. I identified two senior DevOps engineers who were exceptional fits for my team.
He said he would share three to four candidates within a week, and that’s exactly what he did. We hired a senior software engineer we’re confident in, and we’ve been thrilled with how well things have worked out.
The few times I’ve hired over the last five years, I’ve always been vendor neutral, and TekRecruiter has been the staffing partner that filled every one of those open engineering roles.
Their ability to quickly supply highly skilled software and DevOps engineers who blend in well with our existing teams continues to amaze me. They are highly technical at the account management level and transparently propose different solutions, whether staff augmentation or nearshore outsourcing.
How to hire security engineers with us.
Direct hire
A permanent engineer or GRC owner for the controls at the core of your product, backed by a 90-day guarantee.
Direct hireStaff augmentation
Contract security engineers for an identity integration, a cloud migration or an audit deadline, starting in as little as three days.
Staff augmentationContract-to-hire
Start the project on contract, then convert the engineers who proved themselves in your environment.
Contract-to-hireCISO search
CISOs, Heads and Directors of Security, through our executive search practice.
Security leadership
Cybersecurity hiring questions, answered.
What kinds of cybersecurity engineers does TekRecruiter recruit?
We recruit ethical hackers and penetration testers, remediation engineers, identity and access management (IAM) engineers, network and cloud security engineers, AI security engineers and architects, GRC managers, and cybersecurity (SOC) analysts. At the executive level, we placed a Chief Information Security Officer at a top IT infrastructure company in Atlanta in 2026.
What does a cybersecurity engineer earn?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median of $124,910 a year for information security analysts in May 2024 (BLS, May 2024). Specialists in cloud security, IAM and application security at tech companies are usually paid above that median. We benchmark each search against current offers in the specialty and market.
What is the difference between a penetration tester and a remediation engineer?
A penetration tester, or ethical hacker, attacks your systems with permission to find the weaknesses. A remediation engineer fixes what the testing and scanning find, and changes the configuration and process so the same issue does not come back. Most security programs need both, and they are different hires.
Have you filled identity and access management (IAM) roles?
Yes. At eMed, a senior IAM engineer role requiring deep SOC 2 knowledge had been open for more than three months across several agencies. Within a week of speaking with Ron Smith, TekRecruiter sent three very solid profiles and eMed found the right fit in just two weeks, according to eMed’s former Chief Information Security Officer.
How fast can you staff an identity and access management project?
In a 2022 project, for a SailPoint IdentityNow and Okta integration on an urgent timeline and a conservative budget, the client interviewed and hired an Okta architect and two IAM engineers within one week. The integration finished on time and under budget, and all three consultants converted to full-time. Read the case study.
Which cybersecurity certifications should we require?
Require the work, not the acronym. An OSCP signals hands-on offensive skill, a CISSP signals at least five years of security experience and program breadth, and cloud security certifications show baseline cloud knowledge. None of them proves someone has secured an environment like yours, so we screen on that directly.
What is an AI security engineer?
An AI security engineer secures the systems a company builds with AI: the models, the data they are trained and grounded on, and the agents and integrations that act on that data. AI security architects design those controls across the company. We recruit both.
Do you recruit security leaders, including CISOs?
Yes. Security leadership searches run through our executive search practice. In 2026 we placed a Chief Information Security Officer at a top IT infrastructure company in Atlanta. See CISO & Security Leadership.
What is the HEART standard?
HEART is the standard we screen every candidate against, beyond skills: high agency, execution, accountability, resourcefulness and transparency. It describes people who take ownership, turn ideas into results and move the business forward. See the standard.
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