What 100 Cybersecurity Searches Tell Us About Where the Market Is Heading
By Minesh Patel, Vice President, Product, Engineering & AI, Stanton House
I spend most of my time speaking with founders, CTOs, CPOs and CAIOs about the people they need to build and scale their businesses.
There's no shortage of opinions regarding AIs impact on hiring. What I find more useful is looking at hiring data. The roles companies actually invest in tend to tell a more accurate story than the headlines.
In H1 of 2026, we have supported more than 100 cybersecurity searches across Product, Engineering, AI & GTM. I recently went through that data and pulled out some key hiring trends that I think give us a good indication of where the market is heading.
Over the last few weeks, I've been talking through these themes in a short LinkedIn video series, but the numbers themselves tell an interesting story.
The AI Boom Has Increased the Importance of Great Software Engineers
4:1, Software Engineers vs Dedicated AI Engineers
Given the amount of attention AI receives, you might expect AI Engineers to dominate our search activity. They don't.
Around 38% of the cybersecurity searches we supported were Software Engineering roles, compared with approximately 10% dedicated to AI positions. That's roughly four Software Engineering searches for every AI Engineer.
The assumption was that AI will reduce demand for traditional Software Engineering talent. What I'm seeing is almost the opposite.
The cybersecurity companies investing most heavily in AI aren't simply hiring people to build AI models. They're investing in engineers who can evaluate AI technologies, integrate them into existing platforms, improve developer productivity and turn AI into something customers can actually use.
We've largely moved beyond the question of whether AI will be important, the challenge now is making it useful.
[Watch Episode 1: Post | LinkedIn]
The Hardest Roles Aren't Always the Most Senior
65-75 Days to Fill the Most Challenging Searches
When we looked at which searches took the longest to complete, three roles consistently stood out.
Principal and Staff Software Engineers were among them. Companies wanted people with deep technical expertise who could influence architecture, mentor engineers and provide technical leadership without necessarily becoming managers. These searches averaged around 65 days to complete.
AI Engineers with genuine production experience were another. There's a huge difference between someone who has experimented with AI and someone who has successfully deployed AI into a customer-facing product. These searches averaged around 75 days.
The third was Principal Product Managers who understand both cybersecurity and AI. Businesses increasingly need people who can connect technical possibility with customer problems and commercial outcomes.
What I find most interesting isn't the roles themselves, it's what they have in common.
The hardest positions to hire weren't necessarily the most senior. They were the roles sitting at the intersection of multiple disciplines. Engineering and leadership. Product and AI. Cybersecurity and AI. All being Senior ICs.
As cybersecurity products continue to evolve, I expect demand for these hybrid skill sets to increase.
[Watch Episode 2: Post | LinkedIn]
Candidates Care More About Leadership Than Compensation
70% of Candidate Declines Linked to Leadership Confidence and Direction
This was probably the finding that surprised most of the founders and hiring leaders I shared it with.
When we looked at why candidates had declined opportunities, 42% cited a lack of conviction in leadership and another 28% pointed to unclear company direction.
Compensation accounted for 17%, with role scope and title making up the remainder.
That doesn't mean compensation isn't important. Of course it is.
But once you're dealing with experienced people who have multiple opportunities available to them, salary isn't always what separates one company from another.
They're assessing the leadership team. They're assessing the vision. They're assessing whether they believe the company knows where it's going.
At senior levels, the interview process increasingly becomes a confidence-building exercise. The company must sell its leadership and strategy just as convincingly as the candidate sells their experience.
The strongest cybersecurity companies aren't always winning talent because they're paying more.
They're winning because they're creating conviction.
[Watch Episode 3: Post | LinkedIn]
Companies Are Hiring for Leverage, Not Headcount
3:1, Principal/Staff vs Engineering Manager Searches
Another number that stood out was the ratio between Principal Engineer searches and Engineering Manager searches.
For every Engineering Manager search we supported, we worked on roughly three Principal or Staff Engineer searches.
What I think that tells us is that today, the default answer to growth is no longer simply to add more people and more structure.
Today, the conversations sound different.
Founders and Engineering leaders are asking:
How do we move faster?
How do we implement AI effectively?
How do we increase the output of the team we already have?
Increasingly, the answer is senior individual contributors.
A strong Principal or Staff Engineer can solve complex technical challenges, influence architecture, mentor engineers and improve performance across several teams without adding another management layer.
That's a different kind of leverage from simply adding headcount, and it's one of the clearest hiring signals I've seen this year.
[Watch Episode 4: Post | LinkedIn]
AI Is Becoming a Capability, Not a Department
1 in 10 Dedicated AI Searches vs AI Appearing Across 50%+ of Search Categories
Only one in ten of the searches we supported were dedicated AI roles. Yet AI experience appeared across more than half of our Product, Engineering and Go-To-Market search categories. (Much higher when you remove GTM data)
A misconception I’ve noticed in the market is that AI adoption means building entirely new AI teams.
That isn't what we're seeing.
Engineering leaders want engineers who can build with AI and product leaders want people who understand AI-enabled workflows.
Commercial leaders increasingly need people who can explain and demonstrate AI value to customers.
The pattern we’re seeing is that AI is becoming less of a department and more of a capability.
I don't think the most interesting question for cybersecurity companies is:
"How do we build an AI team?"
It's:
"How do we build an AI-enabled company?"
AI isn't replacing existing functions. It's changing what we expect from the people inside them.
[Watch Episode 5: Post | LinkedIn]
What Am I Taking Away From All This?
If I take one thing from the cybersecurity searches we've supported this year, it's that the impact of AI on hiring is more nuanced than the headlines sometimes suggest.
We're not seeing every cybersecurity company suddenly building huge AI teams.
We're seeing increased demand for Software Engineers who can operationalise AI. We're seeing growing value placed on people who sit at the intersection of disciplines. We're seeing strong demand for senior individual contributors who create leverage across organisations. And we're seeing candidates place enormous weight on leadership quality and company direction when making career decisions.
We'll continue tracking these patterns through H2, particularly how AI requirements spread into traditionally non-AI roles, how demand for senior individual contributors evolves and whether candidate priorities shift as the funding environment changes.
If you're building a Product, Engineering or AI team in cybersecurity and want to compare what you're seeing with the wider market, I'm always happy to share what we're seeing.
