Cybersecurity/Info security career

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There's a few categories of cyber-security jobs that pays above 300k per year.

1) top sales in cybersecurity for a region. Usually the top sales guys or management level for a region and above. Else, average is 100k to 200k+. Again, this is for global tech companies.
2) top presales for cybersecurity in a region. Most presales are 100k-200k once again. You're usually the top guy in the region in the company for a global tech organisation.
3) engineering. Usually top person in a regional or global team for a large tech company.

There's varying pay, but usually the bigger region you cover, the more prestigious company you work for, and being the go to person inside the company usually can get 300k+.

Most of these jobs, in fact, I have gotten around 5 offers above 300k, and all are via headhunters who work for these large tech or large cybersecurity companies. Interviews are generally very hard and need to spend a lot of time on it. Feel free to ask any other questions and I'll try to give my perspective.

Can you elaborate the route you took to get there starting from your fresh grad days?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Thanks for the insights!
Just to ask, is the ~300k just the base salary, or the annual package?
It's mind-boggling how much they are willing to pay, and I thought I was already getting paid quite well (almost 200k base) as a presales.

As Presales , do you have sales KPI pegged to you ? Or more of the sales that’s you have supported ?

Also curious about this headhunter thing, there seems to be many Recuriter who proclaim that they are “headhunter”. I really doubt if that is the case.
Seems to be pulling out job advertisement from those tech company and liase with the Recuriter or hiring manager to find them the candidate

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There's a few categories of cyber-security jobs that pays above 300k per year.

1) top sales in cybersecurity for a region. Usually the top sales guys or management level for a region and above. Else, average is 100k to 200k+. Again, this is for global tech companies.
2) top presales for cybersecurity in a region. Most presales are 100k-200k once again. You're usually the top guy in the region in the company for a global tech organisation.
3) engineering. Usually top person in a regional or global team for a large tech company.

There's varying pay, but usually the bigger region you cover, the more prestigious company you work for, and being the go to person inside the company usually can get 300k+.

Most of these jobs, in fact, I have gotten around 5 offers above 300k, and all are via headhunters who work for these large tech or large cybersecurity companies. Interviews are generally very hard and need to spend a lot of time on it. Feel free to ask any other questions and I'll try to give my perspective.

1) what certifications do you have and which one opens the most doors for you (other than cissp)

2) how many years of experience do you have?

3) do you jump companies very often? Like maybe 2-3 years? I have seen people who jump every 1.5-2 years and they seem to be doing very well. What do you personally think about this?

What is a typical day like for presales role?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There's a few categories of cyber-security jobs that pays above 300k per year.

1) top sales in cybersecurity for a region. Usually the top sales guys or management level for a region and above. Else, average is 100k to 200k+. Again, this is for global tech companies.
2) top presales for cybersecurity in a region. Most presales are 100k-200k once again. You're usually the top guy in the region in the company for a global tech organisation.
3) engineering. Usually top person in a regional or global team for a large tech company.

There's varying pay, but usually the bigger region you cover, the more prestigious company you work for, and being the go to person inside the company usually can get 300k+.

Most of these jobs, in fact, I have gotten around 5 offers above 300k, and all are via headhunters who work for these large tech or large cybersecurity companies. Interviews are generally very hard and need to spend a lot of time on it. Feel free to ask any other questions and I'll try to give my perspective.

Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

As Presales , do you have sales KPI pegged to you ? Or more of the sales that’s you have supported ?

Also curious about this headhunter thing, there seems to be many Recuriter who proclaim that they are “headhunter”. I really doubt if that is the case.
Seems to be pulling out job advertisement from those tech company and liase with the Recuriter or hiring manager to find them the candidate

Presales usually have no sales KPI - although the comms is tied to the sales person, there's no pressure to hit the target. As long as you're competent in giving demos/presentations, understand your product well and technically proficient + able to quickly understand the customer pain points, that's it. Quite low stress to be honest compared to salespersons, though of course the max salary is more "capped" even with accelerators.

I work for Google cybersecurity team.

Short intro,

Grad from NTU CS degree, interned at google data center for 6 months. Converted to security engineer then Google Security Cloud specialist. When I was 15 I created runescape bots, around 16-17 I created dll injectors for popular games... ( maplestory, etc ). So I was quite into it before I even entered uni.

anyway
Current pay: 14.5k ( annual around 200k+ with bonuses ), started at 6k when I first join
YOE: 5+ years

Every morning I'll do some quick devops task, check servers etc. Then I'll pen-test intern projects and teach them. By noon I'll have a few meetings and discuss with teams. for the most part i deal with vulnerabilities related to google services. google maps etc.

( here's a funny story, google maps used to leak people's real time location... so paparazzis would always use them to track celebrities. fixed in mid 2020 alr. )

[cyberbible]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There's a few categories of cyber-security jobs that pays above 300k per year.

1) top sales in cybersecurity for a region. Usually the top sales guys or management level for a region and above. Else, average is 100k to 200k+. Again, this is for global tech companies.
2) top presales for cybersecurity in a region. Most presales are 100k-200k once again. You're usually the top guy in the region in the company for a global tech organisation.
3) engineering. Usually top person in a regional or global team for a large tech company.

There's varying pay, but usually the bigger region you cover, the more prestigious company you work for, and being the go to person inside the company usually can get 300k+.

Most of these jobs, in fact, I have gotten around 5 offers above 300k, and all are via headhunters who work for these large tech or large cybersecurity companies. Interviews are generally very hard and need to spend a lot of time on it. Feel free to ask any other questions and I'll try to give my perspective.

1) How many years of experience do you have (maybe can elaborate on your role progression)?
2) What certs do you have and which one open the most doors for you (other than CISSP)?
3) You mentioned that interviews are generally very hard, can you elaborate more on the interviews, what kind of questions should one expect?

[cyberbible]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I work for Google cybersecurity team.

Short intro,

Grad from NTU CS degree, interned at google data center for 6 months. Converted to security engineer then Google Security Cloud specialist. When I was 15 I created runescape bots, around 16-17 I created dll injectors for popular games... ( maplestory, etc ). So I was quite into it before I even entered uni.

anyway
Current pay: 14.5k ( annual around 200k+ with bonuses ), started at 6k when I first join
YOE: 5+ years

Every morning I'll do some quick devops task, check servers etc. Then I'll pen-test intern projects and teach them. By noon I'll have a few meetings and discuss with teams. for the most part i deal with vulnerabilities related to google services. google maps etc.

( here's a funny story, google maps used to leak people's real time location... so paparazzis would always use them to track celebrities. fixed in mid 2020 alr. )

Nice share. Could you share about Google's interview process for cybersecurity team? Everyone knows about the stringent interview process for software engineers in FAANG and how to prepare for it such as grinding leetcodes. What will I expect for the interviews for cybersecurity team in FAANG?

anyone here know about cybersecurity career in LTA in terms of salary, progression, benefits, etc. ? the CISO there seems popular haha