Security Engineer / Information Security Analyst
Does the security work rather than owning the policy: hardening, monitoring, patching, reviewing code and answering the questionnaire.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
The practitioner beneath the CISO, and in most companies the practitioner comes first and the chief comes later. The commercial trigger is almost always an enterprise customer’s security review or a certification, which is why this hire is often funded by sales rather than by engineering.
Education
Computer science, information systems or a self-taught route through operations. Certification carries more weight here than in software engineering.
Experience
4+ years in security, or a strong systems background with security depth. Ask what they found in their last environment that surprised them.
Vertical / domain experience
Regulatory domain decides the evidence you need: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and PCI DSS each accept different proof.
What it pays, roughly
$95,992 median, Canada — for Computer and information systems professionals, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $85,010 to $103,002 over 202,605 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters | Skiploma |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISSP | ISC2 | The senior generalist credential; expected at the top of this track. | Study |
| GIAC — hands-on security certifications | GIAC | Hands-on and specific — the strongest evidence for a practitioner rather than a manager. | Study |
| CompTIA Security+ | CompTIA | The entry credential, and common as a hiring filter. | — |
| OSCP | OffSec | Offensive testing, examined by doing. Relevant if the role includes penetration testing. | Study |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
Nobody. Two-factor everywhere, a password manager, and backups you have restored from.
Nobody internally. Buy a penetration test before your first enterprise customer asks whether you have had one.
A seat once you hold customer data at scale or are working toward a certification.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Chief Information Security Officer (Founders & fractional leadership)
- DevOps Engineer / DevOps Specialist
- IT Systems Administrator / Sysadmin
- Chief Information Officer (Founders & fractional leadership)
Security and DevOps merge in a small company under the name platform engineering, and that works provided someone outside the team reviews the result.
Keep separate from
Once a framework is audited, the person implementing the controls should not be the only person attesting to them.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Asks what you hold and where before anything else
- Prioritises by exposure rather than by tool
- Writes the evidence down as they go
Red flags
- Tool-first answers
- No incident experience
- Treats the questionnaire as the objective
The same role in three kinds of company
This job changes shape depending on who is paying for it. An agency sells the hours, a contract shop delivers into someone else's estate, and a product company is building something it keeps — and the same title means something different in each.
In an agency
An agency holds many clients’ data at once, which makes it a more attractive target than any one client. Segregate client environments from each other.
On a client contract
On contract, the client’s security team will review you. Expect a questionnaire, and expect it to take weeks; budget it into the project plan.
In a product company
In a product company, security becomes a sales dependency the first time an enterprise buyer sends a questionnaire — which is earlier than most founders expect.
What this role runs on
The software categories this job lives in. Each links to our buying brief and to the research behind it.
| Category | Who the default is | What leaving costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNAPP & Cloud Security Posture Management | Wiz, now inside Google | Agentless scanning needs cloud-account trust relationships, and those are granted once and rarely re-granted | The research → |
| GRC & Compliance Automation | OneTrust, with Vanta and Drata owning the automation tier | The evidence history | The research → |
| DMS — Document Management Systems | Microsoft SharePoint (bundled in Microsoft 365), with OpenText and Hyland in enterprise ECM | The repository itself: years of documents with their version history, permissions, metadata, retention schedules and legal holds | The research → |