SAN FRANCISCO: Austin Cowan had expected a quiet year.
The headhunter, who helps Fortune 100 companies find and attract cybersecurity executives, knew that the markets were choppy and that corporate honchos were mulling how artificial intelligence might upend their businesses.
But Heidrick & Struggles, the white glove executive talent firm where Cowan works, has been deluged in recent months with requests to find executives who have experience responding to security breaches and protecting data, along with the technical know-how to review code.
“Roles that typically come along every 12 months, we’re seeing those roles come along every week,” Cowan said. “I think it’s driven by fear and uncertainty in this AI arms race.”
As AI upends jobs – particularly in Silicon Valley – the risks and pitfalls associated with the technology have helped fuel a new wave of hiring for cybersecurity experts.
Demand is so fierce that some search firms have said they are turning away clients, partly because there are too few qualified candidates to go around. Cybersecurity job postings in the first quarter were up 11% from a year earlier, according to Glassdoor, a job search platform.
Hiring of security experts has surged as tech workers increasingly use AI to generate code, sometimes introducing bugs and vulnerabilities in the process. And leading AI labs have warned that their latest technologies, like Anthropic’s Mythos model, could be used to find and exploit software vulnerabilities. That would make it easier to hack into companies’ infrastructure.
The hiring frenzy shows how AI can also help create some jobs, even amid dire warnings that the technology could replace vast parts of the workforce.
“We’re going to need people to deal with the bug-pocalypse,” said Lea Kissner, chief information security officer at LinkedIn. “I don’t think we’re really going to understand how to do AI security in a sustainable, long-term way for at least several years.”
Kissner said they had scoured the market to hire engineers with technical skills, the open-mindedness to navigate the ambiguity and confusion that comes with the AI revolution, and an understanding of how complex corporate infrastructure works.
“The job market for security people is getting hotter and hotter,” Kissner added.
Cybersecurity hiring has particularly picked up speed as AI models have made rapid advances.
Last month, AI startup Anthropic announced that it had built a new model, Mythos, that was exceptional at finding and exploiting flaws in the software that supports the world’s power grids, financial institutions and major companies. The announcement set off a global scramble to prepare for how attackers might eventually use the technology. A week later, OpenAI unveiled similar technology: GPT‑5.4‑Cyber.
Both companies released the technology to a limited group of partners for testing.
For businesses, seeking highly technical security executives “has gotten more and more common” since Anthropic began previewing Mythos, said Michael Piacente, a managing partner at Hitch Partners, an executive search firm that specialises in security. His firm has been flooded by these requests.
“The increase since the fall of last year has been five-, maybe sevenfold,” he said. “We’ve turned down quite a number of searches as a result.”
Some cybersecurity experts are brushing up on AI to make themselves more marketable.
Brian Gaudenti, a security engineer, left his job detecting and investigating cyberthreats at a large tech company in November. Despite more than a decade of experience in the field, he initially struggled to find a new gig.
But at a cybersecurity conference in March, he noticed that other engineers were using AI tools to write code, a practice called vibecoding. He used AI to make music, web apps and software, and added those projects to his portfolio. Demonstrating his AI chops helped him find a new job last month building out an AI startup’s security team.
“People who are not doing that and waiting for their old jobs to reappear, they’re not going to find them again,” he said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a net loss in jobs, but people are going to have to adapt what their next job is going to be, 100%.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
