Flagship research · 2026
What companies are actually hiring for when they say AI Security Engineer.
A ground-truth study of public hiring signals, capability expectations, role compression, and the operating-model evidence behind an emerging security discipline.
754,507
Job descriptions analyzed
27,260
Companies analyzed
15
Chapters
9
Role archetypes mapped
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The market signal
One emerging role. Several jobs hiding inside it.
The report turns a large corpus of job-description intelligence into a practical view of the capabilities employers name, combine, omit, and struggle to separate.
The Frankenstein Role
Public hiring signals increasingly compress application security, cloud security, ML security, governance, and product engineering into one role.
Skill Washing
Putting AI in a title is not the same as specifying AI security work. The report separates explicit capability signals from adjacent language.
The Unicorn Index
Some job descriptions appear to price one role while describing team-shaped capability across several security and engineering disciplines.
The Evidence Gap
Governance language becomes operational only when it reaches controls, telemetry, approvals, remediation, and evidence.
Inside the report
Research made legible as systems, boundaries, and operating decisions.
Role compression
How distinct security and engineering responsibilities converge in AI security hiring language.
The authority ladder
A practical model for reasoning about systems that move from generation toward delegated action.
The MADE operating model
A shared vocabulary for mapping, attacking, defending, and evidencing AI systems.
Research standard
Built to inform decisions without overstating what public data can prove.
Corpus
Public hiring signals
The analysis treats job descriptions as evidence of market demand and role language—not as proof of company security maturity.
Interpretation
Aggregate benchmark
Patterns are evaluated across the corpus so the report can describe directional labor-market signals without accusing individual companies.
Claim discipline
Evidence before assertion
Findings are separated from interpretation, and claims are bounded by explicit caveats and source notes.