Cybersecurity hiring in Singapore surges with AI adoption, but talent gaps remain

[SINGAPORE] Demand for cybersecurity professionals in Singapore has staged a sharp surge, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and an escalating regional threat landscape.

Data from job site Indeed showed that cybersecurity job postings in Singapore rose 57 per cent from 2024 to 2025. This is the highest jump the site has seen in three years.

“As artificial intelligence adoption deepens across sectors, cybersecurity has evolved from a back-end function to a core part of business resilience,” said Indeed spokesperson Shannon Pang.

Employment agency company ManpowerGroup Singapore also observed a more than 20 per cent increase in cybersecurity job postings in the past year.

“Cybersecurity job postings have been steadily increasing over the past several years... current demand is among the highest seen in recent years,” Linda Teo, country manager of ManpowerGroup Singapore, said.

Job site Jobstreet recorded about a 7 per cent year-on-year (yoy) rise in cybersecurity-related job postings from January to October 2025, compared with the same period last year.

This marks a rebound – the first yoy increase in cybersecurity-related job postings the platform has recorded in three years. It also noted that some specialised roles experienced far sharper growth.

Listings for cybersecurity architects surged by 333 per cent and, postings for cybersecurity analysts, by 256 per cent. Job openings for information security analysts climbed by 229 per cent over the same period, a Jobstreet spokesperson said.

The resurgence in hiring is being met with equal enthusiasm from the workforce, with jobseeker interest in these roles jumping 77 per cent in 2025, Indeed’s data indicated. On Jobstreet’s platform, jobseeker interest led to a 15 per cent yoy rise in applications.

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Combating AI risks

While the broader tech labour market has flattened since 2022, cybersecurity has decoupled from the trend due to the specific risks introduced by generative AI.

“As companies adopt cloud, AI and data-driven systems at scale, they’re exposing new attack surfaces,” said Helen Fan, manager of consulting services for Asia at talent solutions provider CXC Global.

The Asia-Pacific region encounters the most cyberattacks, accounting for just over a third (34 per cent) of global incidents, said CXC Global.

This shift is creating sustained demand for specialists who understand how to secure AI pipelines and data flows, she told The Business Times.

Daen Huang, associate director for technology and transformation at recruitment agency Robert Walters Singapore, expressed a similar sentiment.

He added that cyberattacks are becoming “more frequent and more sophisticated”. Risks such as model poisoning and deepfake manipulation are also gaining prominence.

“Companies are facing tighter regulatory requirements, and many are in the middle of major digital-transformation or cloud-migration projects,” said Huang. “All of this has pushed cybersecurity from a back-office function to something that needs real investment and attention.”

Remote work has also introduced additional entry points outside traditional corporate networks, said Teo of ManpowerGroup Singapore. “This creates a complex and distributed environment that cybercriminals can exploit,” she said.

Huang said roles in the highest demand are cloud security engineers, security operations centre analysts, incident responders, cybersecurity architects, and specialists in governance risk and compliance, and identity and access management.

“There’s also growing demand for penetration testers and red-teamers, as organisations start stress-testing their own systems more seriously,” he said.

A structural talent gap

However, the hiring spree faces a critical bottleneck: a severe shortage of experienced talent. This is especially so in the Asia-Pacific, which faces the largest shortage of cybersecurity experts in the world. CXC Global, citing its data, said the Asia-Pacific is short of about 2.6 million professionals, accounting for roughly 60 per cent of the global shortage.

Fan said junior candidates and certified beginners are in oversupply, even as the industry faces a severe shortage of professionals with three to five years of experience.

This scarcity has drastically affected hiring timelines. “For many organisations, hiring a cybersecurity professional can take half a year or longer – and senior roles often drag on for close to 12 months,” Fan added.

The shortage has led to a rise in margins, with clients increasingly willing to pay premiums for high-quality talent, she noted.

Data from Indeed reveals that the average annual base salary for a cybersecurity architect in Singapore is about S$129,765, significantly higher than the S$55,761 average for an AI architect.

According to Robert Walters’ Huang, demand is highest among highly regulated environments such as banks and fintech firms, though healthcare, government-linked organisations and tech firms are also hiring aggressively.

Outlook: no signs of slowing

Looking ahead to 2026, experts predict the demand will outpace supply.

“Cybersecurity hiring is likely to stay strong throughout 2026,” said Huang. “While tools will improve, they won’t replace experienced engineers, architects and incident responders.”

CXC Global’s Fan forecasts that while automation will streamline entry-level monitoring tasks, it will not reduce the need for overall headcount. Instead, the mix of roles will shift towards advanced specialisations in cloud security, development, security and operations, and AI-related compliance.

“Demand won’t fall – it will redistribute towards more advanced, cloud and AI-aligned security roles,” she said.