Global demand for network engineers who have DDoS mitigation skills has continued to grow over the last six months, with skilled pros raking in $102,000 per year on average.
Imperva’s recent analysis into salaries and skill sets identified a perfect storm for job candidates looking to make six figures quickly. The prevalence of DDoS attacks, a lack of new graduates to feed the demand, and competition from DDoS vendors for NetOps experts all mean that qualified candidates can demand more.
The firm found that China is seeing the most demand for DDoS network engineering skills, with an estimated 47% annual growth (compared to 30% in the US). Further, companies in the US, UK and Canada are taking longer to fill these positions, as evidenced by the increase in average listing days for them. In the US, this has increased from 27 to 37 days over a four-month period, with the growth rate being over 75%.
The unfortunate thing is that the average time to hire a qualified person is approaching 40 days for the US and UK, and is on an upward trend worldwide.
“Our analysis of job listings for DDoS skills indicates that organizations are scrambling for DDoS engineers, creating a demand that is not met by the meager supply of applicants with desired skills,” said Tim Matthews, director of demand generation at Imperva, in a blog. “Typically we would consider this normal behavior in the face of an emerging new threat. However, when it comes to DDoS protection it can be unclear what the role of that engineer is and what the required qualifications are—in particular when considering DDoS attacks affect the external side of an organization’s communication line and can only be mitigated through a service external to the organization.”
There is a sustained increase in demand for professionals having DDoS mitigation experience across IT security, network engineering and operations, systems administration and DevOps realms.
Matthews added, “Job listings with the desired qualifications of an experienced anti-DDoS engineer manifests as a long list that includes years in the industry, carrier experience, knowledge of network infrastructure, network platforms and DDoS mitigation technologies, specifically BGP and GRE tunneling. In addition, the engineer needs analytical, customer service, and communication skills, and frequently needs to be a sleuth when deconstructing an attack.”
Companies worldwide are looking to hire skilled and scarce human resources to address a rapidly rising tide of security concerns threatening their online presence, Imperva found.
“We believe that the demand for network engineers with DDoS expertise is growing as a direct result of the rise of volumetric attacks on organizations,” Matthews said. “Whether organizations build or outsource their DDoS mitigation, they require a specialized resource in their IT departments to focus on internal solutions or actively manage vendors.”
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