MANY Hired

Cybersecurity resume keywords

We counted the skills in 680 open cybersecurity job postings from 175 employers, including SentinelOne, Samsara and Jane Street. The ones employers ask for most are automation (52% of postings), application security (44%) and cybersecurity (36%). 74% of the postings mention AI, though often in the company's description rather than as a skill the job needs.

Top skills and tools in cybersecurity postings

#KeywordShare of postings
1automation 52%
2application security 44%
3cybersecurity 36%
4incident response 36%
5AWS 29%
6Python 29%
7compliance 27%
8cloud security 23%
9threat modeling 20%
10triage 20%
11CI/CD 20%
12SaaS 19%
13GCP 18%
14Kubernetes 18%
15audit 17%
16SIEM 16%
17product roadmap 16%
18vulnerability management 15%
19APIs 15%
20LLMs 15%
21IAM 13%
22Linux 12%
23Golang 11%
24sales 10%
25Azure 10%
26machine learning 10%
27supply chain 10%
28code review 10%
29risk management 8%
30penetration testing 8%

Share of the 680 postings whose description names the skill (plurals and common spellings, such as “JS” and “JavaScript”, count as one).

Soft skills employers mention

leadership · 10%communication · 9%ownership · 5%cross-functional · 5%collaboration · 5%

Show these through results in your bullets (“led a team of six”) rather than listing them as adjectives.

How to use these keywords on your cybersecurity resume

  1. Start with the posting, not this list. These are averages across 680 jobs; the one you're applying for has its own priorities. Use this page to spot common gaps, then match the specific posting.
  2. Name skills the way employers do. If you use “automation”, “application security” and “cybersecurity”, write those exact words. Applicant tracking systems and recruiters search for them, and a close synonym can be missed.
  3. Put each skill in a bullet that shows a result. Naming incident response inside a bullet about what you achieved with it, with a number where you can, is stronger than listing it alone in a skills section.
  4. Add only what's true. If you've worked with “incident response”, “AWS” and “Python” but your resume doesn't say so, add it. If you haven't, leave it out: interviews expose padded resumes quickly.

More about cybersecurity jobs

Resume keywords for other jobs

How these numbers are calculated

Every figure comes from open cybersecurity job postings on MANY Hired, imported from employers' own career pages. For each posting we pick out the skills, tools, certifications and qualifications its description names, then count how many postings ask for each one. A job counts as cybersecurity by its title. Updated November 8, 2026.