MANY Hired

Cybersecurity resume keywords

We counted the skills in 714 open cybersecurity job postings from 176 employers, including SentinelOne, Samsara and Jane Street. The ones employers ask for most are automation (52% of postings), application security (42%) and cybersecurity (37%). 71% 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 42%
3cybersecurity 37%
4incident response 36%
5Python 31%
6AWS 28%
7compliance 26%
8cloud security 21%
9threat modeling 20%
10CI/CD 20%
11triage 19%
12Kubernetes 17%
13SIEM 17%
14SaaS 16%
15GCP 16%
16LLMs 15%
17audit 15%
18APIs 15%
19product roadmap 14%
20vulnerability management 14%
21IAM 13%
22Linux 13%
23Golang 11%
24machine learning 10%
25Azure 10%
26penetration testing 9%
27supply chain 9%
28code review 9%
29analytics 8%
30sales 8%

Share of the 714 postings whose description names the skill (plurals and common spellings, such as “JS” and “JavaScript”, count as one).

Soft skills employers mention

leadership · 11%communication · 10%collaboration · 6%ownership · 6%cross-functional · 5%reporting · 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 714 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”, “Python” and “AWS” 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 October 28, 2026.