Cyber security salary in Australia: what entry-level and experienced roles pay
Cyber security has a reputation for paying well, and the reputation is earned. It also has a reputation for being easy to walk into, which is not.
Five numbers, from two sources, that together tell you what a cyber security salary in Australia actually looks like at each rung, and what the headline figures leave out.
The ladder, as employers advertise it
These are average annual ranges from SEEK Career Advice, all refreshed by SEEK on 1 October 2026 and read on 30 October 2026. They reflect what is being offered, not what everyone is earning.
| Role | Typical advertised range | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| Service desk analyst | $70,000 to $85,000 a year | The on-ramp. Not a security job, and the job most people in security actually started in |
| Cyber security analyst | $95,000 to $115,000 a year | The first genuinely security role. SEEK puts the typical salary at $105,000 a year, from around 1,000 roles advertised nationally |
| Penetration tester | $95,000 to $115,000 a year | The job everyone imagines when they picture cyber security. Paid the same as an analyst |
| Systems administrator | $100,000 to $120,000 a year | Not a security title at all, and advertised above the analyst range |
| Security engineer | $140,000 to $160,000 a year | Where the money actually is: building and running the controls rather than monitoring them |
The first surprise: a systems administrator out-earns a security analyst
Read the table again. Systems administrator is advertised at $100,000 to $120,000 a year and cyber security analyst at $95,000 to $115,000. The non-security job pays slightly more.
That is worth sitting with, because it undercuts the assumption driving a lot of career changes. People move towards security expecting a pay jump at the first security title, and at the analyst rung there is not one. What there is, is a different ceiling: the step from analyst to engineer is worth something like forty thousand dollars, and there is no equivalent step out of systems administration.
So the money in security is real, and it arrives later than people think.
The second surprise: about 1,000 jobs
SEEK was showing roughly 1,000 cyber security analyst roles advertised across Australia when we checked. For comparison, in the same week there were well over twenty thousand administration roles advertised across two job titles.
A thousand roles nationally is not a small number in absolute terms, but it is a small number if you are competing for an entry-level one with no IT background. This is the single clearest reason why the advice to start on a service desk is not a consolation prize: the support market is many times larger, and it is where security teams recruit from.
What the national data says about who holds these jobs
Jobs and Skills Australia groups security specialists with database and systems administrators, ANZSCO 2621. Checked on 30 October 2026: 72,600 people employed, annual employment growth of about 3,300, median weekly earnings of $2,461, a median age of 41, and a part-time share of just 8 per cent.
Two things stand out. Median weekly earnings of $2,461 is the highest of any occupation group we have looked at in this series, which confirms the pay reputation at group level. And a part-time share of 8 per cent against a median age of 41 describes a field of full-time, mid-career professionals. This is not an industry of twenty-two year olds, and it is not one you drift into part time around other work.
What actually moves you up the ladder
- Time in an operational role. Every rung above analyst assumes you have run something in production and seen it break.
- Moving from monitoring to building. The analyst watches, the engineer designs. That shift is the forty thousand dollar step in the table above.
- Depth in one area. Cloud security, identity, incident response. Generalists plateau at the analyst rung.
- Being able to explain risk to people who control budgets. The highest paid people in this field are the ones who can make a board understand what it is buying.
Where a qualification fits in all this
Nothing above requires a degree, and no qualification will put you straight into the engineer row. What a qualification does is get you onto the ladder with something an employer can assess.
The Certificate IV in Information Technology with a focus on cyber security is 20 units, 100% online and self-paced with no exams, and takes most students 12 to 18 months. It covers cyber security risk management, securely managing personally identifiable information, cloud services, virtual machines, client problem resolution and first-level support, which is an accurate description of an entry-level IT role with a security lean. There are no formal entry requirements.
Beyond that, the Diploma of Information Technology (Cyber Security) is the specialist step, and we have compared it against the networking stream separately in Advanced Networking or Cyber Security.
If you are at the start of this, read how to start a career in cyber security first, because the route matters more than the destination salary. You can compare the level on the Certificate IV in IT courses page.
Every figure here is indicative, sourced and dated as shown. Pay varies by employer, city and experience, and completing a qualification does not guarantee a job or a particular salary.
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