Top 5 Entry-Level Cybersecurity Careers for 2025 (Salaries Included)

Hey there! These are the top five entry-level cybersecurity careers for 2025 and their salaries, and we’re looking at them right here in this article. If you’re after full career roadmaps for any of these jobs, I guarantee I have an article on that on my site. I’ll link some additional articles, but in no particular order, let’s dive into this list!

1. SOC Analyst: The Classic Blue Team Starter

Coming at number one on this list is the SOC Analyst. This is the OG entry-level cybersecurity blue team role for anyone who’s interested in defensive security. Now, I’ve made a lot of articles on SOC Analysts, but your main job is to work within a Security Operation Center—or an SOC—and basically detect, analyze, and respond to cyber threats and security incidents.

Day-to-Day SOC Life

So what does this mean on a day-to-day basis? Well, in my last role, I was also working somewhat in an SOC capacity, but I was just part of a really small team, so basically we all did everything. One of the things that we had to do was manage all of the SIEM—or SIM—alerts that would pop up throughout the day. Now, depending on your company’s infrastructure, the typical setup is to have a SIEM where all the logs, information, events are managed in one place. Then, using that log information, you can create rules or alerts for anytime XYZ happens or anytime something suspicious happens. Then you can send an alert to the team—either through an email or ping or creating a ticket, etc. And that is where an SOC Analyst sits in and answers that alert and has to go and dig into the logs to see whether or not this is a true positive—an actual threat—or a false positive—something that maybe looks suspicious but is not actually a threat to the company.

Why It’s a Goldmine for Learning

But don’t forget, depending on the size of your business, what industry you’re in, the way that your alerts are set up, and your SIEM, you could be getting up to hundreds of alerts a day. But it’s also one of the entry-level jobs in cybersecurity where I personally think you can learn the most—whether you want to stay in blue team and climb up the ladder or even pivot into red team or even purple team. So there’s a lot of opportunities for growth and the things that you’re actually learning, because the skills that you learn would be relevant in any kind of role in cybersecurity that you might want to go into in the future. And the average salary of an SOC Analyst in the US is between $65,000 to $85,000 per year—so it’s definitely a pretty good salary, especially considering that most SOC Analysts are closer to entry-level and early career. And if there is an alert that is a true positive—which means it is actually some suspicious activity or potentially security incident—then you as an SOC Level One will escalate it to a higher-level team who actually spin out the incident and dig deeper, with, of course, a case report that you’ve written up with the information that you found, the logs that you’ll be using as evidence, all passed up the chain.

2. Network Security Admin: The IT-to-Cyber Bridge

Job number two on this list is a Network Security Admin. So this is one of the roles that have the biggest overlap between cybersecurity and IT. It is another reason why I personally also recommend, if you’re interested in breaking into cyber, then another route into cyber is to first start in IT and then pivot your way into cyber. Because in general, there are more entry-level IT jobs compared to entry-level cybersecurity jobs, so you’ll likely be fighting against fewer candidates who are applying to the same jobs, and it will be easier for you to get your foot in the door because the experience level needed for IT and help desk roles are a lot lower than entry-level cybersecurity roles. So just something to note there.

What You’ll Be Doing

But as a Network Security Admin, you’ll be working on things like securing firewalls, setting up or managing corporate VPNs, and of course creating, reviewing, implementing security policies to protect a corporate network. And if you’ve seen any of my previous posts talking about the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, then you’ll know that number two on the list of the fastest-growing skills by 2030 is networking and cybersecurity, of course, right after the number one skill on the list, which is AI. But considering that networks and cybersecurity came in at number two of the fastest-growing skills in the world internationally is already a huge indication of how much demand there is going to be in the cybersecurity sector. And networking is going to be one of the big niches that you should consider focusing on. A great way into networking or network security is, of course, through an IT Analyst job. I also link the beginner IT course I recommend for anyone trying to break into IT and cybersecurity, linked in my description below. It is a great course to go through if you’re trying to get hired.

Salary Check

And the average salary for a Network Security Administrator is about $70,000 to $88,000 per year in the US.

A Quick Privacy PSA

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3. GRC Analyst: The Compliance Crusader

Alright, job number three on this list is a GRC Analyst. Okay, so as someone who has personally gone through internal audits, external audits, ISO audits, SOC 2 audits, this is another one of those bold predictions I’ve made that personally I think GRC is going to be a really, really popular area in cybersecurity—hence one of my previous articles called “The Future of Cybersecurity Is GRC.” If you think about it this way, with all the new technologies, all the advancements with AI, who is going to be creating the policies, the compliance requirements to make sure that AI isn’t doing what it’s not supposed to be doing or that companies running these AI models and creating them are doing so ethically and in a way that is actually keeping data private? This all comes back to GRC, and that is why I think with the long-term adoption of AI across the board internationally, with more and more companies using free tools, using a bunch of AI wrappers—I mean, there’s like millions of them nowadays—GRC Analysts are going to have a lot of work cut out for them.

What Does a GRC Analyst Do?

Because this also comes down to the question of what a GRC Analyst actually does. Their job is to ensure that any organization, any cybersecurity regulations, compliance requirements, best practices, standards for the sector that they’re operating in—now why do they want to do this? Firstly, to avoid fines by any government or any regulatory bodies who are making sure that companies have to comply against certain requirements. And number two, it is because their customers or users want to work with companies and organizations that are actually adhering to the security standards and compliance requirements that are out there. For example, Microsoft isn’t going to be working with some random company if they don’t have certain security standards in place or if they don’t have certain certifications that they’re looking for in a business partner or a vendor.

Non-Technical and Proud

And not to mention that GRC is the only non-technical cybersecurity job that is on this list. So if you’re someone who is interested in cybersecurity but not necessarily the technical nitty-gritty side of things, then honestly, GRC is a really great place to start. Because the type of person to enjoy pentesting is not the same person who would enjoy GRC. In fact, if you put a pentester in the middle of a compliance audit, they would very much not enjoy their time there. So yes, these are very two different types of people, but both types of people would be interested in cybersecurity but in different aspects. I’ve made lots of different articles on GRC Analysts and how to break into GRC, and I’ll link a few of those down in my description if you’re interested in checking those out. But the technical versus non-technical is definitely the biggest differentiator, especially if you’re early on in your career in cybersecurity and still deciding which path is right for you. Then I would personally take a few free trainings in GRC and red team and blue team and then decide from there which one was most interesting to you, which one did you get bored the least, and which one would you actually be interested in, you know, continuing. It’s basically a little task figuring out what you actually enjoy and not just the job that sounds cool. Because a lot of people come into cybersecurity and think it’s just hacking, but that is very much not the truth. There’s so many different cybersecurity career paths—hacking or red teaming is just one of them.

Salary Snapshot

And the average salary for a GRC Analyst is $65,000 to $85,000 per year in the US.

4. Junior Pentester: Ethical Hacking 101

Alright, job number four—this is a Junior Pentester. So your job as a pentester is to conduct simulated cyberattacks to identify any potential vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks. And the most basic definition is the fact that you’re basically trying to find the bugs, the vulnerabilities in a system, before an actual attacker will try to exploit them. This is the typical cybersecurity job that you’ve probably seen in all the kids’ shows growing up. I probably can’t count how many movies I’ve seen where there’s always some teenager who’s in the back of a van who’s just typing a bunch of stuff into a laptop and there’s a bunch of terminals popping up on the screen and then suddenly they’re in—yeah, that’s basically what I guess media portrays pentesting and ethical hacking to be like.

More Than Just Hacking

But typically, it is not as straightforward as that. A lot of it also comes down to planning, documentation, research—so it’s not just hacking that you’re doing. There’s a lot of different skills that also go into it. For example, I always say this on my site, but the main deliverable after a pentest is not the full pentest but it’s actually the pentest report. And nowadays, I’m sure it’s a lot easier because there are AI tools that can basically spin up a pentest report for you—or at least a template of one—so that you can at least have something to start with. But back then—I say back then, but it’s really just a few years ago—when I was personally on a junior pentesting team, we would write up these reports ourselves. And I mean, some of these reports can go up to 30, 40 pages long, and more senior members of the team would have reports that are more than 100 pages long. So the report is really the bread and butter of what you’re doing.

The Full Pentesting Package

Even after you find potential vulnerabilities or bugs that you can exploit in a system or on a website or application, you have to write those down in a repeatable way as well as, of course, provide potential mitigations for the development team or whatever stakeholders that you’re doing the pentest for—to help them understand the vulnerability, why it’s important, how attackers could take advantage of it, and basically how to mitigate it or get rid of the vulnerability. So there’s a lot that goes into it—not just the hacking part, but also the reporting, the speaking to stakeholders, the research part of things—researching exploits, researching vulnerabilities, researching new tools that you could be using to conduct better pentests. And it is also one of the most technical roles in cybersecurity, but there’s a lot of training out there for beginners—on TryHackMe, on Hack The Box, on just using open-source tools like Burp Suite, Metasploit, ZAP Attack Proxy. There’s a lot of open-source stuff out there that you can use to get hands-on practice.

Salary Lowdown

And the average salary for a Junior Pentester is $70,000 to $90,000 per year in the US.

5. Cybersecurity Analyst: The Ultimate All-Rounder

Alright, we’re almost at the end of this—hopefully at least one of these roles has been interesting to you—but this last one, number five, I think really takes the cake because it is personally what I spent the most time in my career working in, and that is the good old General Cybersecurity or Information Security Analyst. Now you may be wondering what is the difference between a Cybersecurity Analyst and an SOC Analyst. Sometimes, depending on the company, there is no difference—they’re called the same thing by the same title. Other times, based on my personal work experience, the SOC Analyst specifically focuses on blue team, on defensive security, whereas Cybersecurity Analysts sometimes can touch basically everything. And that was the same in my case, especially because I was working in a pretty small team—less than 10 people in my last company—and we basically, again, touched everything.

What’s on Your Plate?

So I would say Cybersecurity Analysts are one of the most jack-of-all-trades type roles in cybersecurity. You could be managing security alerts from an SIEM, you could also be helping draft up policies for different compliance regulations, you could be analyzing threats or looking at new CVEs that were added or using threat intelligence tools, implementing any security measures that are required or requested by your customers, managing the cybersecurity team’s risk register—basically anything that you can think of that is general cybersecurity. Also managing anything security-related on the vendor management side or procurement side—you may also be working directly with the privacy or the legal team. Basically, anything general cybersecurity can fall under a Cybersecurity Analyst workload.

Why It’s Fun (and Where to Start)

But I personally think that also makes it a lot of fun because you can learn a lot in just one job as a Cybersecurity Analyst. Of course, every job is going to be different, but personally, I actually recommend working for a smaller company because you can probably touch a lot more projects. In my career, I’ve worked at Fortune 50 companies, but I’ve also worked at smaller startup companies—so, you know, it really depends on the experience you want. But of course, get experience in both if you’re interested in testing both out. But personally, I will say that you can definitely learn the most from a smaller company where you can have more responsibility in terms of the potential projects that you’ll be working on. Because in a large company where you’re just one in, you know, maybe a thousand cybersecurity employees, you’re most likely not going to be leading projects so early on in your career—which is also a good thing because then you can learn from mentors, you can learn from the senior members of your team. But after a while, I think learning does really come from leading projects and actually getting hands-on experience doing more technical work and having that level of responsibility—you’re more likely to get in a smaller cybersecurity team.

Salary Rundown

And the average salary for a Cybersecurity Analyst in the US is $75,000 to $95,000 per year.

Closing Thoughts

Alright, that is it for this article! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below—hopefully this article was helpful. I gave you an overview of the five most common cybersecurity entry-level career paths that you can go into. You can check out DeleteMe and get a free scan of which data broker sites are selling your data, and you can also get 20% off of your DeleteMe subscription through the link in my description. Thank you guys again so much for reading—let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to answer them. Don’t forget to stay connected on LinkedIn, on Discord, Instagram—also all linked in my description. I usually update those daily, so if you want daily resources and cybersecurity updates, feel free to follow along there. If this article was helpful, please like and share as it really does help out the site. I post articles weekly, and hopefully I’ll see you guys in my next article—bye!