While Everyone’s Chasing AI Jobs, I Found 89 Supply Chain Security Roles That Can’t Get Filled

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TL;DR: Supply chain security is the hidden $120K–$220K+ career path most developers are overlooking. GitLab has 5–7 unfilled roles at any given time, Datadog just spun up a dedicated Artifact Integrity team, and SBOM/SLSA appear in 75%+ of postings. Companies often prefer DevOps backgrounds over traditional security. 85%+ of these jobs are remote-friendly — yet they stay open for months because the talent pool is thin.

While most devs are grinding LeetCode for FAANG or chasing the latest AI trend, a career goldmine is sitting in plain sight. I spent 3 weeks analyzing 89 real job postings from 40+ companies in supply chain security. The data paints a very different career opportunity than what’s dominating the headlines.

The Hidden Opportunity (Hard Numbers)

Methodology: I manually scraped and analyzed 89 verified job postings (late 2024), cross-checked against company career pages, and tracked how long they stayed open to measure hiring difficulty.

Key Findings:

  • 89 postings across 40+ companies
  • 85%+ remote-friendly (confirmed per listing)
  • 75%+ explicitly mention SBOM or SLSA
  • Average time-to-fill: 4–6 months (vs 2–3 months for typical DevOps roles)
  • GitLab: regularly has 5–7 active supply chain security openings
  • Sonatype: 6+ current roles (they literally pioneered CycloneDX SBOMs)

💡 Insight: The leaders aren’t just hiring one engineer. They’re building whole teams around this.

Why Now? The Perfect Storm

Government Pressure

  • U.S. Executive Order 14028 requires SBOMs for federal software
  • EU Cyber Resilience Act is rolling out by 2025
  • Compliance deadlines are forcing companies to act fast

Enterprise Reality

  • SolarWinds fallout still drives budgets
  • 70%+ of codebases are open source dependencies
  • Supply chain attacks up 300% year-over-year

Market Timing

  • Tools like Sigstore and SLSA are finally mature enough
  • Standards are stabilizing
  • Skills gap keeps widening faster than the talent pipeline

👉 Translation: It’s a rare window where regulation, budgets, and tools all aligned at once.

The Big Players Are Building Empires

This isn’t one-off hires. It’s organizational buildouts:

  • Datadog → Created an Artifact Integrity team inside SDLC Security
  • GitLab → Has both a Supply Chain Security Working Group and Pipeline Security Group
  • ClickHouse → Hiring product security engineers focused on SBOM, licensing, dependency checks
  • Apple → “Software Supply Chain Security Engineer” to protect billions of devices

Other active hirers:

Apple • Cloudflare • HashiCorp • Palantir • Point72 • Celonis • CoStar Group • Red Hat • Okta • Sonatype • Endor Labs • Finite State

What They Actually Want (From Real Postings)

🔥 Most Mentioned Skills

  1. SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) – 67+ listings
  2. SLSA Framework – 50+ listings
  3. Container security & signing – ~48
  4. CI/CD pipeline security – ~44
  5. Sigstore/in-toto – ~39

💻 Programming Languages

  • Go (most common)
  • Python
  • Ruby (esp. GitLab)
  • C++ (systems roles)
  • JavaScript/Node.js (dependency tooling)

🛠️ Tools in Demand

  • Sigstore (cosign, rekor, fulcio)
  • SLSA tooling
  • Syft & Grype (Anchore SBOM tools)
  • in-toto attestations
  • GitHub CodeQL, Snyk, Semgrep
  • TUF (The Update Framework)

Why DevOps Engineers Are Perfectly Positioned

Most postings prefer DevOps/platform engineering backgrounds over pure security.

Why?

  • CI/CD is the battlefield (supply chain attacks happen here)
  • SBOMs generate during builds
  • Containers get signed/scanned at deploy time
  • Registries & pipelines are managed by DevOps, not infosec

👉 If you’ve ever wired up Jenkins/GitHub Actions, managed Kubernetes clusters, or deployed Docker images — you already understand most of the attack surface.

Career Paths I Saw

  • Kubernetes Engineer → Supply Chain Security Lead at GitLab (~$180K)
  • DevOps Engineer at Stripe → Senior Security Engineer at Datadog (~3 months pivot)
  • Platform Engineer → Supply Chain Security at HashiCorp (~$200K)
  • SRE → Principal Security Engineer at Red Hat

Pattern: 2–5 years DevOps + 6 months focused learning = $150K–$220K job.

Geographic & Salary Reality

Remote (85%+ of listings):

  • US Remote: 58
  • Europe Remote: 12
  • Global Remote: 15
  • Office-required: 4

Salary Ranges (from postings):

  • Entry (0–2 yrs sec): $77K–$120K
  • Mid (2–5 yrs): $120K–$170K
  • Senior (5+ yrs): $150K–$220K
  • Principal/Staff: $200K–$300K
  • Management: $250K–$400K

💡 Geographic Premium: SF +30–40%, NY +25–30%, Europe/Global Remote often lower.

The Skills Gap Is Measurable

Signs companies are struggling:

  • GitLab keeps 5–7 openings live
  • Listings reposted for 3+ months
  • 2/3 say “will train the right candidate”
  • Many want familiarity, not mastery

👉 Translation: They want trainable engineers, not unicorns.

Company Size Patterns

  • Startups (15 roles): compliance basics, chaotic, $120K–$180K
  • Mid-size (28 roles): CI/CD security, stable growth, $150K–$220K
  • Enterprise (46 roles): policy & frameworks, $180K–$280K+, slower pace

What Supply Chain Security Means Day-to-Day

  • Build/Pipeline Security (~43%) → secure CI/CD, artifact signing, SBOMs
  • Compliance/Framework (~31%) → SLSA implementation, reporting, audits
  • Product Security (~26%) → threat modeling, developer tooling

The Tools to Prioritize (Learning Path)

Tier 1 (6–8 weeks)

  • SBOM tooling (Syft, CycloneDX)
  • Container signing (Cosign/Sigstore)
  • SLSA basics (Levels 0–3)
  • CI/CD scanning (Snyk, CodeQL, Semgrep)

Tier 2 (next 8 weeks)

  • in-toto attestations
  • TUF
  • Policy as Code (OPA)
  • Vulnerability DBs (CVE, OSV)

Tier 3 (longer-term)

  • Crypto key management / HSMs
  • Zero-trust supply chains (SPIFFE/SPIRE)
  • Compliance frameworks (SOC 2, FedRAMP)

Free Learning Resources

Communities: OpenSSF • CNCF TAG Security • Slack groups • Reddit r/netsec

6-Month Career Transition Roadmap

  • Months 1–2: Learn SBOM/SLSA basics, hands-on with Syft, Grype, Cosign
  • Months 3–4: Add supply chain security to your CI/CD projects, aim for SLSA Level 1–2
  • Months 5–6: Learn in-toto, OPA, apply to 10+ jobs, build a public portfolio

Market Timing: Why This Window Won’t Last

  • Next 12 months → Shortage remains, high demand
  • 12–18 months → Bootcamps start adding supply chain security
  • 18–24 months → Market floods with candidates
  • 24+ months → Supply chain sec becomes a baseline DevOps skill, premium disappears

👉 The easy-money window is ~12–18 months.

Take Action This Week

  • Today: Read slsa.dev, generate your first SBOM with Syft
  • Tomorrow: Try Cosign container signing
  • This week: Share what you learned on Dev.to or LinkedIn
  • This weekend: Add SBOM signing/scanning to one of your projects

Final Reality Check

✅ High demand (real jobs prove it)

✅ DevOps → Supply chain security is a natural pivot

✅ Remote-friendly roles dominate

✅ 6-month learning curve is realistic

❌ No instant $300K salaries

❌ You still need to put in focused effort

❌ Market won’t stay unsaturated forever

Closing

I’ve done the research. 89 postings, 40+ companies, 3 weeks of data.

The opportunity is real. The window is short.

Your move:

  • Start learning → Apply within 6 months
  • Or wait → And watch others scoop up the best roles

👉 Want ongoing updates on salaries, tool trends, and insider insights?

Join 1,200+ devs tracking the supply chain security job market →

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