You spent your last few years in the military doing cyber work. Network defense. Threat hunting. Running a SOC. Now you are looking at job postings and the pay numbers are all over the place. One says $85,000. One says $160,000. One just says "competitive." So which one is real for someone like you?

The answer depends on three things. Who you work for. Where you work. And what clearance you hold. A cleared cyber veteran in Northern Virginia does not get paid like an uncleared analyst in a low-cost state. The gap is not small. It can be $40,000 a year or more for the same skill set.

This article lays out the actual salary data for cyber veterans in 2026. Federal pay. NSA and CISA. Defense contractors. Cleared private sector. And the TS/SCI premium that sits on top of all of it. These are ranges, not promises. But they are sourced ranges, so you can walk into a salary talk knowing your number instead of guessing.

What is the baseline cyber salary in 2026?

Start with the broad number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks information security analysts as an occupation. The median pay was $124,910 in May 2024, per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Median means the middle. Half the field earns more. Half earns less.

The full spread runs wide. The bottom 10 percent earned under $69,660. The top 10 percent earned over $186,420. That is a $116,000 gap inside one job title. So when a posting says "competitive pay" with no number, that range is the real world it lives in.

The field is also growing fast. BLS projects 29 percent job growth from 2024 to 2034. That is much faster than the average job. About 16,000 openings open up each year over the decade. More demand pushes pay up, and it gives a cleared veteran real leverage.

One thing the BLS number does not capture. It mixes cleared and uncleared, federal and private, every city in the country. Your number is a slice of that, not the median itself. The rest of this article cuts it into slices you can actually use.

How does federal cyber pay work for veterans?

Most federal cyber jobs sit in the GS-2210 series. That is the Information Technology Management series, and OPM titles the cyber roles inside it "IT Cybersecurity Specialist." You can read the standard on the OPM GS-2210 page. A transitioning cyber veteran usually lands somewhere in the GS-9 to GS-13 band, depending on experience and education.

Here is the 2026 base pay for those grades. These are the exact step 1 and step 10 figures from the 2026 OPM GS salary table, which includes the 1 percent across-the-board raise for 2026.

Those are base numbers. They are not what hits your bank account. Two things push them up.

Locality pay. Every duty station adds a percentage on top of base. A GS-12 in Washington DC earns more than the same GS-12 in a low-cost rural area. The locality rate can add 15 to 45 percent depending on the city.

Special rates. OPM knows cyber talent is hard to keep. So it lets agencies pay special rates for the 2210 series in some locations. A GS employee gets the greater of the special rate or the locality rate. OPM lays out the full toolkit in its cybersecurity compensation flexibilities handbook.

If you want the full grade-by-grade breakdown, our guide on the OPM 2210 series and cyber jobs without a degree walks through where veterans qualify. And to see why the federal title matters less than your duties, the guide to breaking into cybersecurity after the military covers the path in.

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What do NSA and CISA cyber jobs pay?

People search "NSA salary" expecting a secret pay scale. There is not one. NSA hires most of its civilian cyber workforce on the General Schedule, the same GS table above, plus locality. NSA sits in the Fort Meade, Maryland area, so the Washington-Baltimore locality applies. That pushes a GS-13 well past the base number.

NSA also uses the Defense Department's Cyber Excepted Service for many cyber roles. CES is a pay-band system built to compete for cyber talent. It parallels the GS grades but groups them into bands and lets DoD add pay supplements when the market runs hot. We break the band math down in our guide to Cyber Excepted Service pay. The short version is that CES can move faster than the GS table when DoD needs to keep people.

CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of Homeland Security. CISA runs on the GS scale for many roles, but it also uses the Cyber Talent Management System. CTMS is a market-based pay system that can pay above standard GS rates for hard-to-fill cyber jobs. So two people with the same title at CISA can sit on different pay systems.

The takeaway for a veteran. Do not chase the agency name. Chase the pay system and the locality. A GS-13 at NSA, a CES band-equivalent role, and a CTMS role at CISA can all land in the low-to-mid six figures once locality and supplements stack. The agency brand does not set your number. The grade, the band, and the city do.

How much do defense contractors pay cleared cyber veterans?

This is where the numbers jump. Defense contractors do not pay on the GS table. They pay what the contract and the labor market allow. And cleared cyber labor is expensive, so the rates run higher than federal base pay.

A cleared cyber veteran moving to a defense contractor often sees a meaningful bump over the equivalent GS role. Mid-level cleared cyber roles commonly post in the $100,000 to $150,000 range. Senior cleared roles, like a lead engineer or a SOC manager with TS/SCI, can run $150,000 to $200,000 or more in high-demand markets like Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Colorado Springs.

I have seen this side of the labor market from inside the government. When I oversaw federal contracts end to end, the work covered acquisition planning through final close-out. That included writing the work statement that defined each role, sitting on source-selection panels, and approving contractor staff before they billed an hour. From that seat, cleared cyber talent was the line item that always cost the most. The government pays a premium for it because the supply is thin and the clearance takes a year or more to replace.

Why the bump over federal? Contractors carry overhead and profit, but they also compete for a small pool of cleared people. When a contract needs a cleared cyber lead and three companies are bidding, the pay goes up to win the person. Federal pay moves slower. That gap is real, and it is why some veterans go contractor first to bank cash, then move to a federal seat later for the pension and stability.

For a deeper look at the contractor path, read our guide on defense contractor jobs for senior veterans with a clearance.

What is the TS/SCI clearance premium in salary?

This is the number cyber veterans most want to know. A clearance is worth real money on top of your skills. An active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance is the difference between a job you can start next week and a job that needs a year of investigation first.

Employers pay for that gap. A cleared cyber role often pays more than the same role uncleared, and TS/SCI with a polygraph sits at the top. The premium is not a fixed percentage, but cleared roles routinely run tens of thousands of dollars above their uncleared twins. We dig into the dollar value in our guide on how much a Top Secret clearance is worth in salary.

Why does the premium exist? Three reasons.

There is a catch worth knowing. The premium only counts while your clearance is active and clean. The clearance level you can claim, the investigation tier behind it, and the way you keep it all feed your pay. Our guide on TS/SCI clearance levels and their civilian value explains the tiers, and our piece on what a clearance is worth in the job market shows how to price it.

Does an active clearance change your cyber number?

Yes, and the word "active" is doing the heavy lifting. A clearance you held two years ago is not the same asset as one that is current. The premium tracks the live status, not your old badge.

After you separate, your clearance can stay eligible for reinstatement for a window. That window runs up to 24 months from when your access sponsorship ends, which is not always your separation date. If you move straight into a cleared civilian job, your access never breaks and the clock does not start. A proposal in the FY 2026 defense bill would extend the window to 60 months, but it was not law as of this writing. Past that, it can lapse and a new investigation may be needed. That changes your pay leverage fast. A lapsed clearance still helps your resume, but it does not command the same premium as an active one.

Two things protect the premium. First, knowing your real status before you start applying. Our guide on what DCSA does for veterans and your clearance covers who holds your record. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency runs most clearance investigations, and you can read about its mission at DCSA.mil.

Second, keeping it clean once you have a cleared job. Clearances now run on continuous vetting, which means your record gets checked all the time, not just at renewal. A flag can cost you the job and the pay that came with it. Our guide on continuous evaluation flags and fixes walks through what trips people up.

Which military cyber jobs map to the best-paying roles?

Your military cyber background already points at the civilian pay. The work you did maps to a civilian title, and that title sets the salary band. The closer your hands-on work, the easier the translation.

Army Cyber Operations Specialists do offensive and defensive cyber operations. That experience reads straight across to threat hunting, red team, and SOC analyst roles. See the civilian path on our 17C Cyber Operations Specialist career guide.

Army Cyber Network Defenders focus on defense and incident response. That lines up with network security engineer and incident responder roles. The 25D Cyber Network Defender career guide shows where it goes.

Navy Cryptologic Technician Networks do network warfare and signals work. That maps to threat intelligence and offensive security roles. Our CTN Cryptologic Technician Networks career guide lays it out. Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations runs offensive and defensive missions, and the 1B4X1 Cyber Warfare Operations career guide covers the civilian fit.

The pattern across all of them. Operators and engineers who touched live systems land the higher-paying roles. The clearance you earned doing that work is the multiplier. To make the most of both, your certs matter too. Our guide on cybersecurity certifications for veterans covers which ones move the pay needle.

How do you turn this data into a real offer?

Knowing the numbers is step one. Getting paid them is step two. A salary range only helps if you can show an employer you fit the top of it. That comes down to how your resume frames your cyber work and your clearance.

The mistake I see most often is a cyber veteran who buries the clearance and the live-systems work under vague duty descriptions. A recruiter scanning your resume for six seconds needs to see the clearance level, the tools you ran, and the missions you owned. Fast. If they have to dig for it, you get ranked below someone who put it up top.

Once you know your lane and your number, the salary talk gets simple. You are not negotiating against the floor of the range. You are negotiating from the top, because you brought the clearance and the live experience that earns it. For the script side of that, our guide on using your TS/SCI clearance to negotiate better pay covers exactly what to say.

BMR's Resume Builder handles the cyber-to-civilian translation and puts your clearance and tools where a recruiter sees them first. You paste the job posting, and it tailors your resume to that specific role. The free tier covers two tailored resumes, so you can target a federal cyber job and a contractor job without paying a dime. Build it at our military resume builder, made by veterans who have sat on both sides of the hiring desk.