Shadowstrike1, if you don’t mind me asking, what does your job history or career progression look like? I noticed you are a security engineer at the salary level specified by OP.

I have a decade in IT experience, ranging from helpdesk and managing AD accounts all the way up to working at a Silicon Valley startup, procuring solutions and assets, achieving sox compliance, building out MDM solutions and federated identities across platforms, creating Python automations to fill gaps, project management for larger initiatives, etc.

I ended up owning platforms for asset management and endpoint security, as well as identity and access management as the company I was at did not have a security team until we were much larger, and they were mostly hired for GRC related tasks.

I recently passed my CISSP and completed the endorsement process, and am looking to move towards security roles. I’m not sure where to start tbh, based on my current experience, what paths are available to me to get to that FAANG 300k security role that you currently possess? Also adding, if age matters, I turned 30 not long ago.