Security Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for Security Testing skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that have cited Security Testing over the 6 months to 26 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
26 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 695 499 511
Rank change year-on-year -196 +12 +82
Permanent jobs citing Security Testing 200 603 1,015
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.20% 0.58% 0.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.24% 0.60% 0.69%
Number of salaries quoted 175 269 382
10th Percentile £38,500 £41,250 £37,500
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,500 £49,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,206 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year -12.56% +3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £82,500 £90,000 £82,500
90th Percentile - £105,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £57,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -13.04% -8.00% +13.64%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Security Testing is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 84,460 100,219 147,325
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 86.03% 95.64% 95.59%
Number of salaries quoted 59,759 58,822 83,132
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £33,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.29% +3.33% +9.09%
75th Percentile £72,500 £82,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £100,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% +9.38%

Security Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Testing in the UK

Security Testing
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing Security Testing.

Salary trend for Security Testing in the UK

Security Testing
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Testing over the 6 months to 26 April 2024.

Salary histogram for Security Testing in the UK

Security Testing
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 26 April 2024. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -154 183 £61,206 -12.56% 55
UK excluding London -123 112 £50,000 -13.04% 29
London -73 71 £75,000 -8.46% 18
Work from Home -9 51 £61,206 -7.61% 71
North of England +28 44 £60,000 -7.69% 13
Midlands +6 33 £50,000 -23.08% 7
North West -5 30 £61,206 -18.39% 7
West Midlands +23 28 £50,000 -23.08% 6
South East -43 22 £45,000 -11.33% 3
Yorkshire +96 14 £50,000 +20.32% 6
South West -38 10 £72,500 +9.64% 3
East Midlands -14 5 £52,500 +26.02% 1
Scotland -83 2 £65,000 +46.07%
East of England +21 1 £65,000 - 3

Security Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (4.00%) Confluence
2 7 (3.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 40 (20.00%) Azure
2 37 (18.50%) AWS
3 13 (6.50%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (5.00%) SaaS
5 9 (4.50%) GCP
6 5 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 5 (2.50%) Amazon S3
6 5 (2.50%) AWS Fargate
6 5 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (2.50%) Azure Pipelines
6 5 (2.50%) Serverless
7 3 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (1.50%) Azure Sentinel
7 3 (1.50%) Azure Service Bus
7 3 (1.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (1.50%) Cloud Computing
7 3 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
7 3 (1.50%) IaaS
7 3 (1.50%) PaaS
7 3 (1.50%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 29 (14.50%) Network Security
2 15 (7.50%) Firewall
3 14 (7.00%) Wireless
4 6 (3.00%) SD-WAN
4 6 (3.00%) WAN
5 2 (1.00%) 5G
5 2 (1.00%) Remote Desktop
5 2 (1.00%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.00%) VoIP
5 2 (1.00%) WPA
6 1 (0.50%) 3GPP
6 1 (0.50%) Diameter Protocol
6 1 (0.50%) HTTP
6 1 (0.50%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.50%) SCTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.50%) SQL Server
2 10 (5.00%) DynamoDB
2 10 (5.00%) Relational Database
3 4 (2.00%) InfluxDB
3 4 (2.00%) MongoDB
4 3 (1.50%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.50%) GIS
5 1 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 38 (19.00%) Burp Suite
2 34 (17.00%) Metasploit
3 10 (5.00%) MSTest
3 10 (5.00%) Postman
4 9 (4.50%) SoapUI
5 8 (4.00%) JIRA
6 7 (3.50%) IntelliJ
6 7 (3.50%) JUnit
6 7 (3.50%) Mockito
7 5 (2.50%) Git
7 5 (2.50%) JMeter
8 3 (1.50%) Gradle
9 2 (1.00%) Selenium
10 1 (0.50%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.50%) Cypress.io
General
1 73 (36.50%) Social Skills
2 58 (29.00%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (11.50%) Retail
4 22 (11.00%) Public Sector
5 18 (9.00%) Finance
6 13 (6.50%) Law
7 10 (5.00%) Legal
8 9 (4.50%) Marketing
9 8 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (4.00%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (2.50%) Automotive
10 5 (2.50%) Banking
11 4 (2.00%) Welsh Language
12 2 (1.00%) Health Technology
12 2 (1.00%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.50%) Games
13 1 (0.50%) iGaming
13 1 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 63 (31.50%) Tester
2 57 (28.50%) Penetration Tester
3 43 (21.50%) Senior
4 35 (17.50%) Consultant
5 34 (17.00%) Security Consultant
6 14 (7.00%) Senior Consultant
6 14 (7.00%) Senior Testing Consultant
6 14 (7.00%) Testing Consultant
7 13 (6.50%) Security Manager
7 13 (6.50%) Senior Security Consultant
8 12 (6.00%) Lead
8 12 (6.00%) Senior Penetration Tester
8 12 (6.00%) Senior Tester
9 11 (5.50%) Information Manager
9 11 (5.50%) Information Security Manager
9 11 (5.50%) Security Tester
10 10 (5.00%) Information Security Consultant
10 10 (5.00%) Security Engineer
10 10 (5.00%) Security Penetration Tester
10 10 (5.00%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.00%) XML
2 10 (5.00%) JSON
3 9 (4.50%) SOAP
4 8 (4.00%) .NET
4 8 (4.00%) REST
5 5 (2.50%) .NET Core
5 5 (2.50%) Blazor
6 4 (2.00%) OAuth
6 4 (2.00%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.50%) EDI
7 1 (0.50%) Gherkin
7 1 (0.50%) Playwright
7 1 (0.50%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.50%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 28 (14.00%) Management Information System
2 23 (11.50%) Mobile App
3 21 (10.50%) Self-Motivation
4 17 (8.50%) Security Posture
5 14 (7.00%) Cyber Threat
5 14 (7.00%) Product Ownership
6 10 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (4.50%) Cyberattack
8 7 (3.50%) IoT
9 6 (3.00%) Cyber Security Posture
9 6 (3.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 4 (2.00%) Onboarding
10 4 (2.00%) Operational Technology
11 3 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
11 3 (1.50%) NHS
12 2 (1.00%) Security Operations Centre
13 1 (0.50%) Analytical Mindset
13 1 (0.50%) Cybercrime
13 1 (0.50%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 34 (17.00%) Kali Linux
2 28 (14.00%) Linux
3 7 (3.50%) Android
3 7 (3.50%) Apple iOS
4 4 (2.00%) Unix
5 3 (1.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (46.50%) Information Security
2 86 (43.00%) Cybersecurity
3 84 (42.00%) Penetration Testing
4 65 (32.50%) Problem-Solving
5 64 (32.00%) Application Security
6 50 (25.00%) Agile
7 49 (24.50%) Red Team
8 48 (24.00%) Computer Science
9 47 (23.50%) Test Automation
10 46 (23.00%) Vulnerability Scanning
11 33 (16.50%) Mentoring
11 33 (16.50%) Reverse Engineering
12 28 (14.00%) Critical Thinking
12 28 (14.00%) Malware Analysis
13 26 (13.00%) SDLC
14 24 (12.00%) OWASP
14 24 (12.00%) Software Testing
15 22 (11.00%) Test Scripting
16 21 (10.50%) Performance Testing
16 21 (10.50%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 23 (11.50%) SQL
2 17 (8.50%) Java
3 13 (6.50%) C#
4 8 (4.00%) JavaScript
5 5 (2.50%) Go
5 5 (2.50%) T-SQL
6 4 (2.00%) C
6 4 (2.00%) Python
7 1 (0.50%) Bicep
7 1 (0.50%) C++
7 1 (0.50%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 48 (24.00%) Degree
2 43 (21.50%) Computer Science Degree
2 43 (21.50%) CREST Certified
3 26 (13.00%) CISSP
3 26 (13.00%) OSCP
4 25 (12.50%) Security Cleared
5 17 (8.50%) SC Cleared
6 12 (6.00%) CHECK Team Member
7 11 (5.50%) Cyber Scheme
8 9 (4.50%) CHECK Team Leader
9 8 (4.00%) CISM
9 8 (4.00%) CISMP
10 7 (3.50%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (3.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (3.00%) AWS Certification
11 6 (3.00%) Azure Certification
11 6 (3.00%) CCSK
11 6 (3.00%) CEH
11 6 (3.00%) GIAC
11 6 (3.00%) Tigerscheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (16.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 19 (9.50%) GDPR
2 19 (9.50%) GRC
2 19 (9.50%) NIST
3 16 (8.00%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (6.00%) PCI DSS
5 11 (5.50%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 11 (5.50%) QA
6 9 (4.50%) SOC 2
7 8 (4.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 7 (3.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (3.00%) Accessibility
9 6 (3.00%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (2.50%) COBIT
11 4 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (2.00%) ISO 9001
11 4 (2.00%) NCSC
12 1 (0.50%) WCAG
System Software
1 9 (4.50%) Docker
2 5 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.50%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 16 (8.00%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.00%) Nessus
2 6 (3.00%) Nmap
2 6 (3.00%) Single Sign-On
3 4 (2.00%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 4 (2.00%) Grafana
4 3 (1.50%) HP Fortify
5 1 (0.50%) Ansible
5 1 (0.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 33 (16.50%) Microsoft
2 7 (3.50%) Adobe
2 7 (3.50%) MuleSoft
2 7 (3.50%) Salesforce
3 6 (3.00%) Qualys
4 4 (2.00%) Oracle
5 3 (1.50%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.50%) Splunk
5 3 (1.50%) Veracode
6 2 (1.00%) Barracuda Networks
6 2 (1.00%) Meraki
7 1 (0.50%) Darktrace
7 1 (0.50%) Google
7 1 (0.50%) Hitachi
7 1 (0.50%) SonicWALL
7 1 (0.50%) VMware