Penetration Tester Contract Job Trends

Penetration Tester
UK

The median Penetration Tester daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

 6 months to
18 Sep 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 504 521 625
Rank change year-on-year +17 +104 +199
Contract jobs requiring a Penetration Tester 64 38 26
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.099% 0.053%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.21% 0.11% 0.056%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 22 17
10th Percentile £490 £456 £400
25th Percentile £544 £550 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £638 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.73% +21.43% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £700 £638
90th Percentile - £738 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £800 £600 £563
% change year-on-year +33.33% +6.67% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 30,003 35,798 46,379
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.06% 92.95% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,960 22,064 31,748
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,577 1,684 1,483
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% +4.65% +95.45%

Penetration Tester
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Penetration Tester in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Penetration Tester in the UK

Penetration Tester
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Penetration Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Penetration Tester job vacancies in the UK

Penetration Tester
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Penetration Tester over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Penetration Tester in the UK

Penetration Tester
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Penetration Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Penetration Tester job vacancies in the UK

Penetration Tester
Top 7 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Penetration Tester within the UK over the 6 months to 18 September 2025. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
England +45 60 £588 -9.62% 11
London +64 54 £575 -19.30% 5
Work from Home +49 35 £600 - 12
UK excluding London -20 6 £800 +33.33% 8
South West +29 4 £800 -
North West -15 2 £438 -
North of England -23 2 £438 -27.08% 1

Penetration Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 September 2025, Penetration Tester contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Penetration Tester in the job title.

1 54 (84.38%) Penetration Testing
2 31 (48.44%) Cybersecurity
3 27 (42.19%) SC Cleared
3 27 (42.19%) Security Cleared
3 27 (42.19%) Social Skills
4 24 (37.50%) CHECK Team Leader
5 23 (35.94%) CHECK Team Member
6 18 (28.13%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 15 (23.44%) Stakeholder Management
8 12 (18.75%) Application Security
9 11 (17.19%) OWASP
10 10 (15.63%) Azure
10 10 (15.63%) AWS
10 10 (15.63%) GCP
11 9 (14.06%) Security Posture
12 8 (12.50%) Red Team
12 8 (12.50%) Burp Suite
12 8 (12.50%) OSCP
12 8 (12.50%) Metasploit
12 8 (12.50%) Test Automation
13 7 (10.94%) Bash
13 7 (10.94%) Python
13 7 (10.94%) Cloud Security
14 6 (9.38%) Offensive Security
14 6 (9.38%) Threat Modelling
14 6 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
14 6 (9.38%) Infrastructure as Code
14 6 (9.38%) Problem-Solving
14 6 (9.38%) Agile
14 6 (9.38%) Nessus

Penetration Tester Skill Set
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:

Applications
1 1 (1.56%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 10 (15.63%) AWS
1 10 (15.63%) Azure
1 10 (15.63%) GCP
2 4 (6.25%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.13%) VLAN
1 2 (3.13%) VPN
2 1 (1.56%) Bluetooth
2 1 (1.56%) HTTP
2 1 (1.56%) IPsec
2 1 (1.56%) Network Security
2 1 (1.56%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.56%) Wireless
Development Applications
1 8 (12.50%) Burp Suite
1 8 (12.50%) Metasploit
2 5 (7.81%) sqlmap
3 4 (6.25%) GitLab
3 4 (6.25%) Jenkins
3 4 (6.25%) JIRA
General
1 27 (42.19%) Social Skills
2 6 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (1.56%) Finance
3 1 (1.56%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (1.56%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 9 (14.06%) Security Posture
2 4 (6.25%) Cloud Native
3 3 (4.69%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.56%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 5 (7.81%) Linux
2 4 (6.25%) Android
2 4 (6.25%) Windows
3 2 (3.13%) Kali Linux
4 1 (1.56%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (84.38%) Penetration Testing
2 31 (48.44%) Cybersecurity
3 18 (28.13%) Vulnerability Remediation
4 15 (23.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 12 (18.75%) Application Security
6 11 (17.19%) OWASP
7 8 (12.50%) Red Team
7 8 (12.50%) Test Automation
8 7 (10.94%) Cloud Security
9 6 (9.38%) Agile
9 6 (9.38%) Infrastructure as Code
9 6 (9.38%) Offensive Security
9 6 (9.38%) Problem-Solving
9 6 (9.38%) Threat Modelling
9 6 (9.38%) Validation
10 4 (6.25%) CI/CD
10 4 (6.25%) DevOps
10 4 (6.25%) DevSecOps
10 4 (6.25%) Manual Testing
10 4 (6.25%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 7 (10.94%) Bash
1 7 (10.94%) Python
2 2 (3.13%) Go
3 1 (1.56%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 27 (42.19%) SC Cleared
1 27 (42.19%) Security Cleared
2 24 (37.50%) CHECK Team Leader
3 23 (35.94%) CHECK Team Member
4 8 (12.50%) OSCP
5 6 (9.38%) GPEN
6 3 (4.69%) CREST Certified
7 2 (3.13%) GWAPT
7 2 (3.13%) GXPN
7 2 (3.13%) OSCE
7 2 (3.13%) SANS
8 1 (1.56%) CEH
8 1 (1.56%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.13%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.56%) NIST
System Software
1 5 (7.81%) Active Directory
2 2 (3.13%) Docker
3 1 (1.56%) Embedded Firmware
3 1 (1.56%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (9.38%) Nessus
1 6 (9.38%) Nmap
2 4 (6.25%) Ansible
3 2 (3.13%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (9.38%) ServiceNow
2 1 (1.56%) Google
2 1 (1.56%) IBM
2 1 (1.56%) OpenAI
15 Penetration Tester jobs Nationwide