Penetration Testing Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Penetration Testing
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Penetration Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 132 108 112
Rank change year-on-year -24 +4 +54
Contract jobs citing Penetration Testing 6 3 10
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.29% 0.16% 0.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.32% 0.19% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 3 3
10th Percentile £346 £313 £620
25th Percentile £416 £481 £631
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £775 £650
Median % change year-on-year -30.65% +19.23% +44.44%
75th Percentile £666 £788 -
90th Percentile £739 - -
England median daily rate £550 £623 £550
% change year-on-year -11.65% +13.18% -8.33%

All Process and Methodology Skills
West Midlands

Penetration Testing falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,875 1,567 1,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 89.71% 83.31% 84.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,192 984 1,122
10th Percentile £263 £250 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% +4.90% -
75th Percentile £588 £620 £600
90th Percentile £675 £721 £712
England median daily rate £507 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.43% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 45 52
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.70 £15.54
25th Percentile £16.29 £17.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +16.00% +41.16%
75th Percentile £30.47 £35.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £50.00 £51.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.25 £44.50
% change year-on-year -32.48% -16.29% +27.14%

Penetration Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Penetration Testing relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Penetration Testing job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Penetration Testing
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Penetration Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Penetration Testing in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 17 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Penetration Testing in the West Midlands

Penetration Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Penetration Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Penetration Testing within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 17 November 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
Warwickshire 0 2 - - 1
Birmingham -2 2 £300 +50.00% 7
Shropshire - 1 - -
Penetration Testing
England

Penetration Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 2 (33.33%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 2 (33.33%) AWS
1 2 (33.33%) Azure
2 1 (16.67%) Azure Sentinel
2 1 (16.67%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (33.33%) Firewall
2 1 (16.67%) Network Security
2 1 (16.67%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (16.67%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (16.67%) MongoDB
1 1 (16.67%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 2 (33.33%) JIRA
2 1 (16.67%) Gatling
2 1 (16.67%) GitLab
General
1 1 (16.67%) Finance
1 1 (16.67%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (33.33%) Senior
2 1 (16.67%) Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Consultant
2 1 (16.67%) Functional Consultant
2 1 (16.67%) IT Security Officer
2 1 (16.67%) Lead
2 1 (16.67%) Operations Director
2 1 (16.67%) Penetration Test Consultant
2 1 (16.67%) QA Leader
2 1 (16.67%) Security Engineer
2 1 (16.67%) Security Officer
2 1 (16.67%) SOC Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Test Leader
2 1 (16.67%) Testing Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (16.67%) Playwright
1 1 (16.67%) Spring
1 1 (16.67%) Spring Batch
1 1 (16.67%) Spring Boot
1 1 (16.67%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 1 (16.67%) Cloud Native
1 1 (16.67%) Management Information System
1 1 (16.67%) Security Operations Centre
1 1 (16.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (33.33%) Linux
1 2 (33.33%) Windows
2 1 (16.67%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (33.33%) Coaching
1 2 (33.33%) Incident Response
1 2 (33.33%) ITIL
1 2 (33.33%) OWASP
1 2 (33.33%) Security Operations
1 2 (33.33%) Service Delivery
1 2 (33.33%) SOAR
1 2 (33.33%) Threat and Vulnerability Management
1 2 (33.33%) Vulnerability Assessment
1 2 (33.33%) Vulnerability Management
2 1 (16.67%) Budgeting
2 1 (16.67%) CI/CD
2 1 (16.67%) Cost Control
2 1 (16.67%) Cost Reduction
2 1 (16.67%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
2 1 (16.67%) End-to-End Testing
2 1 (16.67%) MITRE ATT&CK
2 1 (16.67%) Roadmaps
2 1 (16.67%) Static Application Security Testing
2 1 (16.67%) Threat Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (16.67%) Java
1 1 (16.67%) Shell Script
1 1 (16.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (66.67%) SC Cleared
1 4 (66.67%) Security Cleared
2 1 (16.67%) BC Cleared
2 1 (16.67%) CISM
2 1 (16.67%) CISSP
2 1 (16.67%) CRISC
2 1 (16.67%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (33.33%) NIST
2 1 (16.67%) Accessibility
2 1 (16.67%) NCSC
2 1 (16.67%) QA
System Software
1 1 (16.67%) Snort
Systems Management
1 2 (33.33%) Kubernetes
2 1 (16.67%) Grafana
2 1 (16.67%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1 (16.67%) Dynatrace
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft
1 1 (16.67%) Oracle
1 1 (16.67%) PagerDuty
1 1 (16.67%) Splunk