Penetration Testing Job Trends in England

Penetration Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England citing Penetration Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 30 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	460	463	434
Rank change year-on-year	+3	-29	-6
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing	359	172	302
As % of all permanent jobs in England	0.33%	0.40%	0.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category	0.45%	0.45%	0.60%
Number of salaries quoted	233	148	166
10^th Percentile	£39,800	£47,750	£47,059
25^th Percentile	£50,000	£52,500	£56,250
Median annual salary (50^th Percentile)	£65,500	£69,384	£65,000
Median % change year-on-year	-5.60%	+6.74%	+4.84%
75^th Percentile	£87,500	£87,500	£87,500
90^th Percentile	£100,000	£90,000	£100,000
UK median annual salary	£70,000	£70,000	£65,000
% change year-on-year	-	+7.69%	+1.56%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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

	6 months to 30 Oct 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Permanent vacancies citing process or methodology skills	79,583	38,089	50,637
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England	74.02%	87.77%	82.97%
Number of salaries quoted	54,866	22,775	26,819
10^th Percentile	£31,250	£28,250	£33,750
25^th Percentile	£41,250	£36,250	£45,000
Median annual salary (50^th Percentile)	£60,000	£55,000	£60,000
Median % change year-on-year	+9.09%	-8.33%	-
75^th Percentile	£78,750	£75,000	£80,000
90^th Percentile	£100,000	£96,250	£98,750
UK median annual salary	£59,623	£54,441	£60,000
% change year-on-year	+9.52%	-9.27%	-

Penetration Testing Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Penetration Testing relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

Penetration Testing Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Penetration Testing.

Penetration Testing Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Penetration Testing in England over the 6 months to 30 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Penetration Testing in England

Penetration Testing Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Penetration Testing within the England region over the 6 months to 30 October 2026. 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Salary Past 6 Months	Median Salary % Change on Same Period Last Year	Live Jobs
London	+20	170	£80,000	+6.67%	33
South East	-20	79	£67,500	+12.50%	22
South West	-43	49	£55,000	-30.16%	18
Midlands	-58	27	£46,743	-15.01%	14
North of England	-66	21	£57,500	-4.17%	17
West Midlands	-51	15	£51,250	-10.09%	8
East Midlands	-28	12	£46,743	-8.45%	6
Yorkshire	-36	12	£48,750	-11.36%	8
East of England	-43	11	£60,763	-28.51%	10
North West	-40	6	£62,500	-9.92%	8
North East	-72	3	£75,000	-0.76%	1
Penetration Testing UK

Penetration Testing Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 30 October 2026, job vacancies citing Penetration Testing also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the England region citing Penetration Testing.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Cybersecurity	74.1%	266
2	Vulnerability Management	37.3%	134
3	ISO/IEC 27001	27.3%	98
4	Incident Response	24.0%	86
5	Azure	23.7%	85
5	Firewall	23.7%	85
5	Security Operations	23.7%	85
8	AWS	23.1%	83
8	SIEM	23.1%	83
10	Cloud Security	22.3%	80
11	Security Testing	22.0%	79
12	Information Security	21.2%	76
13	Problem-Solving	20.6%	74
14	NIST	19.2%	69
15	Red Team	18.9%	68
16	Microsoft	18.7%	67
17	CISSP	17.8%	64
18	Continuous Improvement	15.3%	55
19	Security Cleared	15.0%	54
19	Stakeholder Management	15.0%	54
21	Application Security	14.8%	53
21	Disaster Recovery	14.8%	53
21	Vulnerability Remediation	14.8%	53
24	Offensive Security	13.9%	50
25	Business Continuity	13.6%	49
25	Cisco	13.6%	49
25	Qualys	13.6%	49
25	Windows	13.6%	49
29	Palo Alto	13.1%	47
30	Risk Management	12.8%	46

Penetration Testing Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Processes & Methodologies

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Cybersecurity	74.1%	266
2	Vulnerability Management	37.3%	134
3	Incident Response	24.0%	86
4	Security Operations	23.7%	85
5	SIEM	23.1%	83
6	Cloud Security	22.3%	80
7	Security Testing	22.0%	79
8	Information Security	21.2%	76
9	Problem-Solving	20.6%	74
10	Red Team	18.9%	68
11	Continuous Improvement	15.3%	55
12	Stakeholder Management	15.0%	54
13	Application Security	14.8%	53
13	Disaster Recovery	14.8%	53
13	Vulnerability Remediation	14.8%	53
16	Offensive Security	13.9%	50
17	Business Continuity	13.6%	49
18	Risk Management	12.8%	46
18	Threat Detection	12.8%	46
18	Threat Intelligence	12.8%	46