Penetration Testing Job Trends in England

Penetration Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England requiring Penetration Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 471 445
Rank change year-on-year +25 -26 -13
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 350 166 305
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.34% 0.38% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.46% 0.43% 0.57%
Number of salaries quoted 231 143 168
10th Percentile £38,750 £46,900 £44,625
25th Percentile £46,743 £52,500 £56,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - +8.33%
75th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £85,625
90th Percentile £100,000 £91,000 £100,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £69,384 £65,000
% change year-on-year +0.89% +6.74% +4.00%

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 requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 76,345 38,619 53,704
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.62% 89.01% 82.66%
Number of salaries quoted 53,555 21,921 28,813
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,681 £36,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.64%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,250 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

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 job vacancy trend in England

Penetration Testing
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Penetration Testing.

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 9 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 9 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
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +7 169 £82,500 +10.00% 211
South East +3 75 £67,500 +12.50% 52
South West -37 46 £50,000 -28.57% 39
Midlands -31 28 £46,743 -17.99% 46
North of England -79 20 £55,000 -4.35% 77
West Midlands -36 15 £65,000 +19.61% 29
East Midlands -25 13 £46,743 -23.68% 17
Yorkshire -42 11 £52,500 -4.55% 30
East of England - 10 £51,250 - 21
North West -23 6 £62,500 -6.98% 35
North East -64 3 £75,000 -0.76% 13
Penetration Testing
UK

Penetration Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 9 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.43%) Confluence
4 3 (0.86%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.29%) SAP EHS
1 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 79 (22.57%) AWS
2 77 (22.00%) Azure
3 32 (9.14%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (6.57%) GCP
5 18 (5.14%) Entra ID
6 13 (3.71%) SaaS
7 8 (2.29%) Mimecast
8 7 (2.00%) Microsoft Purview
9 6 (1.71%) Amazon Bedrock
9 6 (1.71%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (1.71%) Power Platform
10 5 (1.43%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
10 5 (1.43%) GitHub
11 4 (1.14%) Nutanix
11 4 (1.14%) OneDrive
12 3 (0.86%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 3 (0.86%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
12 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 84 (24.00%) Firewall
2 39 (11.14%) Wi-Fi
3 37 (10.57%) Cisco Nexus
4 31 (8.86%) Internet
5 30 (8.57%) WAN
6 29 (8.29%) LAN
7 26 (7.43%) Network Security
8 15 (4.29%) VPN
9 11 (3.14%) Wireless
10 10 (2.86%) TCP/IP
11 9 (2.57%) DNS
12 7 (2.00%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (2.00%) Wireshark
13 6 (1.71%) Cisco ISE
14 5 (1.43%) VLAN
15 4 (1.14%) Cisco Firepower
15 4 (1.14%) DHCP
15 4 (1.14%) Intrusion Detection
15 4 (1.14%) Kerberos
15 4 (1.14%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.43%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.43%) Power BI
3 4 (1.14%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (0.86%) Hadoop
4 3 (0.86%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (0.57%) KNIME
6 1 (0.29%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.29%) Data Vault
6 1 (0.29%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.29%) Power Query
6 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.29%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (9.71%) Burp Suite
2 28 (8.00%) Metasploit
3 13 (3.71%) JIRA
4 5 (1.43%) Yeoman
5 4 (1.14%) Snyk
6 3 (0.86%) GitLab
6 3 (0.86%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.86%) Maven
6 3 (0.86%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.57%) Git
8 1 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.29%) Gatling
8 1 (0.29%) IDA Disassembler
8 1 (0.29%) JUnit
8 1 (0.29%) Postman
8 1 (0.29%) Selenium
General
1 115 (32.86%) Social Skills
2 51 (14.57%) Finance
3 48 (13.71%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (7.43%) Law
5 22 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 20 (5.71%) Retail
7 19 (5.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 13 (3.71%) Aerospace
9 12 (3.43%) Banking
9 12 (3.43%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (2.86%) Telecoms
11 8 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (1.71%) Legal
13 6 (1.71%) Marketing
14 3 (0.86%) Aviation
14 3 (0.86%) Digital Health
14 3 (0.86%) Military
14 3 (0.86%) Public Speaking
14 3 (0.86%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 97 (27.71%) Senior
2 76 (21.71%) Tester
3 75 (21.43%) Penetration Tester
4 46 (13.14%) Analyst
5 44 (12.57%) Lead
6 41 (11.71%) Security Engineer
7 40 (11.43%) Security Analyst
8 33 (9.43%) Senior Analyst
9 27 (7.71%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 27 (7.71%) Senior Security Analyst
9 27 (7.71%) Senior Security Engineer
10 25 (7.14%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
11 24 (6.86%) Consultant
11 24 (6.86%) Cybersecurity Engineer
12 21 (6.00%) Network Analyst
12 21 (6.00%) Senior Network Analyst
13 20 (5.71%) Architect
14 19 (5.43%) Security Consultant
14 19 (5.43%) Security Specialist
15 18 (5.14%) Security Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.71%) Terraform
2 4 (1.14%) LDAP
3 3 (0.86%) Kafka
3 3 (0.86%) OAuth
4 2 (0.57%) .NET
4 2 (0.57%) OpenID
4 2 (0.57%) RESTful
4 2 (0.57%) Ruby on Rails
5 1 (0.29%) CSS
5 1 (0.29%) HTML
5 1 (0.29%) LangChain
5 1 (0.29%) Lightning Web Components
5 1 (0.29%) LlamaIndex
5 1 (0.29%) Playwright
5 1 (0.29%) PySpark
5 1 (0.29%) PyTorch
5 1 (0.29%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 71 (20.29%) Security Posture
2 28 (8.00%) Management Information System
3 26 (7.43%) Cyber Threat
4 16 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 16 (4.57%) Self-Motivation
5 14 (4.00%) Mobile App
5 14 (4.00%) Operational Technology
5 14 (4.00%) Security Operations Centre
6 11 (3.14%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.14%) Cyber Defence
7 10 (2.86%) Cyber Security Posture
8 7 (2.00%) NHS
9 6 (1.71%) Insider Threat
9 6 (1.71%) PKI
10 5 (1.43%) Data Centre
10 5 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (1.14%) Cloud Security Posture
11 4 (1.14%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 4 (1.14%) Cyberattack
11 4 (1.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 44 (12.57%) Windows
2 36 (10.29%) Linux
3 16 (4.57%) Windows Server
4 15 (4.29%) Android
4 15 (4.29%) Apple iOS
5 8 (2.29%) Mac OS
6 5 (1.43%) Kali Linux
7 4 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.86%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (76.57%) Cybersecurity
2 133 (38.00%) Vulnerability Management
3 89 (25.43%) Incident Response
4 87 (24.86%) Security Testing
5 85 (24.29%) SIEM
6 83 (23.71%) Security Operations
7 75 (21.43%) Information Security
8 74 (21.14%) Cloud Security
9 69 (19.71%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (19.14%) Red Team
11 56 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 52 (14.86%) Disaster Recovery
12 52 (14.86%) Offensive Security
13 51 (14.57%) Application Security
13 51 (14.57%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 50 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
15 48 (13.71%) Threat Intelligence
16 47 (13.43%) Vulnerability Assessment
17 46 (13.14%) Business Continuity
17 46 (13.14%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 30 (8.57%) Python
2 23 (6.57%) PowerShell
3 16 (4.57%) Java
4 8 (2.29%) Go
5 7 (2.00%) SQL
6 5 (1.43%) JavaScript
6 5 (1.43%) Ruby
7 3 (0.86%) C
7 3 (0.86%) C#
7 3 (0.86%) C++
7 3 (0.86%) Perl
8 2 (0.57%) Bash
8 2 (0.57%) Bicep
8 2 (0.57%) PHP
9 1 (0.29%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.29%) Rust
Qualifications
1 66 (18.86%) CISSP
2 54 (15.43%) Security Cleared
3 45 (12.86%) CISM
4 44 (12.57%) CREST Certified
5 36 (10.29%) SC Cleared
6 35 (10.00%) OSCP
7 28 (8.00%) Degree
8 27 (7.71%) CHECK Team Member
9 17 (4.86%) Cisco Certification
10 15 (4.29%) CEH
11 13 (3.71%) CHECK Team Leader
11 13 (3.71%) CompTIA Security+
12 12 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
13 11 (3.14%) GIAC
14 10 (2.86%) AWS Certification
14 10 (2.86%) CISA
14 10 (2.86%) Cyber Scheme
15 9 (2.57%) CCNP
15 9 (2.57%) DV Cleared
16 8 (2.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (27.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (19.43%) NIST
3 44 (12.57%) Cyber Essentials
4 39 (11.14%) GDPR
5 27 (7.71%) GRC
6 19 (5.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 19 (5.43%) PCI DSS
7 11 (3.14%) NCSC
8 7 (2.00%) Def Stans
8 7 (2.00%) NIST 800
8 7 (2.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (2.00%) SOC 2
9 5 (1.43%) QA
10 4 (1.14%) SLA
11 3 (0.86%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.57%) IASME
12 2 (0.57%) ISO 22301
12 2 (0.57%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.57%) PERC
System Software
1 28 (8.00%) Active Directory
2 6 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.43%) Docker
4 4 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.57%) EMC RecoverPoint
5 2 (0.57%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 2 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 29 (8.29%) Nmap
2 22 (6.29%) Kubernetes
3 20 (5.71%) Nessus
4 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.14%) Red Hat Satellite
4 4 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.86%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.86%) SCCM
5 3 (0.86%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
6 2 (0.57%) VxRail
7 1 (0.29%) CASB
7 1 (0.29%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 1 (0.29%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.29%) OpenVAS
7 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 72 (20.57%) Microsoft
2 50 (14.29%) Cisco
2 50 (14.29%) Qualys
3 48 (13.71%) Palo Alto
4 37 (10.57%) Aruba
5 15 (4.29%) Splunk
5 15 (4.29%) Tenable
6 14 (4.00%) CrowdStrike
7 13 (3.71%) Rapid7
8 6 (1.71%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.71%) Veracode
8 6 (1.71%) VMware
9 5 (1.43%) Fortinet
9 5 (1.43%) Oracle
10 4 (1.14%) CyberArk
10 4 (1.14%) Ivanti
10 4 (1.14%) Okta
10 4 (1.14%) Red Hat
10 4 (1.14%) Sophos
10 4 (1.14%) Zscaler