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 30 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 438 479 455
Rank change year-on-year +41 -24 -10
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 360 164 313
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.35% 0.38% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.47% 0.43% 0.57%
Number of salaries quoted 234 139 175
10th Percentile £38,575 £47,350 £43,000
25th Percentile £46,743 £53,094 £52,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - +8.33%
75th Percentile £89,000 £85,000 £86,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,250 £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 76,412 38,327 54,773
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.56% 89.12% 82.24%
Number of salaries quoted 53,811 21,662 29,728
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,233 £36,750 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -2.44%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £78,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,033
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.23% -3.28%

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 30 September 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 September 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 +6 169 £83,750 +11.67% 149
South East 0 76 £67,500 +12.50% 52
South West -34 48 £50,000 -27.27% 41
Midlands -43 28 £46,743 -20.77% 39
North of England -66 26 £55,000 -4.35% 66
Yorkshire -38 16 £55,000 - 18
West Midlands -39 16 £67,500 +22.73% 22
East Midlands -31 12 £46,743 -23.68% 17
East of England - 11 £45,000 - 18
North West -29 7 £65,000 -3.26% 35
North East -64 3 £75,000 -0.76% 14
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 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.39%) Confluence
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.56%) IIS
Applications
1 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.28%) SAP EHS
1 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 86 (23.89%) AWS
2 75 (20.83%) Azure
3 32 (8.89%) Microsoft 365
4 25 (6.94%) GCP
5 17 (4.72%) Entra ID
6 14 (3.89%) SaaS
7 7 (1.94%) Microsoft Purview
8 6 (1.67%) Amazon Bedrock
8 6 (1.67%) Cloud Computing
8 6 (1.67%) Mimecast
9 5 (1.39%) Amazon ECS
9 5 (1.39%) GitHub
9 5 (1.39%) Power Platform
10 4 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
10 4 (1.11%) Nutanix
10 4 (1.11%) OneDrive
11 3 (0.83%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 3 (0.83%) Amazon Kinesis
11 3 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 87 (24.17%) Firewall
2 39 (10.83%) Wi-Fi
3 37 (10.28%) Cisco Nexus
4 33 (9.17%) Internet
5 29 (8.06%) LAN
5 29 (8.06%) WAN
6 27 (7.50%) Network Security
7 17 (4.72%) VPN
8 11 (3.06%) Wireless
9 10 (2.78%) DNS
9 10 (2.78%) TCP/IP
10 7 (1.94%) Cisco ASA
10 7 (1.94%) Wireshark
11 6 (1.67%) VLAN
12 5 (1.39%) Cisco ISE
12 5 (1.39%) Intrusion Detection
13 4 (1.11%) Cisco Firepower
13 4 (1.11%) DHCP
13 4 (1.11%) Kerberos
13 4 (1.11%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.06%) SQL Server
2 4 (1.11%) MongoDB
2 4 (1.11%) Power BI
3 3 (0.83%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.83%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (0.56%) KNIME
5 1 (0.28%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.28%) Data Vault
5 1 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.28%) Power Query
5 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (0.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 30 (8.33%) Burp Suite
2 26 (7.22%) Metasploit
3 13 (3.61%) JIRA
4 4 (1.11%) Snyk
4 4 (1.11%) Yeoman
5 3 (0.83%) Git
5 3 (0.83%) GitLab
5 3 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.83%) Maven
5 3 (0.83%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.28%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.28%) Gatling
6 1 (0.28%) IDA Disassembler
6 1 (0.28%) JUnit
6 1 (0.28%) NUnit
6 1 (0.28%) Postman
6 1 (0.28%) Selenium
General
1 118 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 57 (15.83%) Finance
3 50 (13.89%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (7.78%) Law
5 26 (7.22%) Public Sector
6 22 (6.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (5.56%) Retail
8 16 (4.44%) Banking
9 13 (3.61%) Aerospace
10 12 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (2.78%) Telecoms
12 8 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
13 7 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (1.67%) Legal
14 6 (1.67%) Marketing
15 5 (1.39%) Pharmaceutical
16 4 (1.11%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.83%) Aviation
17 3 (0.83%) Digital Health
17 3 (0.83%) Military
Job Titles
1 101 (28.06%) Senior
2 72 (20.00%) Tester
3 71 (19.72%) Penetration Tester
4 50 (13.89%) Analyst
5 45 (12.50%) Lead
6 43 (11.94%) Security Analyst
7 41 (11.39%) Security Engineer
8 36 (10.00%) Senior Analyst
9 30 (8.33%) Senior Security Analyst
10 28 (7.78%) Senior Security Engineer
11 27 (7.50%) Cybersecurity Analyst
12 26 (7.22%) Consultant
13 25 (6.94%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
14 24 (6.67%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 21 (5.83%) Network Analyst
15 21 (5.83%) Security Consultant
15 21 (5.83%) Senior Network Analyst
16 20 (5.56%) Architect
17 18 (5.00%) Security Manager
18 17 (4.72%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.22%) Terraform
2 4 (1.11%) LDAP
2 4 (1.11%) OAuth
3 3 (0.83%) .NET
3 3 (0.83%) Kafka
3 3 (0.83%) OpenID
3 3 (0.83%) RESTful
4 2 (0.56%) Ruby on Rails
5 1 (0.28%) .NET Framework
5 1 (0.28%) AngularJS
5 1 (0.28%) ASP.NET Core
5 1 (0.28%) Lightning Web Components
5 1 (0.28%) OAuth2
5 1 (0.28%) OpenAPI
5 1 (0.28%) Playwright
5 1 (0.28%) PySpark
5 1 (0.28%) PyTorch
5 1 (0.28%) RxJS
5 1 (0.28%) Swagger
5 1 (0.28%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 71 (19.72%) Security Posture
2 31 (8.61%) Management Information System
3 26 (7.22%) Cyber Threat
4 17 (4.72%) Onboarding
4 17 (4.72%) Self-Motivation
5 15 (4.17%) Security Operations Centre
6 14 (3.89%) Mobile App
6 14 (3.89%) Operational Technology
7 12 (3.33%) Cloud Native
7 12 (3.33%) Cyber Defence
8 10 (2.78%) Cyber Security Posture
9 7 (1.94%) NHS
9 7 (1.94%) PKI
10 6 (1.67%) Cyberattack
11 5 (1.39%) Data Centre
11 5 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (1.11%) Cloud Security Posture
12 4 (1.11%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 4 (1.11%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 47 (13.06%) Windows
2 38 (10.56%) Linux
3 16 (4.44%) Android
3 16 (4.44%) Apple iOS
3 16 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.22%) Mac OS
5 4 (1.11%) Kali Linux
5 4 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.83%) Unix
7 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 276 (76.67%) Cybersecurity
2 133 (36.94%) Vulnerability Management
3 90 (25.00%) Incident Response
4 89 (24.72%) Security Testing
4 89 (24.72%) SIEM
5 80 (22.22%) Security Operations
6 78 (21.67%) Information Security
7 74 (20.56%) Cloud Security
8 70 (19.44%) Red Team
9 67 (18.61%) Problem-Solving
10 55 (15.28%) Application Security
10 55 (15.28%) Continuous Improvement
11 53 (14.72%) Offensive Security
12 50 (13.89%) Disaster Recovery
13 49 (13.61%) Stakeholder Management
13 49 (13.61%) Vulnerability Assessment
14 47 (13.06%) Threat Detection
14 47 (13.06%) Vulnerability Remediation
15 46 (12.78%) Business Continuity
15 46 (12.78%) Threat Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 32 (8.89%) Python
2 26 (7.22%) PowerShell
3 17 (4.72%) Java
4 10 (2.78%) Go
5 9 (2.50%) SQL
6 5 (1.39%) JavaScript
6 5 (1.39%) Ruby
7 4 (1.11%) Bicep
8 3 (0.83%) C
8 3 (0.83%) C#
8 3 (0.83%) C++
8 3 (0.83%) Perl
9 2 (0.56%) Bash
9 2 (0.56%) PHP
9 2 (0.56%) Rust
10 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.28%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 70 (19.44%) CISSP
2 55 (15.28%) Security Cleared
3 50 (13.89%) CISM
3 50 (13.89%) CREST Certified
4 39 (10.83%) OSCP
5 37 (10.28%) SC Cleared
6 31 (8.61%) Degree
7 27 (7.50%) CHECK Team Member
8 18 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
9 16 (4.44%) CEH
10 14 (3.89%) CompTIA Security+
11 13 (3.61%) CHECK Team Leader
11 13 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (3.06%) AWS Certification
12 11 (3.06%) Cyber Scheme
12 11 (3.06%) GIAC
13 10 (2.78%) CCNP
13 10 (2.78%) CISA
13 10 (2.78%) DV Cleared
14 8 (2.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (28.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 67 (18.61%) NIST
3 45 (12.50%) Cyber Essentials
3 45 (12.50%) GDPR
4 27 (7.50%) GRC
5 20 (5.56%) PCI DSS
6 17 (4.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (3.06%) NCSC
7 11 (3.06%) SOC 2
8 7 (1.94%) Def Stans
8 7 (1.94%) NIST 800
8 7 (1.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (1.67%) QA
10 4 (1.11%) SLA
11 3 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.56%) COBIT
12 2 (0.56%) ISO 22301
12 2 (0.56%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.56%) PERC
System Software
1 29 (8.06%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.39%) Docker
4 4 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.56%) EMC RecoverPoint
5 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 2 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 26 (7.22%) Nmap
2 22 (6.11%) Kubernetes
3 19 (5.28%) Nessus
4 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (1.11%) Red Hat Satellite
4 4 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.83%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.83%) SCCM
5 3 (0.83%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
6 2 (0.56%) VxRail
7 1 (0.28%) CASB
7 1 (0.28%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 1 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.28%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.28%) OpenVAS
7 1 (0.28%) QRadar
Vendors
1 71 (19.72%) Microsoft
2 49 (13.61%) Cisco
2 49 (13.61%) Qualys
3 48 (13.33%) Palo Alto
4 37 (10.28%) Aruba
5 16 (4.44%) Splunk
6 14 (3.89%) CrowdStrike
6 14 (3.89%) Tenable
7 13 (3.61%) Rapid7
8 8 (2.22%) VMware
9 6 (1.67%) Fortinet
9 6 (1.67%) ServiceNow
9 6 (1.67%) Veracode
10 5 (1.39%) Oracle
10 5 (1.39%) Sophos
11 4 (1.11%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.11%) Ivanti
11 4 (1.11%) Red Hat
11 4 (1.11%) Zscaler
12 3 (0.83%) Okta