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 28 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 425 376 392
Rank change year-on-year -49 +16 +80
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 225 250 478
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.33% 0.68% 0.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.42% 0.73% 0.71%
Number of salaries quoted 156 196 381
10th Percentile £42,250 £46,750 £38,750
25th Percentile £50,000 £58,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £66,250 £67,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.85% +3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £82,500
90th Percentile £95,625 £95,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £67,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year +3.70% +8.00% -9.68%

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 53,421 34,107 67,015
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.17% 93.42% 86.49%
Number of salaries quoted 33,389 20,285 51,851
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,590 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,040 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.27% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 -13 99 £77,000 +6.21% 31
South West +2 51 £62,500 -10.71% 23
Midlands -34 27 £52,500 -22.22% 9
South East -61 20 £72,500 +3.57% 22
North of England -66 18 £63,750 +4.51% 14
West Midlands -21 16 £60,000 -11.11% 7
East Midlands -38 11 £51,058 +27.65% 2
Yorkshire -55 7 £60,000 +17.07% 7
North West -40 6 £55,500 -11.20% 7
North East -22 5 £75,000 +12.36%
East of England -28 2 £57,500 - 6
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 4 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (1.33%) Confluence
2 3 (1.33%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.44%) Apache
3 1 (0.44%) Drupal
3 1 (0.44%) IIS
3 1 (0.44%) nginx
3 1 (0.44%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 62 (27.56%) Azure
2 48 (21.33%) AWS
3 17 (7.56%) GCP
4 15 (6.67%) GitHub
4 15 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
5 12 (5.33%) Azure Sentinel
6 10 (4.44%) Entra ID
6 10 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (4.44%) Microsoft Purview
7 5 (2.22%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.78%) Mimecast
8 4 (1.78%) Slack
9 3 (1.33%) SaaS
10 2 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (0.89%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (0.89%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (0.89%) Dynamics 365
10 2 (0.89%) Rubrik
11 1 (0.44%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 42 (18.67%) Firewall
2 24 (10.67%) Network Security
3 20 (8.89%) Wireless
4 16 (7.11%) VPN
5 13 (5.78%) DNS
5 13 (5.78%) TCP/IP
6 8 (3.56%) Intrusion Detection
6 8 (3.56%) VLAN
7 7 (3.11%) Cisco ISE
8 6 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (2.22%) HTTP
10 4 (1.78%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (1.78%) HTTPS
10 4 (1.78%) Wireshark
11 3 (1.33%) DHCP
11 3 (1.33%) DMARC
11 3 (1.33%) Ethernet
11 3 (1.33%) Internet
11 3 (1.33%) Modbus
11 3 (1.33%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.22%) Power BI
2 3 (1.33%) SQL Server
2 3 (1.33%) Tableau
3 1 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.44%) InterSystems Cache
3 1 (0.44%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 21 (9.33%) Burp Suite
1 21 (9.33%) Metasploit
2 11 (4.89%) JIRA
3 9 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 5 (2.22%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.89%) Git
5 2 (0.89%) IDA Disassembler
6 1 (0.44%) Gatling
6 1 (0.44%) GitLab
6 1 (0.44%) JMeter
6 1 (0.44%) NUnit
6 1 (0.44%) Vagrant
General
1 75 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 67 (29.78%) Finance
3 20 (8.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 19 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (7.56%) Law
6 16 (7.11%) Retail
7 15 (6.67%) Banking
8 14 (6.22%) Public Sector
9 9 (4.00%) Legal
10 7 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (2.67%) Marketing
12 5 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (1.78%) Telecoms
14 3 (1.33%) Aerospace
14 3 (1.33%) Electronics
14 3 (1.33%) Manufacturing
14 3 (1.33%) Military
15 2 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
15 2 (0.89%) Financial Institution
15 2 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 42 (18.67%) Consultant
2 41 (18.22%) Security Consultant
3 38 (16.89%) Analyst
4 29 (12.89%) Security Analyst
5 27 (12.00%) Senior
6 24 (10.67%) Security Engineer
6 24 (10.67%) Security Manager
6 24 (10.67%) Tester
7 23 (10.22%) Penetration Tester
8 22 (9.78%) Cybersecurity Consultant
9 18 (8.00%) Security Specialist
10 14 (6.22%) Lead
11 12 (5.33%) Applications Engineer
11 12 (5.33%) IT Manager
11 12 (5.33%) Senior Analyst
11 12 (5.33%) Senior Security Analyst
12 9 (4.00%) Digital Analyst
12 9 (4.00%) Senior Digital Analyst
13 7 (3.11%) Head of Security
13 7 (3.11%) Threat Intelligence Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (1.33%) .NET
2 2 (0.89%) .NET Framework
2 2 (0.89%) JSON
3 1 (0.44%) AngularJS
3 1 (0.44%) ARM Templates
3 1 (0.44%) ASP.NET
3 1 (0.44%) ASP.NET Core
3 1 (0.44%) Entity Framework
3 1 (0.44%) LDAP
3 1 (0.44%) Memcached
3 1 (0.44%) OAuth
3 1 (0.44%) OAuth2
3 1 (0.44%) OpenAPI
3 1 (0.44%) OpenID
3 1 (0.44%) RESTful
3 1 (0.44%) RxJS
3 1 (0.44%) Swagger
3 1 (0.44%) Vitest
3 1 (0.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 63 (28.00%) Security Posture
2 27 (12.00%) Cyber Defence
3 26 (11.56%) Mobile App
4 21 (9.33%) Cyber Threat
5 16 (7.11%) Management Information System
6 7 (3.11%) Data Centre
6 7 (3.11%) Insider Threat
7 6 (2.67%) Blog
7 6 (2.67%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.67%) PKI
7 6 (2.67%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.78%) Cyber Security Posture
9 4 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.33%) Cloud Native
10 3 (1.33%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.33%) Renewable Energy
10 3 (1.33%) SCADA
10 3 (1.33%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 30 (13.33%) Linux
2 29 (12.89%) Windows
3 10 (4.44%) Android
3 10 (4.44%) Apple iOS
4 7 (3.11%) Unix
5 5 (2.22%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (58.22%) Cybersecurity
2 78 (34.67%) Incident Response
3 75 (33.33%) Red Team
4 54 (24.00%) Application Security
5 47 (20.89%) Information Security
5 47 (20.89%) Offensive Security
5 47 (20.89%) Problem-Solving
6 46 (20.44%) SIEM
7 45 (20.00%) Mentoring
8 43 (19.11%) Agile
9 42 (18.67%) Vulnerability Management
10 33 (14.67%) Security Testing
11 32 (14.22%) Business Strategy
12 31 (13.78%) Internal Audit
12 31 (13.78%) Security Operations
12 31 (13.78%) Threat Modelling
13 29 (12.89%) Business Transformation
14 28 (12.44%) Cloud Security
14 28 (12.44%) Coaching
14 28 (12.44%) Creative Thinking
Programming Languages
1 54 (24.00%) Python
2 41 (18.22%) PowerShell
3 38 (16.89%) Bash
4 13 (5.78%) Go
5 11 (4.89%) Java
6 9 (4.00%) C
6 9 (4.00%) C++
7 7 (3.11%) C#
8 6 (2.67%) Perl
8 6 (2.67%) SQL
9 4 (1.78%) Ruby
10 3 (1.33%) R
11 2 (0.89%) Bicep
11 2 (0.89%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.89%) Objective-C
11 2 (0.89%) Rust
12 1 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.44%) PHP
12 1 (0.44%) Scala
12 1 (0.44%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 73 (32.44%) CREST Certified
2 63 (28.00%) OSCP
3 53 (23.56%) CISSP
4 47 (20.89%) Degree
5 44 (19.56%) Security Cleared
6 37 (16.44%) SC Cleared
7 28 (12.44%) CEH
7 28 (12.44%) Cisco Certification
8 25 (11.11%) CHECK Team Member
9 20 (8.89%) CCSAM
9 20 (8.89%) CHECK Team Leader
10 19 (8.44%) CCNA
10 19 (8.44%) CISM
11 18 (8.00%) DV Cleared
12 17 (7.56%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (7.56%) GIAC
13 12 (5.33%) GPEN
14 11 (4.89%) CCNP
14 11 (4.89%) CISA
14 11 (4.89%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (32.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 46 (20.44%) NIST
3 31 (13.78%) GDPR
4 25 (11.11%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (8.00%) Actionable Recommendations
6 14 (6.22%) Accessibility
7 13 (5.78%) PCI DSS
8 11 (4.89%) NCSC
9 10 (4.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 6 (2.67%) GRC
11 3 (1.33%) ITGC
11 3 (1.33%) NIST 800
11 3 (1.33%) RMADS
11 3 (1.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.89%) COBIT
12 2 (0.89%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.89%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.44%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.44%) QA
System Software
1 23 (10.22%) Active Directory
2 6 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (2.22%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.78%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.89%) EMC RecoverPoint
5 2 (0.89%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.44%) Docker
6 1 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 14 (6.22%) Nessus
2 12 (5.33%) Nmap
3 11 (4.89%) Kubernetes
4 7 (3.11%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (2.22%) Ansible
5 5 (2.22%) Terraform
6 4 (1.78%) CSIRT
7 3 (1.33%) ArcSight ESM
7 3 (1.33%) FortiGate
7 3 (1.33%) QRadar
7 3 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.89%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.89%) VxRail
9 1 (0.44%) Consul
9 1 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.44%) Packer
9 1 (0.44%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.44%) Puppet
9 1 (0.44%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 58 (25.78%) Microsoft
2 14 (6.22%) Cisco
3 13 (5.78%) Splunk
4 9 (4.00%) Sophos
4 9 (4.00%) VMware
5 8 (3.56%) Zscaler
6 7 (3.11%) CheckPoint
7 6 (2.67%) Fortinet
8 5 (2.22%) Qualys
8 5 (2.22%) ServiceNow
8 5 (2.22%) Tenable
8 5 (2.22%) TOWER Software
9 4 (1.78%) CrowdStrike
9 4 (1.78%) Okta
9 4 (1.78%) Oracle
10 3 (1.33%) ArcSight
10 3 (1.33%) CyberArk
10 3 (1.33%) Dell
10 3 (1.33%) McAfee
10 3 (1.33%) Veeam