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 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 415 472 450
Rank change year-on-year +57 -22 +5
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 358 173 338
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.37% 0.39% 0.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.50% 0.44% 0.57%
Number of salaries quoted 244 146 233
10th Percentile £40,000 £46,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £46,936 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £68,750 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% - +8.33%
75th Percentile £90,000 £77,500 £82,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,625 £97,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.70% +3.85% +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 70,979 38,973 59,191
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.36% 88.89% 81.01%
Number of salaries quoted 50,404 22,584 37,530
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,000 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £56,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.79% -10.40%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 +28 164 £86,000 +22.86% 35
South East +21 74 £70,000 +16.67% 16
South West -27 52 £50,000 -25.93% 27
Midlands -21 28 £65,000 +9.24% 18
North of England -50 27 £56,000 -2.61% 15
West Midlands -32 18 £70,000 +12.00% 9
Yorkshire -37 16 £55,000 - 7
East Midlands -13 10 £46,743 +16.86% 9
East of England - 9 £45,000 - 10
North West -16 7 £67,500 +17.39% 7
North East -59 4 £75,000 +3.18% 1
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 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.96%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.68%) Confluence
4 3 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.84%) IIS
5 1 (0.28%) Apache
5 1 (0.28%) Drupal
5 1 (0.28%) nginx
5 1 (0.28%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Magento
1 1 (0.28%) SAP EHS
1 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 89 (24.86%) AWS
2 83 (23.18%) Azure
3 29 (8.10%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (6.42%) GCP
5 16 (4.47%) Entra ID
6 12 (3.35%) SaaS
7 8 (2.23%) Mimecast
8 6 (1.68%) Amazon Bedrock
8 6 (1.68%) Azure Sentinel
8 6 (1.68%) Cloud Computing
8 6 (1.68%) Microsoft Purview
9 5 (1.40%) GitHub
9 5 (1.40%) Nutanix
10 4 (1.12%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 4 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.12%) Azure Key Vault
10 4 (1.12%) OneDrive
11 3 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.84%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 94 (26.26%) Firewall
2 37 (10.34%) Cisco Nexus
2 37 (10.34%) Wi-Fi
3 32 (8.94%) Internet
3 32 (8.94%) Network Security
4 27 (7.54%) LAN
4 27 (7.54%) WAN
5 20 (5.59%) VPN
6 13 (3.63%) DNS
7 10 (2.79%) TCP/IP
8 8 (2.23%) Cisco ISE
8 8 (2.23%) VLAN
8 8 (2.23%) Wireless
9 7 (1.96%) Cisco ASA
10 6 (1.68%) Intrusion Detection
11 5 (1.40%) Kerberos
11 5 (1.40%) Wireshark
12 4 (1.12%) DHCP
12 4 (1.12%) HTTPS
13 3 (0.84%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.79%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.40%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.84%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.84%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.56%) KNIME
5 1 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.28%) InterSystems Cache
5 1 (0.28%) Power BI
5 1 (0.28%) Redis
Development Applications
1 25 (6.98%) Burp Suite
2 23 (6.42%) Metasploit
3 14 (3.91%) JIRA
4 4 (1.12%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.84%) Git
5 3 (0.84%) Snyk
5 3 (0.84%) Yeoman
6 2 (0.56%) Gatling
6 2 (0.56%) GitLab
6 2 (0.56%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.56%) Maven
6 2 (0.56%) NUnit
6 2 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.28%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.28%) IDA Disassembler
7 1 (0.28%) JMeter
7 1 (0.28%) JUnit
7 1 (0.28%) Postman
7 1 (0.28%) Selenium
7 1 (0.28%) Vagrant
General
1 111 (31.01%) Social Skills
2 59 (16.48%) Finance
3 51 (14.25%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 30 (8.38%) Law
6 20 (5.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (3.91%) Retail
8 13 (3.63%) Banking
9 10 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (2.79%) Telecoms
10 9 (2.51%) Aerospace
11 6 (1.68%) Legal
11 6 (1.68%) Marketing
11 6 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
11 6 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.84%) Digital Healthcare
12 3 (0.84%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.84%) Military
Job Titles
1 96 (26.82%) Senior
2 63 (17.60%) Penetration Tester
2 63 (17.60%) Tester
3 56 (15.64%) Analyst
4 46 (12.85%) Security Analyst
5 45 (12.57%) Lead
6 37 (10.34%) Senior Analyst
7 35 (9.78%) Security Engineer
8 32 (8.94%) Consultant
9 31 (8.66%) Senior Security Analyst
10 28 (7.82%) Security Consultant
11 26 (7.26%) Cybersecurity Analyst
12 25 (6.98%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
12 25 (6.98%) Senior Security Engineer
13 21 (5.87%) Network Analyst
13 21 (5.87%) Senior Network Analyst
14 20 (5.59%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 19 (5.31%) Security Specialist
16 17 (4.75%) Architect
17 16 (4.47%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.23%) Terraform
2 5 (1.40%) LDAP
3 4 (1.12%) .NET
3 4 (1.12%) OAuth
3 4 (1.12%) RESTful
4 3 (0.84%) .NET Framework
4 3 (0.84%) Kafka
4 3 (0.84%) OpenID
5 2 (0.56%) AngularJS
5 2 (0.56%) ASP.NET
5 2 (0.56%) ASP.NET Core
5 2 (0.56%) Entity Framework
5 2 (0.56%) OAuth2
5 2 (0.56%) OpenAPI
5 2 (0.56%) RxJS
5 2 (0.56%) Swagger
5 2 (0.56%) Vitest
6 1 (0.28%) ARM Templates
6 1 (0.28%) Lightning Web Components
6 1 (0.28%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 68 (18.99%) Security Posture
2 29 (8.10%) Cyber Threat
3 26 (7.26%) Management Information System
4 17 (4.75%) Onboarding
5 16 (4.47%) Self-Motivation
6 15 (4.19%) Security Operations Centre
7 14 (3.91%) Mobile App
8 12 (3.35%) Cyber Defence
9 11 (3.07%) Operational Technology
10 10 (2.79%) Cyber Security Posture
11 8 (2.23%) Blog
12 7 (1.96%) Cloud Native
12 7 (1.96%) NHS
13 6 (1.68%) Cyberattack
13 6 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 6 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (1.40%) PKI
15 4 (1.12%) Cyber Kill Chain
15 4 (1.12%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 4 (1.12%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 50 (13.97%) Windows
2 43 (12.01%) Linux
3 18 (5.03%) Windows Server
4 14 (3.91%) Android
4 14 (3.91%) Apple iOS
5 5 (1.40%) Mac OS
5 5 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.12%) Kali Linux
7 2 (0.56%) Unix
7 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 271 (75.70%) Cybersecurity
2 117 (32.68%) Vulnerability Management
3 97 (27.09%) Incident Response
4 93 (25.98%) SIEM
5 83 (23.18%) Security Testing
6 76 (21.23%) Security Operations
7 75 (20.95%) Red Team
8 72 (20.11%) Cloud Security
9 70 (19.55%) Information Security
10 60 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
11 53 (14.80%) Continuous Improvement
11 53 (14.80%) Offensive Security
12 50 (13.97%) Disaster Recovery
13 48 (13.41%) Application Security
13 48 (13.41%) Mentoring
14 46 (12.85%) Threat Detection
15 45 (12.57%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 44 (12.29%) Vulnerability Assessment
17 43 (12.01%) Threat Intelligence
18 42 (11.73%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 34 (9.50%) Python
2 33 (9.22%) PowerShell
3 17 (4.75%) Java
4 9 (2.51%) Go
5 7 (1.96%) SQL
6 6 (1.68%) Bash
6 6 (1.68%) Bicep
7 5 (1.40%) C
7 5 (1.40%) C#
7 5 (1.40%) C++
7 5 (1.40%) Perl
7 5 (1.40%) Ruby
8 4 (1.12%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.84%) Objective-C
9 3 (0.84%) PHP
9 3 (0.84%) Rust
10 2 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.56%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 61 (17.04%) CISSP
2 56 (15.64%) Security Cleared
3 55 (15.36%) CREST Certified
4 48 (13.41%) CISM
5 40 (11.17%) SC Cleared
6 36 (10.06%) OSCP
7 32 (8.94%) Degree
8 24 (6.70%) CHECK Team Member
9 23 (6.42%) Cisco Certification
10 17 (4.75%) CompTIA Security+
11 15 (4.19%) CEH
12 14 (3.91%) CCNP
13 13 (3.63%) CHECK Team Leader
13 13 (3.63%) GIAC
14 12 (3.35%) DV Cleared
15 9 (2.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 9 (2.51%) AWS Certification
15 9 (2.51%) CCNA
16 8 (2.23%) CCSP
16 8 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (27.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (17.32%) NIST
3 43 (12.01%) GDPR
4 40 (11.17%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (5.87%) GRC
6 17 (4.75%) PCI DSS
7 13 (3.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 12 (3.35%) NCSC
9 9 (2.51%) SOC 2
10 8 (2.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (1.96%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (1.40%) Def Stans
12 5 (1.40%) NIST 800
12 5 (1.40%) QA
13 3 (0.84%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.84%) SLA
14 2 (0.56%) COBIT
15 1 (0.28%) Data Quality
15 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 37 (10.34%) Active Directory
2 10 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.40%) Docker
3 5 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.84%) EMC RecoverPoint
5 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 2 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 23 (6.42%) Nmap
2 18 (5.03%) Kubernetes
3 17 (4.75%) Nessus
4 7 (1.96%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (1.40%) Red Hat Satellite
5 5 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.84%) Ansible
6 3 (0.84%) Progress Chef
6 3 (0.84%) SCCM
6 3 (0.84%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
6 3 (0.84%) VxRail
7 2 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.28%) CASB
8 1 (0.28%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 1 (0.28%) Consul
8 1 (0.28%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.28%) OpenVAS
8 1 (0.28%) Packer
8 1 (0.28%) Puppet
Vendors
1 69 (19.27%) Microsoft
2 49 (13.69%) Cisco
3 48 (13.41%) Palo Alto
4 47 (13.13%) Qualys
5 35 (9.78%) Aruba
6 21 (5.87%) Splunk
7 14 (3.91%) CrowdStrike
8 13 (3.63%) Rapid7
8 13 (3.63%) Tenable
9 10 (2.79%) Fortinet
9 10 (2.79%) Sophos
9 10 (2.79%) VMware
10 8 (2.23%) Zscaler
11 7 (1.96%) ServiceNow
12 6 (1.68%) Veracode
13 5 (1.40%) CheckPoint
13 5 (1.40%) CyberArk
13 5 (1.40%) Ivanti
13 5 (1.40%) Oracle
13 5 (1.40%) Red Hat