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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 443 471 447
Rank change year-on-year +28 -24 +2
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 325 186 345
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.35% 0.43% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.47% 0.48% 0.58%
Number of salaries quoted 220 157 252
10th Percentile £41,250 £45,900 £41,250
25th Percentile £49,938 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £90,000 £78,750 £82,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £92,350 £97,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.70% +3.85% +8.33%

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 68,438 39,016 59,226
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.74% 89.57% 81.29%
Number of salaries quoted 48,346 22,579 39,414
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,750 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 6 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 6 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 +1 139 £85,000 +21.43% 108
South East +11 72 £70,000 +16.67% 39
South West -22 46 £50,000 -25.93% 30
Midlands -31 29 £65,000 -3.70% 21
North of England -52 23 £56,750 -1.30% 38
West Midlands -31 19 £70,000 +3.70% 14
Yorkshire -29 13 £55,000 - 16
East Midlands -7 10 £46,743 +16.86% 7
East of England - 8 £40,000 - 12
North West -14 5 £67,500 +13.92% 20
North East -51 5 £75,000 +3.18% 2
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 (2.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.85%) Confluence
4 3 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.92%) IIS
5 1 (0.31%) Apache
5 1 (0.31%) Drupal
5 1 (0.31%) nginx
5 1 (0.31%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Magento
1 1 (0.31%) SAP EHS
1 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 87 (26.77%) AWS
2 81 (24.92%) Azure
3 31 (9.54%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (7.08%) GCP
5 13 (4.00%) Entra ID
6 9 (2.77%) SaaS
7 6 (1.85%) Amazon Bedrock
7 6 (1.85%) Azure Sentinel
7 6 (1.85%) Cloud Computing
7 6 (1.85%) GitHub
8 5 (1.54%) Nutanix
8 5 (1.54%) OneDrive
9 4 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (1.23%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 4 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (1.23%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (1.23%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (1.23%) Mimecast
10 3 (0.92%) Amazon Kinesis
10 3 (0.92%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 85 (26.15%) Firewall
2 35 (10.77%) Cisco Nexus
3 34 (10.46%) Wi-Fi
4 29 (8.92%) Internet
5 27 (8.31%) Network Security
6 21 (6.46%) LAN
6 21 (6.46%) WAN
7 16 (4.92%) VPN
8 13 (4.00%) DNS
9 10 (3.08%) TCP/IP
10 7 (2.15%) Cisco ISE
10 7 (2.15%) VLAN
11 6 (1.85%) HTTPS
12 5 (1.54%) Intrusion Detection
12 5 (1.54%) Kerberos
12 5 (1.54%) Wireless
13 4 (1.23%) DHCP
14 3 (0.92%) Cisco ASA
14 3 (0.92%) VoIP
14 3 (0.92%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.38%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.54%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.92%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.92%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.62%) KNIME
5 1 (0.31%) InterSystems Cache
5 1 (0.31%) Power BI
5 1 (0.31%) Redis
Development Applications
1 18 (5.54%) Burp Suite
2 17 (5.23%) Metasploit
3 12 (3.69%) JIRA
4 6 (1.85%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.92%) Git
5 3 (0.92%) Yeoman
6 2 (0.62%) Gatling
6 2 (0.62%) NUnit
6 2 (0.62%) Snyk
7 1 (0.31%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.31%) GitLab
7 1 (0.31%) IDA Disassembler
7 1 (0.31%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.31%) JMeter
7 1 (0.31%) JUnit
7 1 (0.31%) Postman
7 1 (0.31%) Selenium
7 1 (0.31%) Vagrant
General
1 105 (32.31%) Social Skills
2 54 (16.62%) Finance
3 47 (14.46%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (11.08%) Public Sector
5 29 (8.92%) Law
6 19 (5.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (4.62%) Retail
8 14 (4.31%) Banking
9 8 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (2.15%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.85%) Legal
11 6 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.54%) Marketing
13 4 (1.23%) Aerospace
13 4 (1.23%) Financial Institution
13 4 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.92%) Back Office
14 3 (0.92%) Digital Health
14 3 (0.92%) Digital Healthcare
14 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 82 (25.23%) Senior
2 59 (18.15%) Analyst
3 55 (16.92%) Penetration Tester
3 55 (16.92%) Tester
4 46 (14.15%) Security Analyst
5 37 (11.38%) Lead
5 37 (11.38%) Senior Analyst
6 31 (9.54%) Senior Security Analyst
7 28 (8.62%) Consultant
7 28 (8.62%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 27 (8.31%) Security Consultant
9 26 (8.00%) Security Engineer
10 25 (7.69%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
11 21 (6.46%) Network Analyst
11 21 (6.46%) Senior Network Analyst
12 20 (6.15%) Security Specialist
13 16 (4.92%) Architect
13 16 (4.92%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 16 (4.92%) Senior Security Engineer
13 16 (4.92%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (1.54%) LDAP
2 4 (1.23%) RESTful
3 3 (0.92%) .NET
3 3 (0.92%) .NET Framework
3 3 (0.92%) Kafka
3 3 (0.92%) OAuth
4 2 (0.62%) AngularJS
4 2 (0.62%) ASP.NET
4 2 (0.62%) ASP.NET Core
4 2 (0.62%) Entity Framework
4 2 (0.62%) OAuth2
4 2 (0.62%) OpenAPI
4 2 (0.62%) OpenID
4 2 (0.62%) RxJS
4 2 (0.62%) Swagger
4 2 (0.62%) Vitest
5 1 (0.31%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.31%) Memcached
5 1 (0.31%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 62 (19.08%) Security Posture
2 28 (8.62%) Cyber Threat
3 24 (7.38%) Management Information System
4 17 (5.23%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.00%) Security Operations Centre
6 12 (3.69%) Cyber Defence
6 12 (3.69%) Self-Motivation
7 11 (3.38%) Mobile App
8 8 (2.46%) Blog
8 8 (2.46%) Operational Technology
9 7 (2.15%) Cloud Native
9 7 (2.15%) Cyber Security Posture
10 6 (1.85%) Cyberattack
10 6 (1.85%) Data Centre
10 6 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (1.23%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 4 (1.23%) Insider Threat
11 4 (1.23%) NHS
11 4 (1.23%) PKI
12 3 (0.92%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 51 (15.69%) Windows
2 42 (12.92%) Linux
3 18 (5.54%) Windows Server
4 14 (4.31%) Android
4 14 (4.31%) Apple iOS
5 5 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.23%) Unix
7 3 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.62%) Kali Linux
8 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 248 (76.31%) Cybersecurity
2 104 (32.00%) Vulnerability Management
3 92 (28.31%) Incident Response
4 86 (26.46%) SIEM
5 71 (21.85%) Security Testing
6 70 (21.54%) Security Operations
7 68 (20.92%) Cloud Security
8 67 (20.62%) Red Team
9 66 (20.31%) Information Security
10 54 (16.62%) Problem-Solving
11 47 (14.46%) Disaster Recovery
11 47 (14.46%) Offensive Security
12 46 (14.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 43 (13.23%) Application Security
13 43 (13.23%) Threat Detection
13 43 (13.23%) Threat Intelligence
14 42 (12.92%) Mentoring
15 40 (12.31%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 39 (12.00%) Incident Management
16 39 (12.00%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 37 (11.38%) PowerShell
2 35 (10.77%) Python
3 15 (4.62%) Java
4 11 (3.38%) Bash
5 10 (3.08%) Go
6 7 (2.15%) SQL
7 6 (1.85%) Bicep
8 3 (0.92%) C
8 3 (0.92%) C#
8 3 (0.92%) C++
8 3 (0.92%) Objective-C
8 3 (0.92%) Perl
8 3 (0.92%) PHP
8 3 (0.92%) Ruby
8 3 (0.92%) Rust
9 2 (0.62%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (0.62%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 60 (18.46%) CISSP
2 51 (15.69%) Security Cleared
3 50 (15.38%) CREST Certified
4 46 (14.15%) CISM
5 39 (12.00%) SC Cleared
6 34 (10.46%) OSCP
7 29 (8.92%) Degree
8 21 (6.46%) Cisco Certification
9 19 (5.85%) CHECK Team Member
10 18 (5.54%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (4.31%) CEH
12 13 (4.00%) GIAC
13 12 (3.69%) CCNP
14 11 (3.38%) DV Cleared
15 10 (3.08%) CHECK Team Leader
16 9 (2.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 9 (2.77%) CCNA
17 8 (2.46%) AWS Certification
17 8 (2.46%) CCSP
18 7 (2.15%) OSCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (26.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 54 (16.62%) NIST
3 41 (12.62%) GDPR
4 37 (11.38%) Cyber Essentials
5 20 (6.15%) PCI DSS
6 15 (4.62%) GRC
7 14 (4.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 13 (4.00%) NCSC
9 9 (2.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (2.46%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (2.46%) SOC 2
11 5 (1.54%) Accessibility
11 5 (1.54%) QA
12 4 (1.23%) Def Stans
12 4 (1.23%) NIST 800
13 3 (0.92%) Data Quality
13 3 (0.92%) SLA
14 2 (0.62%) COBIT
15 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 35 (10.77%) Active Directory
2 10 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.23%) Docker
5 3 (0.92%) EMC RecoverPoint
6 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 2 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 19 (5.85%) Kubernetes
2 17 (5.23%) Nmap
3 10 (3.08%) Nessus
4 9 (2.77%) Terraform
5 7 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (1.54%) Ansible
6 5 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
7 3 (0.92%) SCCM
7 3 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.92%) VxRail
8 2 (0.62%) CSIRT
8 2 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.31%) CASB
9 1 (0.31%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 1 (0.31%) Consul
9 1 (0.31%) OpenVAS
9 1 (0.31%) Packer
9 1 (0.31%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.31%) Puppet
9 1 (0.31%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
Vendors
1 65 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 43 (13.23%) Cisco
2 43 (13.23%) Qualys
3 41 (12.62%) Palo Alto
4 32 (9.85%) Aruba
5 22 (6.77%) Splunk
6 12 (3.69%) Sophos
7 11 (3.38%) CrowdStrike
8 10 (3.08%) Tenable
8 10 (3.08%) VMware
9 9 (2.77%) Rapid7
10 8 (2.46%) Fortinet
10 8 (2.46%) Zscaler
11 7 (2.15%) ServiceNow
12 6 (1.85%) CheckPoint
13 5 (1.54%) CyberArk
13 5 (1.54%) Ivanti
13 5 (1.54%) Oracle
13 5 (1.54%) Red Hat
13 5 (1.54%) TOWER Software