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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 443 473 443
Rank change year-on-year +30 -30 -11
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 353 164 304
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.34% 0.38% 0.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.46% 0.43% 0.56%
Number of salaries quoted 230 140 168
10th Percentile £38,725 £46,675 £44,625
25th Percentile £46,743 £52,438 £54,219
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - +8.33%
75th Percentile £89,000 £86,957 £87,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,125 £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 76,581 38,469 54,071
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.57% 89.04% 82.44%
Number of salaries quoted 53,748 21,719 29,115
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,000 £36,250 £43,125
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 £75,000 £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 6 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 6 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 +6 168 £82,500 +10.00% 193
South East +13 77 £68,750 +14.58% 62
South West -36 46 £50,000 -28.57% 38
Midlands -41 28 £46,743 -17.99% 46
North of England -69 22 £55,000 -4.35% 79
West Midlands -29 15 £65,000 +19.61% 28
East Midlands -21 13 £46,743 -23.68% 18
Yorkshire -38 13 £55,000 - 25
East of England - 10 £51,250 - 27
North West -30 6 £62,500 -6.98% 39
North East -64 3 £75,000 -0.76% 16
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 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.42%) Confluence
4 3 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.28%) IIS
Applications
1 2 (0.57%) 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 81 (22.95%) AWS
2 76 (21.53%) Azure
3 32 (9.07%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (6.52%) GCP
5 18 (5.10%) Entra ID
6 13 (3.68%) SaaS
7 8 (2.27%) Mimecast
8 7 (1.98%) Microsoft Purview
9 6 (1.70%) Amazon Bedrock
9 6 (1.70%) Azure Sentinel
9 6 (1.70%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (1.70%) Power Platform
10 5 (1.42%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (1.42%) GitHub
11 4 (1.13%) Nutanix
11 4 (1.13%) OneDrive
12 3 (0.85%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 3 (0.85%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
12 3 (0.85%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 86 (24.36%) Firewall
2 39 (11.05%) Wi-Fi
3 37 (10.48%) Cisco Nexus
4 32 (9.07%) Internet
5 30 (8.50%) WAN
6 29 (8.22%) LAN
7 27 (7.65%) Network Security
8 16 (4.53%) VPN
9 11 (3.12%) TCP/IP
9 11 (3.12%) Wireless
10 9 (2.55%) DNS
11 7 (1.98%) Cisco ASA
11 7 (1.98%) Wireshark
12 6 (1.70%) Cisco ISE
13 5 (1.42%) Intrusion Detection
13 5 (1.42%) VLAN
14 4 (1.13%) Cisco Firepower
14 4 (1.13%) DHCP
14 4 (1.13%) Kerberos
14 4 (1.13%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.40%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.42%) Power BI
3 4 (1.13%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (0.85%) Hadoop
4 3 (0.85%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (0.57%) KNIME
6 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.28%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.28%) Data Vault
6 1 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.28%) Power Query
6 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (9.35%) Burp Suite
2 27 (7.65%) Metasploit
3 13 (3.68%) JIRA
4 5 (1.42%) Yeoman
5 4 (1.13%) Snyk
6 3 (0.85%) GitLab
6 3 (0.85%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.85%) Maven
6 3 (0.85%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.57%) Git
8 1 (0.28%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.28%) Gatling
8 1 (0.28%) IDA Disassembler
8 1 (0.28%) JUnit
8 1 (0.28%) Postman
8 1 (0.28%) Selenium
General
1 117 (33.14%) Social Skills
2 55 (15.58%) Finance
3 48 (13.60%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (7.65%) Law
5 23 (6.52%) Public Sector
6 20 (5.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 20 (5.67%) Retail
7 13 (3.68%) Aerospace
7 13 (3.68%) Banking
8 12 (3.40%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (2.83%) Telecoms
10 8 (2.27%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (1.70%) Legal
12 6 (1.70%) Marketing
13 3 (0.85%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.85%) Military
13 3 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.85%) Public Speaking
13 3 (0.85%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 99 (28.05%) Senior
2 72 (20.40%) Tester
3 71 (20.11%) Penetration Tester
4 48 (13.60%) Analyst
5 43 (12.18%) Lead
6 42 (11.90%) Security Engineer
7 41 (11.61%) Security Analyst
8 34 (9.63%) Senior Analyst
9 28 (7.93%) Senior Security Analyst
9 28 (7.93%) Senior Security Engineer
10 27 (7.65%) Cybersecurity Analyst
11 25 (7.08%) Consultant
11 25 (7.08%) Cybersecurity Engineer
11 25 (7.08%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
12 21 (5.95%) Network Analyst
12 21 (5.95%) Senior Network Analyst
13 20 (5.67%) Architect
13 20 (5.67%) Security Consultant
14 19 (5.38%) Security Manager
15 18 (5.10%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (1.98%) Terraform
2 4 (1.13%) LDAP
2 4 (1.13%) OAuth
3 3 (0.85%) Kafka
3 3 (0.85%) OpenID
4 2 (0.57%) .NET
4 2 (0.57%) RESTful
4 2 (0.57%) Ruby on Rails
5 1 (0.28%) CSS
5 1 (0.28%) HTML
5 1 (0.28%) LangChain
5 1 (0.28%) Lightning Web Components
5 1 (0.28%) LlamaIndex
5 1 (0.28%) OAuth2
5 1 (0.28%) Playwright
5 1 (0.28%) PySpark
5 1 (0.28%) PyTorch
5 1 (0.28%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 71 (20.11%) Security Posture
2 30 (8.50%) Management Information System
3 26 (7.37%) Cyber Threat
4 17 (4.82%) Self-Motivation
5 16 (4.53%) Onboarding
6 14 (3.97%) Mobile App
6 14 (3.97%) Operational Technology
6 14 (3.97%) Security Operations Centre
7 11 (3.12%) Cloud Native
7 11 (3.12%) Cyber Defence
8 10 (2.83%) Cyber Security Posture
9 7 (1.98%) NHS
9 7 (1.98%) PKI
10 5 (1.42%) Cyberattack
10 5 (1.42%) Data Centre
10 5 (1.42%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 5 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (1.42%) Insider Threat
11 4 (1.13%) Cloud Security Posture
11 4 (1.13%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 46 (13.03%) Windows
2 37 (10.48%) Linux
3 16 (4.53%) Windows Server
4 15 (4.25%) Android
4 15 (4.25%) Apple iOS
5 8 (2.27%) Mac OS
6 5 (1.42%) Kali Linux
7 4 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.85%) Unix
9 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 270 (76.49%) Cybersecurity
2 135 (38.24%) Vulnerability Management
3 90 (25.50%) Incident Response
4 89 (25.21%) Security Testing
5 88 (24.93%) SIEM
6 82 (23.23%) Security Operations
7 76 (21.53%) Information Security
8 74 (20.96%) Cloud Security
9 69 (19.55%) Red Team
10 68 (19.26%) Problem-Solving
11 56 (15.86%) Continuous Improvement
12 52 (14.73%) Application Security
12 52 (14.73%) Disaster Recovery
12 52 (14.73%) Offensive Security
13 49 (13.88%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 48 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
14 48 (13.60%) Vulnerability Assessment
15 47 (13.31%) Business Continuity
15 47 (13.31%) Threat Intelligence
16 46 (13.03%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 31 (8.78%) Python
2 25 (7.08%) PowerShell
3 16 (4.53%) Java
4 8 (2.27%) Go
4 8 (2.27%) SQL
5 5 (1.42%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.42%) Ruby
6 3 (0.85%) Bicep
6 3 (0.85%) C
6 3 (0.85%) C#
6 3 (0.85%) C++
6 3 (0.85%) Perl
7 2 (0.57%) Bash
7 2 (0.57%) PHP
8 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
8 1 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 68 (19.26%) CISSP
2 54 (15.30%) Security Cleared
3 47 (13.31%) CISM
4 46 (13.03%) CREST Certified
5 36 (10.20%) OSCP
5 36 (10.20%) SC Cleared
6 30 (8.50%) Degree
7 27 (7.65%) CHECK Team Member
8 18 (5.10%) Cisco Certification
9 16 (4.53%) CEH
10 14 (3.97%) CompTIA Security+
11 13 (3.68%) CHECK Team Leader
11 13 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (3.12%) AWS Certification
12 11 (3.12%) CISA
12 11 (3.12%) GIAC
13 10 (2.83%) CCNP
13 10 (2.83%) Cyber Scheme
13 10 (2.83%) DV Cleared
14 8 (2.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (28.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 67 (18.98%) NIST
3 46 (13.03%) Cyber Essentials
4 41 (11.61%) GDPR
5 27 (7.65%) GRC
6 20 (5.67%) PCI DSS
7 19 (5.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 11 (3.12%) NCSC
9 10 (2.83%) SOC 2
10 7 (1.98%) Def Stans
10 7 (1.98%) NIST 800
10 7 (1.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (1.42%) QA
12 4 (1.13%) SLA
13 3 (0.85%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 2 (0.57%) IASME
14 2 (0.57%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.57%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.57%) PERC
System Software
1 30 (8.50%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.42%) Docker
4 4 (1.13%) 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 28 (7.93%) Nmap
2 22 (6.23%) Kubernetes
3 20 (5.67%) Nessus
4 5 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (1.13%) Red Hat Satellite
6 3 (0.85%) Progress Chef
6 3 (0.85%) SCCM
6 3 (0.85%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
7 2 (0.57%) VxRail
8 1 (0.28%) CASB
8 1 (0.28%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 1 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.28%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.28%) OpenVAS
8 1 (0.28%) QRadar
Vendors
1 73 (20.68%) Microsoft
2 50 (14.16%) Cisco
2 50 (14.16%) Qualys
3 48 (13.60%) Palo Alto
4 37 (10.48%) Aruba
5 15 (4.25%) CrowdStrike
5 15 (4.25%) Splunk
5 15 (4.25%) Tenable
6 13 (3.68%) Rapid7
7 7 (1.98%) VMware
8 6 (1.70%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.70%) Veracode
9 5 (1.42%) Fortinet
9 5 (1.42%) Oracle
9 5 (1.42%) Zscaler
10 4 (1.13%) CyberArk
10 4 (1.13%) Ivanti
10 4 (1.13%) Okta
10 4 (1.13%) Red Hat
10 4 (1.13%) Sophos