Penetration Testing Job Trends

Penetration Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Penetration Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 447 477 465
Rank change year-on-year +30 -12 -5
Permanent jobs citing Penetration Testing 364 205 406
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.36% 0.42% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.49% 0.46% 0.57%
Number of salaries quoted 246 167 303
10th Percentile £42,500 £45,900 £39,439
25th Percentile £50,000 £53,094 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £64,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +5.47% +6.67%
75th Percentile £89,000 £78,750 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -15.38% +8.33% +9.09%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 74,889 44,229 70,800
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.63% 89.64% 81.30%
Number of salaries quoted 51,640 25,065 47,390
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%

Penetration Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Penetration Testing relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Penetration Testing job vacancy trend in the UK

Penetration Testing
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Penetration Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Penetration Testing over the 6 months to 29 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Penetration Testing in the UK

Penetration Testing
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Penetration Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 29 July 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
England +25 319 £70,000 +3.70% 106
UK excluding London -6 187 £55,000 -15.38% 79
London +19 135 £83,750 +19.64% 49
Work from Home +26 123 £75,000 +7.14% 52
South East +14 71 £70,000 +16.67% 25
South West -21 45 £50,000 -25.93% 18
Midlands -32 28 £65,000 -3.70% 7
North of England -50 24 £57,500 - 15
West Midlands -33 19 £70,000 +3.70% 4
Yorkshire -34 13 £55,000 - 7
Scotland +17 9 £95,000 +35.71% 5
East Midlands -19 9 £46,743 +16.86% 3
East of England - 7 £35,000 - 4
North East -49 6 £75,000 +3.18%
North West -26 5 £67,500 +13.92% 8
Wales -53 5 £55,000 -27.22% 5

Penetration Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.92%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.37%) Confluence
4 3 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.82%) IIS
5 1 (0.27%) Apache
5 1 (0.27%) CMS
5 1 (0.27%) Drupal
5 1 (0.27%) nginx
5 1 (0.27%) NServiceBus
5 1 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Magento
1 1 (0.27%) SAP EHS
1 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 83 (22.80%) AWS
2 80 (21.98%) Azure
3 29 (7.97%) Microsoft 365
4 25 (6.87%) GCP
5 13 (3.57%) Entra ID
6 10 (2.75%) GitHub
7 9 (2.47%) SaaS
8 7 (1.92%) Azure Sentinel
9 6 (1.65%) Amazon Bedrock
9 6 (1.65%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (1.37%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (1.37%) Mimecast
11 4 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (1.10%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 4 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (1.10%) Azure Key Vault
11 4 (1.10%) Nutanix
11 4 (1.10%) OneDrive
11 4 (1.10%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 87 (23.90%) Firewall
2 35 (9.62%) Cisco Nexus
3 32 (8.79%) Wi-Fi
4 29 (7.97%) Internet
4 29 (7.97%) Network Security
5 19 (5.22%) LAN
5 19 (5.22%) WAN
6 16 (4.40%) VPN
7 12 (3.30%) Wireless
8 11 (3.02%) DNS
9 9 (2.47%) TCP/IP
10 8 (2.20%) Cisco ISE
11 6 (1.65%) Intrusion Detection
11 6 (1.65%) VLAN
12 5 (1.37%) HTTPS
13 4 (1.10%) Kerberos
14 3 (0.82%) DHCP
14 3 (0.82%) VoIP
14 3 (0.82%) Wireshark
15 2 (0.55%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.75%) SQL Server
2 4 (1.10%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.82%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.82%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.55%) KNIME
4 2 (0.55%) Redis
5 1 (0.27%) InterSystems Cache
5 1 (0.27%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 20 (5.49%) Burp Suite
2 19 (5.22%) Metasploit
3 12 (3.30%) JIRA
4 6 (1.65%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.10%) Git
5 4 (1.10%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.82%) Yeoman
7 2 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.55%) Gatling
7 2 (0.55%) JMeter
7 2 (0.55%) NUnit
7 2 (0.55%) Selenium
7 2 (0.55%) Snyk
8 1 (0.27%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.27%) GitLab
8 1 (0.27%) IDA Disassembler
8 1 (0.27%) JUnit
8 1 (0.27%) Postman
8 1 (0.27%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.27%) Vagrant
General
1 109 (29.95%) Social Skills
2 66 (18.13%) Finance
3 48 (13.19%) Public Sector
4 42 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
5 30 (8.24%) Law
6 19 (5.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 16 (4.40%) Banking
8 15 (4.12%) Retail
9 7 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.65%) Legal
10 6 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (1.37%) Marketing
11 5 (1.37%) Telecoms
12 4 (1.10%) Financial Institution
12 4 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.82%) Back Office
13 3 (0.82%) Digital Health
13 3 (0.82%) Digital Healthcare
13 3 (0.82%) Military
14 2 (0.55%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 81 (22.25%) Senior
2 66 (18.13%) Penetration Tester
2 66 (18.13%) Tester
3 63 (17.31%) Analyst
4 50 (13.74%) Security Analyst
5 40 (10.99%) Lead
6 39 (10.71%) Senior Analyst
7 38 (10.44%) Consultant
8 33 (9.07%) Senior Security Analyst
9 30 (8.24%) Cybersecurity Analyst
10 29 (7.97%) Security Consultant
11 27 (7.42%) Security Engineer
12 25 (6.87%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
13 22 (6.04%) Team Leader
14 21 (5.77%) Network Analyst
14 21 (5.77%) Security Specialist
14 21 (5.77%) Senior Network Analyst
15 15 (4.12%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 15 (4.12%) Network Security Analyst
15 15 (4.12%) Security Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (1.37%) RESTful
2 4 (1.10%) .NET
2 4 (1.10%) LDAP
2 4 (1.10%) OAuth
3 3 (0.82%) .NET Framework
3 3 (0.82%) ASP.NET
3 3 (0.82%) Kafka
4 2 (0.55%) AngularJS
4 2 (0.55%) ASP.NET Core
4 2 (0.55%) Entity Framework
4 2 (0.55%) OAuth2
4 2 (0.55%) OpenAPI
4 2 (0.55%) OpenID
4 2 (0.55%) Playwright
4 2 (0.55%) RxJS
4 2 (0.55%) Swagger
4 2 (0.55%) Vitest
5 1 (0.27%) CSS
5 1 (0.27%) Gherkin
5 1 (0.27%) Memcached
Miscellaneous
1 69 (18.96%) Security Posture
2 31 (8.52%) Cyber Threat
3 24 (6.59%) Management Information System
4 18 (4.95%) Mobile App
5 17 (4.67%) Cyber Defence
6 14 (3.85%) Onboarding
7 13 (3.57%) Security Operations Centre
8 11 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (2.47%) Cloud Native
9 9 (2.47%) Operational Technology
10 8 (2.20%) Blog
11 7 (1.92%) Data Centre
11 7 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
11 7 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
12 6 (1.65%) Cyber Security Posture
12 6 (1.65%) Cyberattack
13 4 (1.10%) Insider Threat
13 4 (1.10%) NHS
13 4 (1.10%) Public Cloud
14 3 (0.82%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 53 (14.56%) Windows
2 44 (12.09%) Linux
3 17 (4.67%) Windows Server
4 14 (3.85%) Android
4 14 (3.85%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.10%) Kali Linux
5 4 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.10%) Unix
6 3 (0.82%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 270 (74.18%) Cybersecurity
2 108 (29.67%) Vulnerability Management
3 105 (28.85%) Incident Response
4 87 (23.90%) SIEM
5 77 (21.15%) Security Testing
6 74 (20.33%) Security Operations
7 71 (19.51%) Red Team
8 66 (18.13%) Cloud Security
9 62 (17.03%) Information Security
10 56 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
11 55 (15.11%) Application Security
12 53 (14.56%) Offensive Security
13 48 (13.19%) Continuous Improvement
14 47 (12.91%) Disaster Recovery
15 45 (12.36%) Mentoring
15 45 (12.36%) Threat Intelligence
16 42 (11.54%) Risk Management
17 41 (11.26%) Threat Detection
17 41 (11.26%) Threat Modelling
18 40 (10.99%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 44 (12.09%) PowerShell
2 41 (11.26%) Python
3 16 (4.40%) Bash
4 14 (3.85%) Java
5 10 (2.75%) Go
6 7 (1.92%) SQL
7 6 (1.65%) Bicep
8 4 (1.10%) C#
9 3 (0.82%) C
9 3 (0.82%) C++
9 3 (0.82%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.82%) Objective-C
9 3 (0.82%) Perl
9 3 (0.82%) PHP
9 3 (0.82%) Ruby
9 3 (0.82%) Rust
10 2 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.55%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 70 (19.23%) Security Cleared
2 67 (18.41%) CREST Certified
3 64 (17.58%) CISSP
4 54 (14.84%) SC Cleared
5 45 (12.36%) CISM
5 45 (12.36%) OSCP
6 32 (8.79%) Degree
7 29 (7.97%) CHECK Team Member
8 23 (6.32%) CHECK Team Leader
9 21 (5.77%) Cisco Certification
10 17 (4.67%) CompTIA Security+
11 16 (4.40%) CEH
12 13 (3.57%) CCNP
13 12 (3.30%) DV Cleared
13 12 (3.30%) GIAC
14 11 (3.02%) CCNA
15 8 (2.20%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 8 (2.20%) AWS Certification
15 8 (2.20%) CCSAM
15 8 (2.20%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (26.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 56 (15.38%) NIST
3 50 (13.74%) GDPR
4 39 (10.71%) Cyber Essentials
5 29 (7.97%) PCI DSS
6 18 (4.95%) GRC
7 15 (4.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 15 (4.12%) NCSC
8 10 (2.75%) Accessibility
9 9 (2.47%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (2.47%) SOC 2
10 8 (2.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (1.65%) QA
12 4 (1.10%) Data Quality
12 4 (1.10%) Def Stans
12 4 (1.10%) NIST 800
13 3 (0.82%) SLA
14 2 (0.55%) COBIT
15 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 34 (9.34%) Active Directory
2 10 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.10%) Docker
3 4 (1.10%) EMC RecoverPoint
3 4 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.27%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
4 1 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 18 (4.95%) Kubernetes
2 17 (4.67%) Nmap
3 10 (2.75%) Nessus
3 10 (2.75%) Terraform
4 7 (1.92%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (1.37%) Ansible
6 4 (1.10%) Red Hat Satellite
6 4 (1.10%) VxRail
7 3 (0.82%) CSIRT
7 3 (0.82%) SCCM
8 2 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.27%) CASB
9 1 (0.27%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 1 (0.27%) Consul
9 1 (0.27%) OpenVAS
9 1 (0.27%) Packer
9 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.27%) Puppet
Vendors
1 68 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 41 (11.26%) Cisco
3 40 (10.99%) Qualys
4 38 (10.44%) Palo Alto
5 31 (8.52%) Aruba
6 22 (6.04%) Splunk
7 14 (3.85%) Sophos
8 11 (3.02%) CrowdStrike
8 11 (3.02%) Zscaler
9 10 (2.75%) VMware
10 8 (2.20%) CheckPoint
10 8 (2.20%) Fortinet
10 8 (2.20%) Tenable
11 7 (1.92%) Rapid7
12 6 (1.65%) ServiceNow
13 5 (1.37%) TOWER Software
14 4 (1.10%) Google
14 4 (1.10%) Ivanti
14 4 (1.10%) Oracle
14 4 (1.10%) Red Hat