Red Team Job Trends

Red Teaming
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Red Team skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 518 658 533
Rank change year-on-year +140 -125 +341
Permanent jobs citing Red Team 129 50 177
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.092% 0.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.10% 0.36%
Number of salaries quoted 74 29 54
10th Percentile £29,375 £57,750 £52,500
25th Percentile £47,500 £62,500 £63,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £77,500 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -22.58% +3.33% +11.11%
75th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £82,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £112,500 -
UK excluding London median annual salary £51,058 £72,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -29.58% +20.83% -11.11%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Red Team 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 48,544 49,000 48,555
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.18% 90.28% 90.00%
Number of salaries quoted 28,525 24,011 36,948
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%

Red Team
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Red Team job vacancy trend in the UK

Red Team
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Team.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Team

Red Team
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Red Team over the 6 months to 8 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Red Team in the UK

Red Team
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Red Team within the UK over the 6 months to 8 January 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 +143 119 £60,000 -22.58% 65
UK excluding London +106 75 £51,058 -29.58% 54
Work from Home +108 62 £62,500 - 14
London +79 47 £95,000 +22.58% 19
South East +45 22 £42,500 - 18
Midlands +30 17 £51,058 - 7
North of England +28 14 £60,000 -20.00% 8
South West +13 13 £80,000 +14.29% 12
West Midlands - 9 £70,000 -
East Midlands +10 8 £51,058 - 6
North West +31 7 £60,000 -20.00% 2
Yorkshire - 7 £80,000 - 5
East of England - 4 £60,000 - 6
Scotland -5 2 - - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 1
Wales - 2 - - 2

Red Team
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 1 (0.78%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 31 (24.03%) AWS
2 30 (23.26%) Azure
3 17 (13.18%) GCP
4 6 (4.65%) IaaS
4 6 (4.65%) PaaS
4 6 (4.65%) SaaS
4 6 (4.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 3 (2.33%) Cloudflare
5 3 (2.33%) GitHub
6 2 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (1.55%) AWS Step Functions
6 2 (1.55%) Azure Sentinel
6 2 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (1.55%) Pulumi
6 2 (1.55%) Serverless
7 1 (0.78%) Cloud Run
7 1 (0.78%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 8 (6.20%) Wireless
2 5 (3.88%) Wireshark
3 4 (3.10%) DNS
4 3 (2.33%) Firewall
4 3 (2.33%) Modbus
5 2 (1.55%) DSL
5 2 (1.55%) InfiniBand
6 1 (0.78%) 2G
6 1 (0.78%) 4G
6 1 (0.78%) 5G
6 1 (0.78%) HTTP
6 1 (0.78%) ICMP
6 1 (0.78%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.78%) TCP/IP
Development Applications
1 19 (14.73%) Burp Suite
1 19 (14.73%) Metasploit
2 2 (1.55%) GitLab
2 2 (1.55%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.78%) Git
3 1 (0.78%) IDA Disassembler
3 1 (0.78%) JIRA
General
1 47 (36.43%) Finance
2 34 (26.36%) Social Skills
3 24 (18.60%) Financial Institution
4 19 (14.73%) Marketing
5 18 (13.95%) Influencing Skills
6 14 (10.85%) Billing
7 11 (8.53%) Retail
8 6 (4.65%) Banking
9 5 (3.88%) Law
9 5 (3.88%) Telecoms
10 4 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (2.33%) Analytical Skills
11 3 (2.33%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.55%) Aerospace
12 2 (1.55%) Legal
12 2 (1.55%) Public Speaking
13 1 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.78%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.78%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 32 (24.81%) Senior
2 30 (23.26%) Consultant
3 13 (10.08%) Security Consultant
3 13 (10.08%) Security Engineer
4 12 (9.30%) Tester
5 9 (6.98%) Incident Responder
5 9 (6.98%) Managing Consultant
6 8 (6.20%) Recruitment Consultant
7 7 (5.43%) Analyst
7 7 (5.43%) Security Specialist
7 7 (5.43%) Threat Intelligence Specialist
8 6 (4.65%) Automation Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) AWS Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) Azure Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) Cloud Automation Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) Cloud Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) Cloud Security Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) GCP Engineer
8 6 (4.65%) Penetration Tester
8 6 (4.65%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (1.55%) AWS CDK
1 2 (1.55%) PyTorch
1 2 (1.55%) TensorFlow
2 1 (0.78%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 24 (18.60%) Security Posture
2 19 (14.73%) Self-Motivation
3 17 (13.18%) Onboarding
4 11 (8.53%) Insider Threat
4 11 (8.53%) Mobile App
5 7 (5.43%) Cyber Defence
6 6 (4.65%) Cyberattack
6 6 (4.65%) Hedge funds
6 6 (4.65%) Management Information System
7 5 (3.88%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (3.88%) Operational Technology
8 4 (3.10%) Cloud Native
8 4 (3.10%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 4 (3.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.33%) Cloud Security Posture
9 3 (2.33%) Renewable Energy
9 3 (2.33%) SCADA
10 2 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (1.55%) CUDA
10 2 (1.55%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 17 (13.18%) Linux
2 13 (10.08%) Windows
3 10 (7.75%) Unix
4 4 (3.10%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.78%) Android
5 1 (0.78%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.78%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (35.66%) Penetration Testing
2 32 (24.81%) Cybersecurity
3 27 (20.93%) Incident Response
4 26 (20.16%) Offensive Security
5 25 (19.38%) Cloud Security
5 25 (19.38%) Purple Team
5 25 (19.38%) Threat Intelligence
6 20 (15.50%) Information Security
6 20 (15.50%) Threat Modelling
7 19 (14.73%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (13.95%) Security Testing
9 17 (13.18%) Collaborative Working
9 17 (13.18%) Ethical Hacking
9 17 (13.18%) Mentoring
10 15 (11.63%) AI
10 15 (11.63%) Digital Forensics
11 14 (10.85%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
11 14 (10.85%) Infrastructure as Code
11 14 (10.85%) Vulnerability Assessment
11 14 (10.85%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 28 (21.71%) Python
2 22 (17.05%) Bash
3 12 (9.30%) PowerShell
4 4 (3.10%) Go
4 4 (3.10%) Java
4 4 (3.10%) Kotlin
4 4 (3.10%) Perl
5 2 (1.55%) C
5 2 (1.55%) C#
5 2 (1.55%) C++
5 2 (1.55%) Ruby
5 2 (1.55%) Rust
Qualifications
1 32 (24.81%) OSCP
2 25 (19.38%) CREST Certified
3 23 (17.83%) CISSP
3 23 (17.83%) Degree
3 23 (17.83%) Security Cleared
4 22 (17.05%) SC Cleared
5 11 (8.53%) CEH
5 11 (8.53%) Cisco Certification
6 10 (7.75%) CHECK Team Member
6 10 (7.75%) GPEN
7 9 (6.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (6.20%) GCIH
8 8 (6.20%) GIAC
9 7 (5.43%) CCNA
9 7 (5.43%) CHECK Team Leader
9 7 (5.43%) CISMP
9 7 (5.43%) CompTIA Security+
9 7 (5.43%) MCP
9 7 (5.43%) MCSE
9 7 (5.43%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (10.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (10.08%) NIST
3 11 (8.53%) Actionable Recommendations
4 9 (6.98%) GDPR
5 5 (3.88%) NIST 800
6 4 (3.10%) EU AI Act
7 2 (1.55%) Def Stans
7 2 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 2 (1.55%) JSP 440
7 2 (1.55%) NCSC
8 1 (0.78%) COBIT
8 1 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.78%) GRC
System Software
1 4 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.55%) GPFS
3 2 (1.55%) Lustre
3 2 (1.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 15 (11.63%) Nmap
2 10 (7.75%) Terraform
3 7 (5.43%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 5 (3.88%) Nessus
5 3 (2.33%) Kubernetes
6 2 (1.55%) Ansible
6 2 (1.55%) CSIRT
6 2 (1.55%) SELinux
Vendors
1 13 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 7 (5.43%) Cisco
2 7 (5.43%) Google
3 4 (3.10%) VMware
4 3 (2.33%) Rapid7
5 2 (1.55%) NVIDIA
5 2 (1.55%) Qualys
5 2 (1.55%) Splunk
6 1 (0.78%) Dell
6 1 (0.78%) Intel