Security Testing Job Trends

Security Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Security Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 504 454 562
Rank change year-on-year -50 +108 -99
Permanent jobs citing Security Testing 147 267 164
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.49% 0.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.30% 0.55% 0.34%
Number of salaries quoted 93 87 141
10th Percentile £50,050 £52,500 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £60,000 £56,809
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £77,500 £82,500 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.06% +13.79% +3.57%
75th Percentile £90,000 £93,250 £82,500
90th Percentile - £110,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £75,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - +15.38% +13.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Security 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 48,249 48,920 48,231
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.52% 90.19% 90.95%
Number of salaries quoted 28,284 23,965 36,703
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,000 £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%

Security Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Security Testing job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Testing
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Testing

Security Testing
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Testing over the 6 months to 5 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Testing in the UK

Security Testing
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 5 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 -38 129 £75,000 -11.24% 122
UK excluding London +12 80 £75,000 - 106
London -19 64 £79,625 -6.32% 27
Work from Home +73 49 £80,000 -5.88% 35
South East -8 21 £48,924 -34.77% 29
South West +15 17 £90,000 - 12
Scotland +9 14 £90,000 +44.00% 4
North of England +13 13 £55,000 -6.38% 25
Yorkshire -14 9 £53,500 -10.83% 13
East of England +18 7 £65,000 - 14
Midlands +16 6 £67,500 +22.73% 20
West Midlands +18 4 £70,542 +28.26% 10
North East +10 3 £62,539 - 2
East Midlands -5 2 £41,250 - 9
North West +14 1 £70,079 +62.03% 10
Wales +3 1 £70,079 -26.23% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1

Security 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 (6.12%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (4.08%) Appian
3 5 (3.40%) Apache
4 4 (2.72%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.68%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (2.04%) SAP CX
2 2 (1.36%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 70 (47.62%) Azure
2 48 (32.65%) AWS
3 38 (25.85%) Azure DevOps
4 37 (25.17%) PaaS
5 34 (23.13%) GCP
6 25 (17.01%) GitHub
6 25 (17.01%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (14.29%) SaaS
8 9 (6.12%) Datadog
9 7 (4.76%) dbt
10 6 (4.08%) Amazon S3
10 6 (4.08%) IaaS
10 6 (4.08%) MinIO
10 6 (4.08%) Power Platform
10 6 (4.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (3.40%) Microsoft 365
12 4 (2.72%) Entra ID
13 3 (2.04%) Cloud Run
13 3 (2.04%) Google Compute Engine
13 3 (2.04%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 10 (6.80%) Firewall
2 6 (4.08%) Network Security
3 4 (2.72%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (2.04%) Wireless
5 1 (0.68%) DMARC
5 1 (0.68%) Unified Communications
5 1 (0.68%) WAN
5 1 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.68%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.40%) Airbyte
2 3 (2.04%) BigQuery
2 3 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (2.04%) MongoDB
2 3 (2.04%) Pinecone
3 2 (1.36%) Tableau
4 1 (0.68%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 27 (18.37%) Jenkins
2 22 (14.97%) Selenium
3 20 (13.61%) JMeter
4 14 (9.52%) Cucumber
5 11 (7.48%) GitLab
6 8 (5.44%) LoadRunner
6 8 (5.44%) Robot Framework
7 7 (4.76%) Burp Suite
7 7 (4.76%) Locust
7 7 (4.76%) Postman
8 6 (4.08%) JIRA
8 6 (4.08%) Snyk
9 4 (2.72%) Cypress.io
9 4 (2.72%) Git
9 4 (2.72%) Metasploit
9 4 (2.72%) NeoLoad
9 4 (2.72%) SpecFlow
9 4 (2.72%) TeamCity
10 3 (2.04%) Gatling
10 3 (2.04%) SonarQube
General
1 61 (41.50%) Finance
2 25 (17.01%) Social Skills
3 21 (14.29%) Law
4 18 (12.24%) Banking
5 12 (8.16%) Retail
6 8 (5.44%) Financial Institution
6 8 (5.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.72%) Back Office
9 3 (2.04%) Analytical Skills
9 3 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.36%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.36%) Avionics
10 2 (1.36%) Marketing
10 2 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.36%) Public Sector
10 2 (1.36%) Public Speaking
11 1 (0.68%) Automotive
11 1 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 54 (36.73%) Security Engineer
2 45 (30.61%) Lead
3 24 (16.33%) Applications Engineer
4 18 (12.24%) Senior
5 13 (8.84%) Test Leader
5 13 (8.84%) Tester
6 12 (8.16%) Architect
6 12 (8.16%) Test Engineer
7 11 (7.48%) Automation Engineer
7 11 (7.48%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (6.80%) Cloud Automation Engineer
8 10 (6.80%) Cloud Security Engineer
8 10 (6.80%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 10 (6.80%) Test Automation Engineer
9 9 (6.12%) Penetration Tester
10 7 (4.76%) Automation Test Lead
11 6 (4.08%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (4.08%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (4.08%) GCP Engineer
11 6 (4.08%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (17.01%) YAML
2 9 (6.12%) Kafka
2 9 (6.12%) Playwright
3 8 (5.44%) JSON
4 7 (4.76%) Gherkin
5 6 (4.08%) Apache NiFi
5 6 (4.08%) Middleware
5 6 (4.08%) React
5 6 (4.08%) REST
5 6 (4.08%) Spring Boot
6 5 (3.40%) RESTful
7 3 (2.04%) LangChain
7 3 (2.04%) Next.js
8 2 (1.36%) .NET
8 2 (1.36%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.68%) Blazor
9 1 (0.68%) JWT
9 1 (0.68%) Node.js
9 1 (0.68%) OAuth
9 1 (0.68%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 36 (24.49%) Security Posture
2 16 (10.88%) Cloud Native
3 12 (8.16%) Management Information System
4 6 (4.08%) Hedge funds
4 6 (4.08%) Low-Code
5 4 (2.72%) Blog
5 4 (2.72%) Cyber Threat
5 4 (2.72%) Cyberattack
5 4 (2.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 4 (2.72%) Insider Threat
5 4 (2.72%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (2.04%) Mobile App
6 3 (2.04%) Onboarding
6 3 (2.04%) Taxonomies
7 2 (1.36%) Data Centre
7 2 (1.36%) Driving Licence
7 2 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (1.36%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.68%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 12 (8.16%) Linux
2 10 (6.80%) Windows
3 6 (4.08%) Unix
4 4 (2.72%) Mac OS
4 4 (2.72%) Windows Server
5 3 (2.04%) Android
5 3 (2.04%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.36%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (50.34%) Test Automation
2 73 (49.66%) CI/CD
3 63 (42.86%) Application Security
4 57 (38.78%) DevOps
5 55 (37.41%) Agile
6 52 (35.37%) OWASP
7 50 (34.01%) Cybersecurity
8 48 (32.65%) Threat Modelling
9 42 (28.57%) DevSecOps
10 40 (27.21%) SDLC
11 38 (25.85%) Cloud Security
11 38 (25.85%) Mentoring
12 35 (23.81%) Infrastructure as Code
13 30 (20.41%) Continuous Improvement
13 30 (20.41%) Vulnerability Management
14 28 (19.05%) Penetration Testing
15 25 (17.01%) Information Security
16 23 (15.65%) Computer Science
16 23 (15.65%) Product Strategy
17 22 (14.97%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 56 (38.10%) Python
2 44 (29.93%) PowerShell
3 31 (21.09%) Bash
4 29 (19.73%) Java
5 9 (6.12%) SQL
6 7 (4.76%) JavaScript
7 6 (4.08%) C#
7 6 (4.08%) Go
8 4 (2.72%) Kotlin
9 3 (2.04%) Perl
10 2 (1.36%) C
10 2 (1.36%) C++
10 2 (1.36%) Ruby
10 2 (1.36%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 34 (23.13%) Degree
2 25 (17.01%) CISSP
3 24 (16.33%) Security Cleared
4 23 (15.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (14.29%) CREST Certified
6 19 (12.93%) Master's Degree
7 18 (12.24%) SC Cleared
8 13 (8.84%) OSCP
9 12 (8.16%) SANS
10 9 (6.12%) DV Cleared
11 8 (5.44%) CISM
11 8 (5.44%) ISTQB
12 7 (4.76%) CISA
13 6 (4.08%) CCSK
14 5 (3.40%) Azure Certification
15 4 (2.72%) AWS Certification
15 4 (2.72%) CRISC
15 4 (2.72%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (2.72%) OSCE
16 2 (1.36%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (33.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 45 (30.61%) NIST
3 31 (21.09%) NCSC
4 26 (17.69%) QA
5 23 (15.65%) Accessibility
6 14 (9.52%) GRC
6 14 (9.52%) SOC 2
7 8 (5.44%) WCAG
8 7 (4.76%) PCI DSS
9 6 (4.08%) GDPR
10 4 (2.72%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (2.72%) EU AI Act
11 3 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (2.04%) NIST 800
11 3 (2.04%) SOC 1
12 1 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.68%) Def Stans
12 1 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 20 (13.61%) Docker
2 4 (2.72%) Active Directory
2 4 (2.72%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (2.04%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.36%) Firmware
4 2 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.68%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 33 (22.45%) Terraform
2 30 (20.41%) Kubernetes
3 11 (7.48%) Grafana
4 8 (5.44%) Ansible
5 4 (2.72%) Cilium
5 4 (2.72%) Nmap
6 3 (2.04%) HP Fortify
6 3 (2.04%) Nessus
6 3 (2.04%) RSA Archer
6 3 (2.04%) vRealize
7 2 (1.36%) Control-M
7 2 (1.36%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (0.68%) CASB
8 1 (0.68%) Forefront Identity Manager
8 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.68%) QRadar
8 1 (0.68%) SCCM
8 1 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (16.33%) Microsoft
2 10 (6.80%) VMware
3 9 (6.12%) Google
4 7 (4.76%) UiPath
5 6 (4.08%) BiZZdesign
5 6 (4.08%) Black Duck
5 6 (4.08%) Qualys
6 5 (3.40%) Blue Prism
6 5 (3.40%) Coverity
7 4 (2.72%) Carbon Black
7 4 (2.72%) Darktrace
7 4 (2.72%) SAP
8 3 (2.04%) IBM
8 3 (2.04%) Oracle
8 3 (2.04%) Splunk
9 2 (1.36%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.36%) Guidewire
10 1 (0.68%) Citrix
10 1 (0.68%) Palo Alto
10 1 (0.68%) ServiceNow