Skillenai

penetration testing jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills

As of 2026-11-05, penetration testing appears in 2,369 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Security Engineer has the most postings mentioning penetration testing, with demand share up 18.2% vs the prior 4 weeks.

Last updated · 90d ending 2026-11-05

Postings · last 90 days
2,369
Demand vs prior month
up 18.2% vs the prior 4 weeks
Top role · 18.9% of skill postings
Security Engineer
Top hiring metro
New York City

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Frequently asked questions about penetration testing

+Is penetration testing in demand in 2026?

Yes. penetration testing appears in 2,369 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-11-05. Security Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning penetration testing (18.9% of all postings mentioning penetration testing).

+What jobs require penetration testing?

According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-11-05, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning penetration testing are Penetration Tester (88.6% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Offensive Security Engineer (78.1% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Vulnerability Management Engineer (53.6% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing).

+What skills are commonly paired with penetration testing?

Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-11-05), penetration testing most often appears alongside threat modeling, Python, vulnerability management, incident response, Application security.

+Where is penetration testing most in demand?

As of 2026-11-05, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring penetration testing are New York City, San Francisco, Bengaluru, London, Singapore, according to the Skillenai jobs index.

+How can I keep up with new penetration testing content and jobs?

Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning penetration testing alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new penetration testing content from your Skillenai account.

+Which skills come before and after penetration testing?

The skill-flow chart shows skills documented in adjacent positions across observed employer changes. An outgoing skill is documented in the following position but not the preceding one. These are ideas to explore, not proven prerequisites, acquisition dates, or levels of mastery. Each ribbon counts employer moves with that skill pair; one move can contribute several pairs.

Weekly indexed postings requiring penetration testing — last 90 days

Salary distribution

Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized

Career paths around penetration testing

Skills documented before and after this skill across employer changes.

Historical career profiles · all locations

Skills before penetration testing

Before penetration testingpython → penetration testing: 10 observed employer moves with this skill pairAWS → penetration testing: 6 observed employer moves with this skill pairActive Directory → penetration testing: 6 observed employer moves with this skill pairNessus → penetration testing: 5 observed employer moves with this skill pairSplunk → penetration testing: 5 observed employer moves with this skill pairMYSQL → penetration testing: 4 observed employer moves with this skill pairdocker → penetration testing: 4 observed employer moves with this skill pairLinux → penetration testing: 4 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetrationtestingpython: 10 movespython10 movesAWS: 6 movesAWS6 movesActive Directory: 6 movesActive Directory6 movesNessus: 5 movesNessus5 movesSplunk: 5 movesSplunk5 movesMYSQL: 4 movesMYSQL4 movesdocker: 4 movesdocker4 movesLinux: 4 movesLinux4 moves

Skills after penetration testing

After penetration testingpenetration testing → python: 9 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → Vulnerability Management: 8 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → incident response: 7 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → SIEM: 7 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → AWS: 6 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → CI/CD pipelines: 6 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → Vulnerability assessments: 5 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetration testing → Java: 5 observed employer moves with this skill pairpenetrationtestingpython: 9 movespython9 movesVulnerability Management: 8 movesVulnerabilityManagement8 movesincident response: 7 movesincident response7 movesSIEM: 7 movesSIEM7 movesAWS: 6 movesAWS6 movesCI/CD pipelines: 6 movesCI/CD pipelines6 movesVulnerability assessments: 5 movesVulnerabilityassessments5 movesJava: 5 movesJava5 moves
How to read this chart · view counts

Each side is an independent set of observed employer moves, not the same people followed through three stages. Ribbon widths compare move counts within that side. Internal moves are not included.

The following position documents a skill that the preceding position does not. Skills must be linked to both positions, with clear dates and no overlap. One move can connect several skill pairs. These patterns suggest skills to explore; they do not establish prerequisites, when a skill was learned, or a higher skill level.

Source: Skillenai talent graph, historical career profiles. Historical descriptions and coverage can change. Only the leading published connections are shown.

Observed connections and move counts
ConnectionMoves
Before: python10
Before: AWS6
Before: Active Directory6
Before: Nessus5
Before: Splunk5
Before: MYSQL4
Before: docker4
Before: Linux4
After: python9
After: Vulnerability Management8
After: incident response7
After: SIEM7
After: AWS6
After: CI/CD pipelines6
After: Vulnerability assessments5
After: Java5

Roles most likely to require penetration testing

Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.

RolePostings mentioning skill% of role postings mentioning skill
Penetration Tester14088.6%
Offensive Security Engineer5078.1%
Vulnerability Management Engineer1553.6%
Application Security Analyst1244.4%
Application Security Engineer21436.4%
Product Security Engineer13035.3%
Security Consultant2129.2%
Head of Information Security728.0%
Application Security Architect624.0%
Security Researcher1922.1%

Roles with the most penetration testing postings

RolePostings mentioning skillShare of skill postings
Security Engineer44818.9%
Application Security Engineer2149.0%
Penetration Tester1405.9%
Product Security Engineer1305.5%
Cybersecurity Engineer733.1%
Offensive Security Engineer502.1%
Information Security Analyst411.7%
Software Engineer411.7%
Security Analyst381.6%
Security Architect381.6%

Top companies posting jobs requiring penetration testing

Employers ranked by indexed job postings in the last 90 days.

Top companies posting jobs requiring penetration testing
CompanyPostings · 90 days
Bosch27
Tesora22
OpenBrain21
LinkedIn18
CACI16
Truist16
Chainguard16
Writer13
Eurofins13
CrowdStrike13

Job postings indexed over the past 90 days, grouped by resolved employer. Counts are postings, not hires. Companies without a published page appear without a link.

Top metros hiring for penetration testing

NamePostingsShare
New York City853.6%
San Francisco753.2%
Bengaluru371.6%
London351.5%
Singapore331.4%
Irvine241.0%
Mountain View231.0%
Washington231.0%
Los Angeles200.8%

Skills commonly paired with penetration testing

threat modeling (803)Python (738)vulnerability management (602)incident response (520)Application security (465)AWS (462)CI/CD (424)SAST (408)DAST (351)Cloud Security (314)

Explore related pages

How this was computed

Weekly job-count charts omit the incomplete current week (weeks start Monday, UTC). Totals include all postings in the stated window. Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-11-05. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning penetration testing by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s penetration testing postings by all penetration testing postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills). Adjusted posting share: 0.6% to 0.8%. Demand share change is the relative percentage change between these adjusted shares. Each employer-and-ATS group has at least 10 postings in each 90-day window; its earlier posting count supplies the same weight in both windows. The panel includes 2,472 identified employers and covers 71% of earlier and 70% of latest indexed postings. Windows: 2026-07-07 to 2026-10-05 and 2026-08-04 to 2026-11-02 (UTC; end dates excluded). The windows overlap by 62 days. Dates reflect indexing, not the employer’s posting date. This measures posting mix, not total hiring or market-wide demand. Matching excludes entrants and exits; changes in crawl completeness within an employer or ATS can still affect the result.

source
Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
entity_id
a46257943b32053c
data_as_of
2026-11-05
window_days
90
Compiled by Jared Rand · Data sourced from the Skillenai labor market index