penetration testing jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, penetration testing appears in 1,560 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Security Engineer has the most postings mentioning penetration testing, with demand down 33% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about penetration testing
+Is penetration testing in demand in 2026?
Yes. penetration testing appears in 1,560 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 33% vs the prior 4 weeks. Security Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning penetration testing (16.9% of all postings mentioning penetration testing).
+What jobs require penetration testing?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning penetration testing are Penetration Tester (71.3% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Offensive Security Engineer (66.2% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Vulnerability Management Engineer (48.0% 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 2026-09-28), penetration testing most often appears alongside threat modeling, Python, vulnerability management, incident response, Application security.
+Where is penetration testing most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring penetration testing are Bengaluru, New York City, San Francisco, London, Boston, 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.
Weekly job postings requiring penetration testing — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require penetration testing
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| Penetration Tester | 77 | 71.3% |
| Offensive Security Engineer | 43 | 66.2% |
| Vulnerability Management Engineer | 12 | 48.0% |
| Application Security Analyst | 11 | 44.0% |
| Product Security Engineer | 105 | 33.0% |
| Application Security Engineer | 117 | 31.6% |
| Security Researcher | 16 | 28.1% |
| Head of Information Security | 5 | 22.7% |
| Embedded Security Engineer | 7 | 21.2% |
| Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) | 5 | 17.9% |
Roles with the most penetration testing postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Security Engineer | 263 | 16.9% |
| Application Security Engineer | 117 | 7.5% |
| Product Security Engineer | 105 | 6.7% |
| Penetration Tester | 77 | 4.9% |
| Cybersecurity Engineer | 47 | 3.0% |
| Offensive Security Engineer | 43 | 2.8% |
| Cyber Security Engineer | 27 | 1.7% |
| Information Security Analyst | 27 | 1.7% |
| Security Analyst | 24 | 1.5% |
| Security Architect | 24 | 1.5% |
Top metros hiring for penetration testing
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bengaluru | 38 | 2.4% |
| New York City | 38 | 2.4% |
| San Francisco | 33 | 2.1% |
| London | 29 | 1.9% |
| Boston | 24 | 1.5% |
| Austin | 18 | 1.2% |
| Washington | 16 | 1.0% |
| Dublin | 15 | 1.0% |
| Tel Aviv | 15 | 1.0% |
Skills commonly paired with penetration testing
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Explore related pages
- Penetration Tester
- Offensive Security Engineer
- Vulnerability Management Engineer
- Application Security Analyst
- Product Security Engineer
- Application Security Engineer
- Security Researcher
- Head of Information Security
- threat modeling
- Python
- vulnerability management
- incident response
- Application security
- SAST
- DAST
- AWS
How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28. 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).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- a46257943b32053c
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-28
- window_days
- 90
The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.
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