penetration testing jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-30, penetration testing appears in 1,592 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Security Engineer has the most postings mentioning penetration testing, with demand share up 20.0% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-30
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Frequently asked questions about penetration testing
+Is penetration testing in demand in 2026?
Yes. penetration testing appears in 1,592 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30. Security Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning penetration testing (16.6% of all postings mentioning penetration testing).
+What jobs require penetration testing?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning penetration testing are Penetration Tester (74.3% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Offensive Security Engineer (67.7% of that role’s postings mention penetration testing), Vulnerability Management Engineer (46.2% 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 2026-09-30), penetration testing most often appears alongside threat modeling, Python, vulnerability management, incident response, Application security.
+Where is penetration testing most in demand?
As of 2026-09-30, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring penetration testing are New York City, Bengaluru, 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.
+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
Skills after penetration testing
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.
| Connection | Moves |
|---|---|
| Before: python | 6 |
| Before: NIST | 4 |
| Before: Firewalls | 4 |
| Before: regulatory requirements | 4 |
| Before: Active Directory | 4 |
| Before: MYSQL | 3 |
| Before: IDS/IPS | 3 |
| Before: docker | 3 |
| After: python | 8 |
| After: CI/CD pipelines | 6 |
| After: AWS | 5 |
| After: Azure | 5 |
| After: SIEM | 5 |
| After: security policies | 4 |
| After: Java | 4 |
| After: NIST | 4 |
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 | 84 | 74.3% |
| Offensive Security Engineer | 44 | 67.7% |
| Vulnerability Management Engineer | 12 | 46.2% |
| Application Security Analyst | 11 | 44.0% |
| Product Security Engineer | 106 | 33.0% |
| Application Security Engineer | 117 | 31.3% |
| Security Researcher | 16 | 29.1% |
| Head of Information Security | 5 | 20.8% |
| Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) | 6 | 20.7% |
| Embedded Security Engineer | 7 | 19.4% |
Roles with the most penetration testing postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Security Engineer | 264 | 16.6% |
| Application Security Engineer | 117 | 7.3% |
| Product Security Engineer | 106 | 6.7% |
| Penetration Tester | 84 | 5.3% |
| Cybersecurity Engineer | 51 | 3.2% |
| Offensive Security Engineer | 44 | 2.8% |
| Information Security Analyst | 29 | 1.8% |
| Cyber Security Engineer | 27 | 1.7% |
| Security Analyst | 27 | 1.7% |
| Security Architect | 25 | 1.6% |
Top companies posting jobs requiring penetration testing
Employers ranked by indexed job postings in the last 90 days.
| Company | Postings · 90 days |
|---|---|
| OpenBrain | 28 |
| Bosch | 21 |
| EverAI | 17 |
| Flywire | 13 |
| Writer | 10 |
| Gitlab | 10 |
| Cisco | 10 |
| CACI | 9 |
| Truist | 9 |
| Eurofins | 9 |
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
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | 40 | 2.5% |
| Bengaluru | 38 | 2.4% |
| San Francisco | 35 | 2.2% |
| London | 30 | 1.9% |
| Boston | 24 | 1.5% |
| Austin | 18 | 1.1% |
| Pune | 18 | 1.1% |
| Washington | 17 | 1.1% |
| Dublin | 15 | 0.9% |
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 2026-09-30. 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: 0.5% to 0.6%. 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 2,596 identified employers and covers 68% of earlier and 72% of latest indexed postings. Windows: 2026-06-02 to 2026-08-31 and 2026-06-30 to 2026-09-28 (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
- 2026-09-30
- 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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