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Job market reports · Skill · October 2026

penetration testing

183 live US technical postings name penetration testing in October 2026. Here is which roles ask for it, what those roles pay, and where they are.

Which roles ask for it

Share of the 183 postings naming penetration testing that belong to each role. This is the answer to "what would learning this qualify me for".

  1. 1Security Engineer80.9%
  2. 2Software Engineer13.7%
  3. 3DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineer3.8%

What postings asking for it pay

Across every role, for the postings that both name this skill and disclose a salary. A skill does not cause a salary — senior roles ask for more of everything — so read this as association, not as a raise.

Disclosed pay where penetration testing is named
n = 128
10th
$122k
25th
$158k
Median
$194k
75th
$230k
90th
$269k

Where those jobs are

Metro share of the postings naming this skill.

  1. 1Remote13.7%
  2. 2San Francisco, CA13.7%
  3. 3New York, NY8.7%
  4. 4Silicon Valley, CA5.5%
  5. 5Washington, DC4.4%
  6. 6Seattle, WA3.3%
  7. 7Boston, MA2.7%
  8. 8Los Angeles, CA2.7%

How we counted

967,730 live US postings read directly from 82,954 employers’ own careers pages in October 2026 — not from a jobs aggregator, so a role reposted across several sites is counted once. Full methodology, limitations and external checks.