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Job market reports · Skill · September 2026

penetration testing

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

Which roles ask for it

Share of the 176 postings naming penetration testing that belong to each role. This is the answer to "what would learning this qualify me for".

  1. 1Security Engineer81.8%
  2. 2Software Engineer12.5%
  3. 3DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineer2.8%
  4. 4AI Engineer1.7%
  5. 5Frontend Engineer1.1%

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 = 108
10th
$135k
25th
$163k
Median
$195k
75th
$220k
90th
$265k

Where those jobs are

Metro share of the postings naming this skill.

  1. 1Remote16.5%
  2. 2San Francisco, CA13.1%
  3. 3New York, NY9.1%
  4. 4Washington, DC5.7%
  5. 5Silicon Valley, CA5.1%
  6. 6Los Angeles, CA3.4%
  7. 7Boston, MA2.8%
  8. 8Denver, CO2.8%

How we counted

668,970 live US postings read directly from 79,892 employers’ own careers pages in September 2026 — not from a jobs aggregator, so a role reposted across several sites is counted once. Full methodology, limitations and external checks.