penetration testing jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-08-27, penetration testing appears in 118 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — most often required for Security Engineer roles, with demand up 88% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-08-27
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Frequently asked questions about penetration testing
+Is penetration testing in demand in 2026?
Yes. penetration testing appears in 118 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-08-27, with demand up 88% vs the prior 4 weeks. It is most often required for Security Engineer roles (25% of Security Engineer postings list it).
+What jobs require penetration testing?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-08-27, the job titles most likely to require penetration testing are Security Engineer (25% of postings list penetration testing), Penetration Tester (8% of postings list penetration testing), Application Security Engineer (6% of postings list penetration testing).
+What skills are commonly paired with penetration testing?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-08-27), penetration testing most often appears alongside threat modeling, Python, AWS, incident response, application security.
+Where is penetration testing most in demand?
As of 2026-08-27, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring penetration testing are New York City, Arlington, San Francisco, Bengaluru, Palo Alto, 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
Job titles most likely to require penetration testing
| Role | Postings mentioning | % requiring |
|---|---|---|
| Security Engineer | 29 | 24.6% |
| Penetration Tester | 9 | 7.6% |
| Application Security Engineer | 7 | 5.9% |
| Cybersecurity Engineer | 5 | 4.2% |
| Product Security Engineer | 5 | 4.2% |
| Security Application Engineer | 4 | 3.4% |
| Software Engineer | 4 | 3.4% |
| Cybersecurity Specialist | 3 | 2.5% |
| Engineering Manager | 3 | 2.5% |
| Offensive Security Engineer | 3 | 2.5% |
Top metros hiring for penetration testing
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | 11 | 9.3% |
| Arlington | 7 | 5.9% |
| San Francisco | 4 | 3.4% |
| Bengaluru | 3 | 2.5% |
| Palo Alto | 3 | 2.5% |
| Da Nang | 2 | 1.7% |
| Little Portugal | 2 | 1.7% |
| London | 2 | 1.7% |
| Mount Vernon | 2 | 1.7% |
Skills commonly paired with penetration testing
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How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-08-27. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- a46257943b32053c
- data_as_of
- 2026-08-27
- 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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