Counted October 19, 2026 · from employers’ own postings
Penetration Tester: $154K median posted pay.
From 14 salary bands employers posted on 31 open penetration tester roles in it & security. Never an estimate.
The ladder, by level
What each rung pays.
| Level | Open roles | Median posted band | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | 6 | — (4 of 8 bands) | — |
| Junior | 1 | — (1 of 8 bands) | — |
| Staff | 1 | — (0 of 8 bands) | — |
Levels as the postings name them. A rung shows a median only where eight or more postings at that level carried a band.
Who is hiring
The employers with the most open.
| Employer | Open roles | Entry level |
|---|---|---|
| Dark Wolf Solutions | 3 | — |
| Bishop Fox | 3 | — |
| Gdit | 3 | — |
| Db | 3 | — |
| CACI | 2 | — |
| TP-Link Systems Inc. | 2 | — |
| Aveva | 1 | — |
| Costar | 1 | — |
| A-LIGN External | 1 | — |
| SOSi | 1 | — |
Counted from employers’ own job boards. The ten with the most open penetration tester roles tonight.
The skills, as the postings name them
What these postings ask for.
| Skill | Postings | At entry |
|---|---|---|
| Penetration Testing | 26 | — |
| Cybersecurity | 19 | — |
| Secure Coding | 14 | — |
| Python | 10 | — |
| Risk Management | 9 | — |
| Cloud Infrastructure | 9 | — |
| Security Engineering | 7 | — |
| Security Operations | 7 | — |
| JavaScript | 7 | — |
| Emergency Response | 6 | — |
Where the work is
13% of these roles are remote.
- Remote13%4 roles
- Hybrid3%1 roles
- On site61%19 roles
- Not stated23%7 roles
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How this was counted
Every figure is counted from 31 open postings read from employers’ own job boards on October 19, 2026, and recounted every night. Pay is the band the employer posted — never an estimate, never a model — and 14 of these postings carried one. Titles are grouped by the words the postings use, with levels, shifts and schedules removed, so “Senior Penetration Tester (Nights)” counts here too. 100% of roles with this title sit in it & security, which is why this page belongs to that career. A title gets a page only where twenty-five or more roles are open, eight or more of them posted a band, three or more employers are hiring for it and four in five of its postings sit in one career, so no page here is a guess.