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How to become a penetration tester: 12 beginner jobs open today
Five steps for people changing careers, with the figures from today’s 116 open penetration tester postings: what employers ask for first, how much experience, and what beginners are paid.
- Open jobs today
- 116
- Open to beginners
- 12
- Experience asked, median
- 5 years
Five steps to your first penetration tester job
- Know what the work is. A penetration tester attacks a company’s own systems, with permission, to find the holes first. Beginner postings today use titles like Security Research Internship; Security Research, Intern; Security Engineer (Red Team); Security Engineer (Vulnerability Management); Sr. Security Engineer (Vulnerability Management).
- Learn the skills employers name first. In today’s 116 postings: Python (56%), LLM (38%), AWS (35%), GCP (30%), Azure (29%).
- Build proof you can show. Two or three results with a number, from a job, a course project or volunteer work. The kind of line a recruiter looks for: “Ran 28 penetration tests in a year and reported 190 findings, 22 of them critical”.
- Write the resume and the letter. Start from the penetration tester resume example and the cover letter example, and replace every line with your own.
- Apply where beginners are hired. 12 of today’s 116 open penetration tester jobs are junior or intern roles or ask for two years of experience or less. See the open jobs and check each one with the resume match checker before you apply.
Questions about becoming a penetration tester
- How much experience do penetration tester jobs ask for?
- The median in today’s postings is 5 years; 14% of the postings that name a number ask for two years or less.
- Do I need a degree to become a penetration tester?
- 4% of today’s 116 postings say no degree is required. Many others accept equivalent experience: read the requirements of each posting.
- How much does a beginner penetration tester earn?
- Few beginner postings state pay. Across all levels, the median advertised pay is $213K a year.
Everything about penetration tester work
Counted from the open postings on Nov 14, 2026, read from employers’ own careers pages and recounted on every update. Beginner jobs: junior and intern titles, and postings that ask for two years of experience or less.