ISTQB Job Trends in England

International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for ISTQB qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 482 548 523
Rank change year-on-year +66 -25 +29
Permanent jobs citing ISTQB 130 132 137
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.25% 0.27% 0.30%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.74% 0.73% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 103 85 107
10th Percentile £32,750 £31,750 £33,450
25th Percentile £34,813 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £62,500 £67,500 £57,500
90th Percentile £71,250 £78,000 £78,750
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

ISTQB falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in England.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 17,547 18,076 13,781
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 33.75% 36.31% 30.50%
Number of salaries quoted 7,065 7,252 9,481
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £35,854 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £92,150 £93,225 £93,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £59,430 £57,500
% change year-on-year -7.45% +3.36% -

ISTQB
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing ISTQB relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

ISTQB job vacancy trend in England

ISTQB
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB

ISTQB
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing ISTQB in England over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Salary histogram for ISTQB in England

ISTQB
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing ISTQB within the England region over the 6 months to 31 December 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South East +48 52 £42,500 -10.53% 65
London +72 48 £58,250 -12.08% 28
South West +20 17 £37,500 +7.91% 30
West Midlands +17 7 £45,000 +2.86% 26
Midlands +7 7 £45,000 +20.00% 48
East of England +22 2 £60,000 +60.00% 39
North of England -4 2 £65,000 +45.01% 62
North West +19 1 £65,000 +62.50% 33
North East +9 1 - - 3
ISTQB
UK

ISTQB
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 1 (0.77%) CMS
1 1 (0.77%) Confluence
Applications
1 14 (10.77%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (1.54%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (3.08%) Elite 3E
2 3 (2.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.54%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 2 (1.54%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.77%) Maximo
4 1 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 56 (43.08%) Azure
2 43 (33.08%) Azure DevOps
3 14 (10.77%) AWS
4 12 (9.23%) Power Platform
5 9 (6.92%) GCP
6 8 (6.15%) Dynamics 365
7 7 (5.38%) BrowserStack
8 4 (3.08%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (3.08%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (2.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (2.31%) GitHub
9 3 (2.31%) Tricentis Tosca
10 2 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (1.54%) Entra ID
10 2 (1.54%) SuccessFactors
11 1 (0.77%) Azure Pipelines
11 1 (0.77%) PowerApps
11 1 (0.77%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.31%) DNS
1 3 (2.31%) Firewall
2 2 (1.54%) Cisco ISE
3 1 (0.77%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.69%) Relational Database
2 4 (3.08%) Metadata
2 4 (3.08%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.54%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.54%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 71 (54.62%) JIRA
2 59 (45.38%) Selenium
3 47 (36.15%) Postman
4 38 (29.23%) Team Foundation Server
5 34 (26.15%) WebDriver
6 33 (25.38%) SoapUI
7 19 (14.62%) Cypress.io
8 11 (8.46%) Jenkins
9 10 (7.69%) SpecFlow
10 9 (6.92%) TestRail
11 8 (6.15%) Git
11 8 (6.15%) GitLab
12 5 (3.85%) Gatling
12 5 (3.85%) JMeter
12 5 (3.85%) Zephyr
13 4 (3.08%) Ranorex
13 4 (3.08%) Visual Studio
14 3 (2.31%) Cucumber
14 3 (2.31%) LoadRunner
14 3 (2.31%) NeoLoad
General
1 58 (44.62%) Finance
2 56 (43.08%) Social Skills
3 27 (20.77%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (6.15%) Banking
5 7 (5.38%) Legal
6 4 (3.08%) Law
7 3 (2.31%) Back Office
7 3 (2.31%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.31%) Retail
8 2 (1.54%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.54%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.77%) Electronics
9 1 (0.77%) Marketing
9 1 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.77%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 48 (36.92%) Analyst
2 46 (35.38%) Test Analyst
3 23 (17.69%) Tester
4 21 (16.15%) Lead
5 19 (14.62%) Senior
5 19 (14.62%) Test Engineer
6 16 (12.31%) Test Leader
7 13 (10.00%) Test Manager
8 11 (8.46%) Senior Analyst
8 11 (8.46%) Senior Test Analyst
9 8 (6.15%) Test Automation Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) QA Analyst
11 6 (4.62%) Manual Tester
11 6 (4.62%) QA Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) Automation Tester
12 5 (3.85%) QA Test Analyst
12 5 (3.85%) Software Tester
13 4 (3.08%) Automation Test Analyst
13 4 (3.08%) Data Engineer
13 4 (3.08%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (32.31%) .NET
2 35 (26.92%) HTML
3 32 (24.62%) SOAP
4 15 (11.54%) Playwright
5 9 (6.92%) XML
6 5 (3.85%) REST
7 4 (3.08%) Gherkin
7 4 (3.08%) RESTful
8 3 (2.31%) CSS
8 3 (2.31%) FIX Protocol
8 3 (2.31%) React
9 2 (1.54%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (1.54%) GraphQL
9 2 (1.54%) XSL
10 1 (0.77%) Spring
10 1 (0.77%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 14 (10.77%) Product Ownership
2 10 (7.69%) Self-Motivation
3 4 (3.08%) Algorithms
3 4 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
3 4 (3.08%) Reference Data
4 3 (2.31%) Derivative
4 3 (2.31%) Equities
4 3 (2.31%) Fixed Income
4 3 (2.31%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.31%) Mobile App
4 3 (2.31%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (1.54%) Client/Server
6 1 (0.77%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 18 (13.85%) Windows
2 6 (4.62%) Linux
3 2 (1.54%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.54%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (73.08%) Agile
2 87 (66.92%) Software Testing
3 66 (50.77%) Test Automation
4 64 (49.23%) Test Management
5 61 (46.92%) Scrum
6 58 (44.62%) Test Scripting
7 53 (40.77%) API Testing
8 50 (38.46%) DevOps
9 46 (35.38%) Non-Functional Testing
10 38 (29.23%) CI/CD
11 36 (27.69%) Manual Testing
12 34 (26.15%) Mentoring
13 33 (25.38%) Cross-Browser Testing
14 31 (23.85%) Test Strategy
15 30 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
16 28 (21.54%) Logistics
16 28 (21.54%) User Acceptance Testing
17 25 (19.23%) Regression Testing
18 18 (13.85%) Continuous Improvement
19 17 (13.08%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 70 (53.85%) SQL
2 49 (37.69%) C#
3 38 (29.23%) Java
4 13 (10.00%) JavaScript
5 12 (9.23%) TypeScript
6 10 (7.69%) Python
7 5 (3.85%) Bash
8 3 (2.31%) Bicep
8 3 (2.31%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 46 (35.38%) Degree
2 38 (29.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 34 (26.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 23 (17.69%) ISEB
5 12 (9.23%) Security Cleared
6 7 (5.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (5.38%) DV Cleared
6 7 (5.38%) SC Cleared
7 2 (1.54%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.77%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.77%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.77%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.77%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (34.62%) QA
2 8 (6.15%) Software Quality Assurance
3 4 (3.08%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.31%) Accessibility
System Software
1 8 (6.15%) Docker
2 2 (1.54%) Active Directory
2 2 (1.54%) Terminal Server
2 2 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.77%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 8 (6.15%) Kubernetes
2 6 (4.62%) Terraform
3 5 (3.85%) Prometheus
4 4 (3.08%) HP ALM
5 3 (2.31%) Ansible
6 2 (1.54%) Grafana
6 2 (1.54%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (1.54%) Nessus
6 2 (1.54%) SCCM
6 2 (1.54%) SCOM
Vendors
1 28 (21.54%) Microsoft
2 4 (3.08%) HP
2 4 (3.08%) iManage
2 4 (3.08%) Oracle
2 4 (3.08%) Workday
3 3 (2.31%) Salesforce
3 3 (2.31%) SAP
3 3 (2.31%) Siebel
3 3 (2.31%) Splunk
4 2 (1.54%) Cisco
4 2 (1.54%) CODA
4 2 (1.54%) Cognos
4 2 (1.54%) Juniper
4 2 (1.54%) McAfee
4 2 (1.54%) ServiceNow
4 2 (1.54%) Sitecore
4 2 (1.54%) VMware
5 1 (0.77%) Ariba
5 1 (0.77%) IBM
5 1 (0.77%) OpenText