Software Testing Job Trends in England

Software Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England requiring Software Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 283 153
Rank change year-on-year +28 -130 +23
Permanent jobs citing Software Testing 769 419 1,104
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.74% 0.98% 1.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.00% 1.10% 2.09%
Number of salaries quoted 506 306 547
10th Percentile £29,000 £27,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £39,818 £40,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £55,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.41% +0.91% -3.51%
75th Percentile £71,250 £68,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £83,000
UK median annual salary £51,619 £57,143 £56,000
% change year-on-year -9.67% +2.04% +1.82%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Software Testing falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 76,889 38,006 52,896
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.85% 88.89% 82.67%
Number of salaries quoted 53,783 21,806 28,108
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £44,738
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.32%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £79,225
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Software Testing job vacancy trend in England

Software Testing
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in England over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Testing within the England region over the 6 months to 13 October 2026. 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 +3 157 £45,000 -10.00% 117
North of England +30 153 £52,500 -2.33% 112
London -53 136 £70,000 +9.38% 273
Midlands +18 134 £52,500 +23.53% 75
West Midlands +18 95 £47,500 +35.71% 49
South West -23 94 £50,000 -9.91% 57
East of England +20 83 £50,000 -5.66% 62
North West -1 61 £44,447 -36.50% 65
North East -19 57 £57,500 +21.05% 15
East Midlands -13 39 £55,000 -3.08% 26
Yorkshire -20 35 £44,447 +45.73% 32
Software Testing
UK

Software Testing
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 12 (1.56%) CMS
2 9 (1.17%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.04%) Confluence
4 7 (0.91%) IIS
4 7 (0.91%) WinCC
5 6 (0.78%) Apache Spark
5 6 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.52%) Apache
7 3 (0.39%) Headless CMS
7 3 (0.39%) nginx
7 3 (0.39%) Office Communications Server
7 3 (0.39%) WordPress
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Umbraco
Applications
1 17 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
1 17 (2.21%) Simulink
2 13 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.26%) EPLAN
5 2 (0.26%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.13%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.13%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 3 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
1 3 (0.39%) SystmOne
2 2 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.26%) Sage 200
2 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.26%) Shopify
2 2 (0.26%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.13%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.13%) Misys Equation
3 1 (0.13%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 132 (17.17%) AWS
2 127 (16.51%) Azure
3 42 (5.46%) Serverless
4 37 (4.81%) GitHub
5 36 (4.68%) Power Platform
6 35 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (3.90%) GCP
8 24 (3.12%) SaaS
9 19 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
10 18 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (1.82%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.69%) GitHub Copilot
14 9 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 9 (1.17%) Azure Functions
14 9 (1.17%) Google Workspace
15 8 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (0.91%) Amazon EC2
17 6 (0.78%) BrowserStack
18 5 (0.65%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.21%) TCP/IP
2 9 (1.17%) Wireshark
3 8 (1.04%) Ethernet
4 6 (0.78%) HTTP
4 6 (0.78%) SNMP
4 6 (0.78%) VPN
5 5 (0.65%) Modbus
5 5 (0.65%) Profibus
6 4 (0.52%) DNS
7 3 (0.39%) Network Security
8 2 (0.26%) ATM
8 2 (0.26%) Software-Defined Radio
9 1 (0.13%) 5G
9 1 (0.13%) DHCP
9 1 (0.13%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 1 (0.13%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 1 (0.13%) IPv4
9 1 (0.13%) IPv6
9 1 (0.13%) LTE
9 1 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (4.03%) Power BI
2 29 (3.77%) SQL Server
3 19 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.82%) Elasticsearch
5 13 (1.69%) DynamoDB
5 13 (1.69%) NoSQL
5 13 (1.69%) Relational Database
6 8 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
6 8 (1.04%) InfluxDB
7 7 (0.91%) MongoDB
8 6 (0.78%) Geospatial Data
8 6 (0.78%) OLTP
9 4 (0.52%) Chroma
9 4 (0.52%) Flink
9 4 (0.52%) MySQL
9 4 (0.52%) Pinecone
9 4 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.39%) Big Data
10 3 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.39%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 93 (12.09%) Git
2 63 (8.19%) JIRA
3 58 (7.54%) GitLab
4 54 (7.02%) Selenium
5 44 (5.72%) Jenkins
6 29 (3.77%) Cypress.io
6 29 (3.77%) Postman
7 17 (2.21%) JMeter
7 17 (2.21%) JUnit
8 16 (2.08%) Cucumber
9 13 (1.69%) Gatling
9 13 (1.69%) TestRail
10 10 (1.30%) LabVIEW
10 10 (1.30%) Zephyr
11 9 (1.17%) Eclipse
11 9 (1.17%) REST Assured
12 8 (1.04%) Maven
12 8 (1.04%) Robot Framework
12 8 (1.04%) Spock
13 4 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 262 (34.07%) Social Skills
2 139 (18.08%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (10.27%) Finance
4 66 (8.58%) Electronics
5 57 (7.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 52 (6.76%) Manufacturing
7 27 (3.51%) Law
8 26 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.25%) Aerospace
10 24 (3.12%) Public Sector
11 20 (2.60%) Automotive
12 17 (2.21%) Retail
13 15 (1.95%) Aviation
13 15 (1.95%) Banking
14 14 (1.82%) Legal
14 14 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.43%) Telecoms
16 9 (1.17%) Military
16 9 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (1.17%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 162 (21.07%) Senior
2 115 (14.95%) Test Engineer
3 114 (14.82%) Software Engineer
4 100 (13.00%) Developer
5 83 (10.79%) Lead
6 64 (8.32%) Analyst
7 49 (6.37%) Software Developer
7 49 (6.37%) Tester
8 45 (5.85%) QA Engineer
9 43 (5.59%) Senior Developer
10 39 (5.07%) Software Test Engineer
11 31 (4.03%) Senior Software Engineer
12 28 (3.64%) Junior
13 26 (3.38%) Embedded Engineer
13 26 (3.38%) IT Support
13 26 (3.38%) Support Engineer
14 25 (3.25%) Consultant
14 25 (3.25%) Test Automation Engineer
15 24 (3.12%) Support Analyst
16 23 (2.99%) Software Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (8.71%) .NET
2 61 (7.93%) Playwright
3 55 (7.15%) React
4 49 (6.37%) HTML
5 34 (4.42%) CSS
6 32 (4.16%) REST
7 31 (4.03%) Terraform
8 26 (3.38%) Node.js
9 24 (3.12%) RESTful
10 23 (2.99%) ASP.NET
11 22 (2.86%) XML
12 15 (1.95%) Spring
12 15 (1.95%) Swagger
13 13 (1.69%) AngularJS
13 13 (1.69%) ASP.NET Core
13 13 (1.69%) Gherkin
14 12 (1.56%) LangChain
15 11 (1.43%) JSON
16 9 (1.17%) Elastic Stack
16 9 (1.17%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 63 (8.19%) Product Ownership
2 40 (5.20%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (3.77%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.51%) AI Agents
5 24 (3.12%) Algorithms
5 24 (3.12%) Embedded Systems
6 20 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
6 20 (2.60%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.34%) Robotics
8 17 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
9 16 (2.08%) Mobile App
10 14 (1.82%) Client/Server
10 14 (1.82%) Driving Licence
10 14 (1.82%) SCADA
11 13 (1.69%) Legacy Applications
12 12 (1.56%) FPGA
13 11 (1.43%) Onboarding
14 10 (1.30%) Life Science
15 9 (1.17%) Online Gambling
Operating Systems
1 75 (9.75%) Windows
2 68 (8.84%) Linux
3 18 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.04%) CentOS
5 7 (0.91%) Android
6 6 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.65%) Embedded Linux
7 5 (0.65%) Robot Operating System
8 4 (0.52%) VMS
9 3 (0.39%) Debian
9 3 (0.39%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.39%) Unix
10 1 (0.13%) macOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 337 (43.82%) Test Automation
2 288 (37.45%) Agile
3 238 (30.95%) Software Engineering
4 221 (28.74%) CI/CD
5 216 (28.09%) Problem-Solving
6 208 (27.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 153 (19.90%) DevOps
8 124 (16.12%) Mentoring
9 122 (15.86%) Code Quality
10 120 (15.60%) Validation
11 113 (14.69%) AI
12 102 (13.26%) Test Strategy
13 101 (13.13%) SDLC
14 93 (12.09%) Scrum
15 88 (11.44%) Regression Testing
16 75 (9.75%) Stakeholder Management
17 67 (8.71%) Software Delivery
18 58 (7.54%) Computer Science
18 58 (7.54%) Manual Testing
18 58 (7.54%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 182 (23.67%) Python
2 140 (18.21%) SQL
3 97 (12.61%) C#
4 92 (11.96%) Java
4 92 (11.96%) JavaScript
5 73 (9.49%) C++
6 70 (9.10%) TypeScript
7 58 (7.54%) C
8 26 (3.38%) MATLAB
9 21 (2.73%) Bash
9 21 (2.73%) PowerShell
10 13 (1.69%) Embedded C
11 11 (1.43%) Go
12 10 (1.30%) Groovy
12 10 (1.30%) Julia
12 10 (1.30%) PL/SQL
13 8 (1.04%) R
14 6 (0.78%) Embedded C++
14 6 (0.78%) Rust
15 5 (0.65%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 162 (21.07%) Degree
2 135 (17.56%) Security Cleared
3 83 (10.79%) SC Cleared
4 33 (4.29%) DV Cleared
5 31 (4.03%) ISTQB
6 26 (3.38%) Master's Degree
7 23 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.04%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.91%) ISEB
11 5 (0.65%) DBS Check
12 4 (0.52%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 3 (0.39%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.39%) Chartered Engineer
13 3 (0.39%) HNC
13 3 (0.39%) HND
14 2 (0.26%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 2 (0.26%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (26.14%) QA
2 50 (6.50%) Accessibility
3 23 (2.99%) GDPR
4 20 (2.60%) WCAG
5 13 (1.69%) Data Quality
6 7 (0.91%) SLA
7 4 (0.52%) PMO
8 3 (0.39%) IEC 61131
8 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 12207
8 3 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
9 2 (0.26%) Automotive SPICE
9 2 (0.26%) DO-254
9 2 (0.26%) IEC 61508
10 1 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 1 (0.13%) DO-160
10 1 (0.13%) GAMP
10 1 (0.13%) GMP
10 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.13%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 66 (8.58%) Docker
2 36 (4.68%) Firmware
3 18 (2.34%) Embedded Firmware
4 14 (1.82%) Active Directory
5 8 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.13%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.13%) KVM
Systems Management
1 50 (6.50%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.73%) Grafana
3 18 (2.34%) Ansible
4 10 (1.30%) Kibana
5 7 (0.91%) logstash
6 6 (0.78%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.52%) Prometheus
8 3 (0.39%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.39%) HP Fortify
8 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (0.39%) Norton AntiVirus
8 3 (0.39%) Puppet
9 2 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.26%) Rancher
9 2 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.13%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.13%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.13%) SCCM
10 1 (0.13%) SCOM
10 1 (0.13%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 67 (8.71%) Microsoft
2 19 (2.47%) Splunk
3 15 (1.95%) Google
3 15 (1.95%) Siemens
4 13 (1.69%) Oracle
5 10 (1.30%) Atlassian
5 10 (1.30%) Red Hat
5 10 (1.30%) VMware
6 9 (1.17%) Intel
7 8 (1.04%) AppDynamics
7 8 (1.04%) Rockwell
8 7 (0.91%) OpenAI
9 6 (0.78%) Citrix
9 6 (0.78%) Databricks
9 6 (0.78%) SAP
9 6 (0.78%) ServiceNow
10 5 (0.65%) EMC
11 4 (0.52%) IBM
11 4 (0.52%) Microsemi
11 4 (0.52%) Xilinx