Software Testing Job Trends in Manchester

Software Testing
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring Software Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 131 116
Rank change year-on-year -31 -15 +11
Permanent jobs citing Software Testing 41 20 69
As % of all permanent jobs in Manchester 0.55% 0.84% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 0.95% 2.04%
Number of salaries quoted 25 17 32
10th Percentile - £40,750 £35,125
25th Percentile £40,000 £54,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £75,000 £58,750
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +27.66% -9.62%
75th Percentile £76,250 £77,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £93,450 £78,000 £82,750
North West median annual salary £47,200 £70,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -32.57% +40.00% -16.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,700 2,116 3,378
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Manchester 75.90% 89.36% 82.94%
Number of salaries quoted 4,346 1,201 1,788
10th Percentile £32,000 £29,000 £30,700
25th Percentile £45,000 £35,000 £40,997
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £52,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £80,000 £70,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £83,750
North West median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,309
% change year-on-year +10.00% -0.61% -8.53%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

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

Software Testing job vacancy trend in Manchester

Software Testing
Salary Trend in Manchester

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Salary Histogram in Manchester

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in Manchester over the 6 months to 19 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Testing in Manchester

Software Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 3 (7.32%) CMS
2 1 (2.44%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (31.71%) AWS
2 9 (21.95%) Azure
3 6 (14.63%) GCP
4 5 (12.20%) Serverless
5 2 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (4.88%) GitHub
6 1 (2.44%) Anthropic Claude
6 1 (2.44%) AWS CodePipeline
6 1 (2.44%) Azure Functions
6 1 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.44%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (4.88%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.44%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (21.95%) GitLab
2 8 (19.51%) JUnit
2 8 (19.51%) Spock
3 6 (14.63%) Git
3 6 (14.63%) Maven
4 4 (9.76%) IntelliJ
4 4 (9.76%) JIRA
5 3 (7.32%) Postman
6 2 (4.88%) Cypress.io
7 1 (2.44%) Android Studio
7 1 (2.44%) Claude Code
7 1 (2.44%) Jenkins
7 1 (2.44%) Selenium
7 1 (2.44%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (34.15%) Finance
2 7 (17.07%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (12.20%) Social Skills
4 2 (4.88%) Retail
5 1 (2.44%) Back Office
5 1 (2.44%) Health Technology
5 1 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (2.44%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 8 (19.51%) Software Engineer
1 8 (19.51%) Test Engineer
2 7 (17.07%) Software Test Engineer
3 5 (12.20%) Developer
3 5 (12.20%) Firmware Engineer
3 5 (12.20%) Lead
4 4 (9.76%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 4 (9.76%) Full-Stack Engineer
4 4 (9.76%) Java Developer
4 4 (9.76%) Senior
4 4 (9.76%) Technical Leader
4 4 (9.76%) Tester
5 3 (7.32%) QA Engineer
5 3 (7.32%) Software Tester
6 2 (4.88%) Senior Developer
6 2 (4.88%) Senior Java Developer
7 1 (2.44%) Integration Engineer
7 1 (2.44%) Software Development Engineer
7 1 (2.44%) Systems Engineer
7 1 (2.44%) Test Development Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (24.39%) Spring
2 6 (14.63%) AngularJS
3 4 (9.76%) LangChain
3 4 (9.76%) LlamaIndex
3 4 (9.76%) Playwright
4 3 (7.32%) Gherkin
4 3 (7.32%) React
4 3 (7.32%) REST
5 2 (4.88%) .NET
5 2 (4.88%) .NET Core
5 2 (4.88%) Spring Boot
5 2 (4.88%) Vue
6 1 (2.44%) .NET Framework
6 1 (2.44%) ASP.NET Web API
6 1 (2.44%) ASP.NET Web Forms
6 1 (2.44%) CSS
6 1 (2.44%) Entity Framework
6 1 (2.44%) Kafka
6 1 (2.44%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (2.44%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 10 (24.39%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (19.51%) Private Cloud
3 5 (12.20%) AI Agents
4 4 (9.76%) Life Science
5 2 (4.88%) Marketing Technology
5 2 (4.88%) Online Gambling
5 2 (4.88%) Video\Live Streaming
6 1 (2.44%) Cloud Native
6 1 (2.44%) Product Ownership
6 1 (2.44%) Robotics
6 1 (2.44%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 4 (9.76%) VMS
2 3 (7.32%) Linux
2 3 (7.32%) Windows
3 1 (2.44%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (46.34%) AI
2 18 (43.90%) Software Engineering
3 17 (41.46%) Agile
4 15 (36.59%) CI/CD
5 14 (34.15%) Test Automation
6 13 (31.71%) DevOps
7 11 (26.83%) Scrum
8 10 (24.39%) Microservices
9 9 (21.95%) Code Quality
9 9 (21.95%) Data Pipeline
9 9 (21.95%) Full-Stack Development
9 9 (21.95%) Kanban
10 7 (17.07%) Collaborative Culture
10 7 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
10 7 (17.07%) Mentoring
11 6 (14.63%) Clean Code
12 5 (12.20%) Infrastructure as Code
12 5 (12.20%) Regression Testing
13 4 (9.76%) Disaster Recovery
13 4 (9.76%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (29.27%) JavaScript
1 12 (29.27%) Python
1 12 (29.27%) TypeScript
2 11 (26.83%) Java
3 8 (19.51%) Groovy
4 7 (17.07%) SQL
5 3 (7.32%) C
5 3 (7.32%) C++
6 2 (4.88%) C#
7 1 (2.44%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (2.44%) PHP
7 1 (2.44%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 5 (12.20%) Degree
2 4 (9.76%) DV Cleared
2 4 (9.76%) Security Cleared
3 1 (2.44%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (14.63%) QA
2 4 (9.76%) Data Quality
3 3 (7.32%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.44%) IEC 61131
System Software
1 11 (26.83%) Docker
2 5 (12.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.44%) Functional Safety
2 1 (2.44%) Grafana
Vendors
1 8 (19.51%) AppDynamics
1 8 (19.51%) Splunk
2 2 (4.88%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.44%) Databricks
3 1 (2.44%) Salesforce
3 1 (2.44%) Siemens