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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 132 118
Rank change year-on-year -29 -14 -6
Permanent jobs citing Software Testing 40 19 67
As % of all permanent jobs in Manchester 0.52% 0.80% 1.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 0.90% 2.00%
Number of salaries quoted 24 16 30
10th Percentile - £40,625 £35,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £51,281 £38,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £75,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +25.00% -7.69%
75th Percentile £76,250 £77,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £95,275 £78,125 £86,375
North West median annual salary £44,724 £62,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -28.44% +25.00% -23.08%

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 5,836 2,114 3,348
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Manchester 76.18% 89.27% 83.99%
Number of salaries quoted 4,386 1,183 1,662
10th Percentile £32,500 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £34,599 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £52,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £80,000 £70,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £85,000 £84,750
North West median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,500
% change year-on-year +10.00% -0.99% -8.18%

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 3 October 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 5 (12.50%) CMS
2 2 (5.00%) Headless CMS
3 1 (2.50%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (32.50%) AWS
2 12 (30.00%) Azure
3 6 (15.00%) GCP
4 5 (12.50%) Serverless
5 4 (10.00%) GitHub
6 2 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (5.00%) Azure Functions
7 1 (2.50%) Anthropic Claude
7 1 (2.50%) AWS CodePipeline
7 1 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (2.50%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.00%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.00%) Chroma
1 2 (5.00%) MongoDB
1 2 (5.00%) Pinecone
1 2 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 11 (27.50%) GitLab
2 8 (20.00%) Git
2 8 (20.00%) JUnit
2 8 (20.00%) Spock
3 6 (15.00%) Maven
4 4 (10.00%) IntelliJ
4 4 (10.00%) JIRA
5 3 (7.50%) Jenkins
5 3 (7.50%) Postman
6 2 (5.00%) Cypress.io
7 1 (2.50%) Android Studio
7 1 (2.50%) Claude Code
7 1 (2.50%) Selenium
7 1 (2.50%) Visual Studio
General
1 13 (32.50%) Finance
2 6 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (12.50%) Social Skills
4 2 (5.00%) Retail
5 1 (2.50%) Back Office
5 1 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (2.50%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 8 (20.00%) Test Engineer
2 7 (17.50%) Developer
2 7 (17.50%) Software Test Engineer
3 6 (15.00%) Software Engineer
4 5 (12.50%) Firmware Engineer
5 4 (10.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 4 (10.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
5 4 (10.00%) Java Developer
5 4 (10.00%) Lead
5 4 (10.00%) Senior
6 3 (7.50%) QA Engineer
6 3 (7.50%) Senior Developer
6 3 (7.50%) Software Tester
6 3 (7.50%) Technical Leader
6 3 (7.50%) Tester
7 2 (5.00%) Python Developer
7 2 (5.00%) Senior Java Developer
8 1 (2.50%) Lead Systems Engineer
8 1 (2.50%) Senior Python Developer
8 1 (2.50%) Test and Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (22.50%) Spring
2 6 (15.00%) AngularJS
2 6 (15.00%) LangChain
3 5 (12.50%) React
4 4 (10.00%) LlamaIndex
4 4 (10.00%) Playwright
4 4 (10.00%) REST
5 3 (7.50%) .NET
5 3 (7.50%) .NET Core
5 3 (7.50%) Gherkin
6 2 (5.00%) CrewAI
6 2 (5.00%) FastAPI
6 2 (5.00%) LangGraph
6 2 (5.00%) Node.js
6 2 (5.00%) pgvector
6 2 (5.00%) Terraform
6 2 (5.00%) Vue
7 1 (2.50%) Kafka
7 1 (2.50%) Spring Boot
7 1 (2.50%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 10 (25.00%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (20.00%) Private Cloud
3 7 (17.50%) AI Agents
4 4 (10.00%) Life Science
5 2 (5.00%) Cloud Native
5 2 (5.00%) Marketing Technology
5 2 (5.00%) Online Gambling
5 2 (5.00%) Product Ownership
5 2 (5.00%) Video\Live Streaming
6 1 (2.50%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 4 (10.00%) VMS
2 2 (5.00%) Linux
2 2 (5.00%) Windows
3 1 (2.50%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (50.00%) AI
2 19 (47.50%) Agile
3 18 (45.00%) CI/CD
3 18 (45.00%) Software Engineering
4 15 (37.50%) Test Automation
5 12 (30.00%) DevOps
5 12 (30.00%) Microservices
5 12 (30.00%) Scrum
6 9 (22.50%) Code Quality
6 9 (22.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 9 (22.50%) Kanban
7 8 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
7 8 (20.00%) Full-Stack Development
7 8 (20.00%) Mentoring
8 7 (17.50%) Collaborative Culture
8 7 (17.50%) Infrastructure as Code
9 6 (15.00%) Clean Code
9 6 (15.00%) LLM
9 6 (15.00%) Observability
9 6 (15.00%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 15 (37.50%) TypeScript
2 12 (30.00%) Python
3 11 (27.50%) JavaScript
4 10 (25.00%) Java
5 8 (20.00%) Groovy
6 6 (15.00%) SQL
7 3 (7.50%) C#
8 2 (5.00%) C
8 2 (5.00%) C++
9 1 (2.50%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (2.50%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 5 (12.50%) Degree
2 3 (7.50%) DV Cleared
2 3 (7.50%) Security Cleared
3 1 (2.50%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (15.00%) QA
2 4 (10.00%) Accessibility
3 3 (7.50%) Data Quality
4 1 (2.50%) IEC 61131
System Software
1 14 (35.00%) Docker
2 5 (12.50%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (10.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.50%) Functional Safety
2 1 (2.50%) Grafana
Vendors
1 8 (20.00%) AppDynamics
1 8 (20.00%) Splunk
2 3 (7.50%) Microsoft
3 2 (5.00%) Mistral
3 2 (5.00%) OpenAI
4 1 (2.50%) Databricks
4 1 (2.50%) Salesforce
4 1 (2.50%) Siemens
4 1 (2.50%) Sitecore