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 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 108 115
Rank change year-on-year -10 +7 -82
Permanent jobs citing Software Testing 19 50 47
As % of all permanent jobs in Manchester 0.62% 1.89% 1.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 2.01% 1.80%
Number of salaries quoted 11 26 37
10th Percentile £30,000 £36,250 £38,500
25th Percentile £46,250 £41,344 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £86,250 £70,000
90th Percentile - £87,500 £81,774
North West median annual salary £62,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +19.05% +5.00% -

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 2,397 2,492 2,616
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Manchester 78.56% 94.25% 90.11%
Number of salaries quoted 1,460 1,184 2,128
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £31,425
25th Percentile £37,500 £40,866 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £72,500 £72,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £83,750
North West median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £51,150
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.64% -7.00%

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 22 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Testing in Manchester

Software Testing
Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Software Testing within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 22 January 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
Bolton +15 3 £75,000 +194.00% 1
Software Testing
North West

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:

Applications
1 3 (15.79%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (5.26%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 4 (21.05%) AWS
1 4 (21.05%) Azure
2 3 (15.79%) Amazon EKS
2 3 (15.79%) AWS CloudFormation
2 3 (15.79%) Azure AKS
2 3 (15.79%) GCP
2 3 (15.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
2 3 (15.79%) OpenShift
3 1 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (5.26%) GitHub
3 1 (5.26%) Tricentis Tosca
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (31.58%) MySQL
1 6 (31.58%) NoSQL
2 3 (15.79%) DynamoDB
2 3 (15.79%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (15.79%) MongoDB
2 3 (15.79%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (5.26%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (31.58%) Git
2 4 (21.05%) Bitbucket
3 3 (15.79%) GitLab
4 2 (10.53%) Cypress.io
4 2 (10.53%) Postman
4 2 (10.53%) Selenium
5 1 (5.26%) Appium
5 1 (5.26%) REST Assured
General
1 4 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 1 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 4 (21.05%) Lead
1 4 (21.05%) Software Engineer
2 3 (15.79%) Cloud Engineer
2 3 (15.79%) Design Engineer
2 3 (15.79%) Developer
2 3 (15.79%) FPGA Design Engineer
2 3 (15.79%) FPGA Engineer
2 3 (15.79%) Lead Software Engineer
3 2 (10.53%) Administrator
3 2 (10.53%) Data Engineer
3 2 (10.53%) Full-Stack Developer
3 2 (10.53%) Graduate
3 2 (10.53%) Graduate Data Engineer
3 2 (10.53%) Software Developer
3 2 (10.53%) Technical Administrator
3 2 (10.53%) Technical Support
3 2 (10.53%) Technical Tester
3 2 (10.53%) Tester
4 1 (5.26%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
4 1 (5.26%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (26.32%) .NET
2 4 (21.05%) CSS
2 4 (21.05%) HTML
3 3 (15.79%) .NET Framework
3 3 (15.79%) React
3 3 (15.79%) RESTful
3 3 (15.79%) Web Services
4 2 (10.53%) Kafka
5 1 (5.26%) Node.js
5 1 (5.26%) Playwright
5 1 (5.26%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 4 (21.05%) Product Ownership
2 3 (15.79%) Cloud Native
2 3 (15.79%) Distributed Computing
2 3 (15.79%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (15.79%) Embedded Systems
2 3 (15.79%) FPGA
2 3 (15.79%) Public Cloud
2 3 (15.79%) Verilog
2 3 (15.79%) VHDL
3 1 (5.26%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 3 (15.79%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (68.42%) Agile
2 7 (36.84%) CI/CD
3 6 (31.58%) Containerisation
3 6 (31.58%) Mentoring
3 6 (31.58%) Microservices
4 5 (26.32%) DevOps
4 5 (26.32%) Test Automation
5 4 (21.05%) Performance Optimisation
5 4 (21.05%) Software Engineering
6 3 (15.79%) Creative Problem-Solving
6 3 (15.79%) Data Pipeline
6 3 (15.79%) Deployment Automation
6 3 (15.79%) Event-Driven
6 3 (15.79%) FPGA Design
6 3 (15.79%) Front End Development
6 3 (15.79%) Full-Stack Development
6 3 (15.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 3 (15.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 3 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
6 3 (15.79%) Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 8 (42.11%) SQL
2 6 (31.58%) TypeScript
3 5 (26.32%) Go
4 4 (21.05%) JavaScript
5 3 (15.79%) C
5 3 (15.79%) C#
5 3 (15.79%) Java
5 3 (15.79%) Python
5 3 (15.79%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 3 (15.79%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (5.26%) Accessibility
1 1 (5.26%) QA
System Software
1 3 (15.79%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (31.58%) Kubernetes
2 3 (15.79%) Ansible
2 3 (15.79%) Rancher
2 3 (15.79%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (15.79%) Intel
1 3 (15.79%) Microsemi
1 3 (15.79%) Xilinx
2 1 (5.26%) Genesys
2 1 (5.26%) Siebel