ISTQB Job Trends in the South West

International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the South West with a requirement for ISTQB qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 173 220
Rank change year-on-year +3 +47 -43
Permanent jobs citing ISTQB 16 17 27
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 0.29% 0.44% 0.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.93% 1.10% 1.16%
Number of salaries quoted 9 16 22
10th Percentile £33,250 - £31,250
25th Percentile £33,750 £31,750 £34,592
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £34,500 £47,961
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -28.07% -3.11%
75th Percentile £41,250 £37,313 £78,750
90th Percentile £76,850 £44,750 £84,375
England median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £49,329
% change year-on-year - -3.71% -1.34%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South West

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 the South West.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,714 1,545 2,324
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 31.48% 39.87% 37.91%
Number of salaries quoted 886 760 1,653
10th Percentile £28,250 £24,316 £27,550
25th Percentile £39,000 £40,000 £39,658
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £52,600 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.56% +5.20% -2.48%
75th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,250 £81,250 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -4.35%

ISTQB
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

ISTQB job vacancy trend in the South West

ISTQB
Salary Trend in the South West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing ISTQB.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing ISTQB

ISTQB
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing ISTQB in the South West over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Salary histogram for ISTQB in the South West

ISTQB
Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing ISTQB within the South West region over the 6 months to 31 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
Somerset - 7 £35,000 - 1
Devon - 6 £40,000 - 1
Wiltshire +1 1 £35,250 +2.17%
ISTQB
England

ISTQB
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 (6.25%) CMS
Business Applications
1 1 (6.25%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 15 (93.75%) Azure
2 12 (75.00%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (12.50%) Azure Pipelines
3 2 (12.50%) GCP
4 1 (6.25%) AWS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (43.75%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (37.50%) Cypress.io
2 2 (12.50%) GitLab
2 2 (12.50%) REST Assured
3 1 (6.25%) CircleCI
3 1 (6.25%) Gatling
3 1 (6.25%) Git
3 1 (6.25%) Jenkins
3 1 (6.25%) LoadRunner
3 1 (6.25%) Locust
3 1 (6.25%) Selenium
3 1 (6.25%) TestRail
3 1 (6.25%) Zephyr
General
1 1 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (68.75%) Tester
2 5 (31.25%) Automation Tester
3 4 (25.00%) Manual Tester
4 3 (18.75%) Analyst
4 3 (18.75%) Software Tester
5 2 (12.50%) Automation Test Lead
5 2 (12.50%) Lead
5 2 (12.50%) Lead Test Engineer
5 2 (12.50%) QA Analyst
5 2 (12.50%) Test Automation Engineer
5 2 (12.50%) Test Engineer
6 1 (6.25%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (43.75%) Playwright
2 2 (12.50%) RESTful
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (93.75%) DevOps
2 13 (81.25%) Manual Testing
3 12 (75.00%) API Testing
4 10 (62.50%) Software Testing
5 9 (56.25%) Regression Testing
5 9 (56.25%) Test Automation
6 8 (50.00%) Agile
6 8 (50.00%) CI/CD
7 7 (43.75%) Kanban
7 7 (43.75%) Scrum
7 7 (43.75%) Software Engineering
7 7 (43.75%) Test Strategy
8 6 (37.50%) Test Scripting
9 5 (31.25%) Computer Science
9 5 (31.25%) Ticket Management
10 3 (18.75%) Microservices
11 2 (12.50%) Backends for Frontends
11 2 (12.50%) Community of Practice
11 2 (12.50%) DevSecOps
11 2 (12.50%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 8 (50.00%) SQL
2 7 (43.75%) TypeScript
3 6 (37.50%) JavaScript
4 5 (31.25%) C#
5 3 (18.75%) Java
6 1 (6.25%) Python
Qualifications
1 10 (62.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
2 5 (31.25%) Computer Science Degree
2 5 (31.25%) Degree
3 2 (12.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
4 1 (6.25%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (56.25%) QA
2 2 (12.50%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (12.50%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) Kubernetes
1 2 (12.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (12.50%) Guidewire