Manual Testing Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Manual Testing
UK > UK excluding London

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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 480 368 501
Rank change year-on-year -112 +133 -78
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 95 123 229
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.15% 0.47% 0.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.21% 0.52% 0.41%
Number of salaries quoted 68 97 196
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,000 £33,750
25th Percentile £37,500 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £43,250 £42,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.83% +2.98% -6.67%
75th Percentile £57,500 £48,750 £52,688
90th Percentile £62,500 £62,500 £66,137
UK median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% +5.56% -10.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Manual 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 the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 44,698 23,772 55,659
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.91% 91.30% 84.40%
Number of salaries quoted 27,301 13,687 40,519
10th Percentile £28,500 £28,575 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,750 £37,785 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,300 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% +6.60% -7.83%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,751 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.57%

Manual Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Manual Testing relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Manual Testing job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Manual Testing
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Manual Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Manual Testing

Manual Testing
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Manual Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Manual Testing in the UK excluding London

Manual Testing
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Manual Testing within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 April 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 West -27 31 £47,500 +18.75% 5
South East -56 20 £52,500 +10.53% 16
Midlands -50 19 £37,500 -16.67% 9
North of England -70 16 £50,000 +17.65% 5
East Midlands -44 15 £30,000 -45.45% 3
North West -29 11 £46,250 +2.78% 4
East of England -28 7 £45,000 +28.57% 8
West Midlands -22 4 £47,500 +11.76% 6
Yorkshire -61 3 £50,000 +65.33% 1
Wales -26 2 £25,000 - 1
North East -36 2 £55,000 +59.42%
Manual Testing
UK

Manual Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (1.05%) Apache
1 1 (1.05%) CMS
1 1 (1.05%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 1 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.05%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 41 (43.16%) Azure
2 37 (38.95%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (5.26%) AWS
4 3 (3.16%) SaaS
5 2 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
5 2 (2.11%) BrowserStack
6 1 (1.05%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.16%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (2.11%) HTTP
3 1 (1.05%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.16%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.11%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 27 (28.42%) Selenium
2 23 (24.21%) Cypress.io
3 19 (20.00%) JIRA
4 16 (16.84%) Postman
5 8 (8.42%) Jenkins
6 5 (5.26%) Git
6 5 (5.26%) GitLab
7 4 (4.21%) Subversion
7 4 (4.21%) Zephyr
8 3 (3.16%) TestRail
9 2 (2.11%) JMeter
9 2 (2.11%) JUnit
9 2 (2.11%) LoadRunner
9 2 (2.11%) Robot Framework
9 2 (2.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (1.05%) CircleCI
10 1 (1.05%) Gatling
10 1 (1.05%) Locust
10 1 (1.05%) REST Assured
General
1 13 (13.68%) Social Skills
2 9 (9.47%) Finance
3 8 (8.42%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (6.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (4.21%) Tech for Good
6 3 (3.16%) Health Technology
7 2 (2.11%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.11%) Law
8 1 (1.05%) Advertising
8 1 (1.05%) Back Office
8 1 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.05%) Electronics
8 1 (1.05%) Games
8 1 (1.05%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 22 (23.16%) Lead
2 18 (18.95%) Tester
3 17 (17.89%) QA Engineer
3 17 (17.89%) QA Leader
3 17 (17.89%) Test Engineer
4 12 (12.63%) Test Leader
5 10 (10.53%) Senior
6 9 (9.47%) Analyst
7 8 (8.42%) Test Automation Engineer
8 7 (7.37%) Manual Tester
8 7 (7.37%) Test Analyst
9 6 (6.32%) Automation Tester
9 6 (6.32%) Graduate
9 6 (6.32%) Graduate Test Engineer
9 6 (6.32%) Head of Testing
10 5 (5.26%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.26%) QA Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.26%) Software Test Engineer
11 3 (3.16%) QA Analyst
11 3 (3.16%) Test Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (29.47%) Playwright
2 3 (3.16%) .NET
3 2 (2.11%) AngularJS
3 2 (2.11%) CSS
3 2 (2.11%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (2.11%) HTML
3 2 (2.11%) Laravel
3 2 (2.11%) React
3 2 (2.11%) Vue
3 2 (2.11%) XML
4 1 (1.05%) .NET Core
4 1 (1.05%) .NET Framework
4 1 (1.05%) Blazor
4 1 (1.05%) JWT
4 1 (1.05%) OAuth
4 1 (1.05%) pytest
4 1 (1.05%) React Native
4 1 (1.05%) SAML
4 1 (1.05%) Spring
4 1 (1.05%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 10 (10.53%) Product Ownership
2 4 (4.21%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (2.11%) Embedded Systems
3 2 (2.11%) IoT
3 2 (2.11%) Virtual Team
4 1 (1.05%) Security Posture
4 1 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.05%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.26%) Windows
2 4 (4.21%) Linux
2 4 (4.21%) Windows Server
2 4 (4.21%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.05%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (84.21%) Test Automation
2 48 (50.53%) CI/CD
3 44 (46.32%) DevOps
4 42 (44.21%) Agile
5 32 (33.68%) Software Testing
6 31 (32.63%) Regression Testing
7 28 (29.47%) API Testing
7 28 (29.47%) Test Strategy
8 23 (24.21%) Test Scripting
9 22 (23.16%) Continuous Improvement
9 22 (23.16%) User Acceptance Testing
10 20 (21.05%) SDLC
11 19 (20.00%) Acceptance Criteria
12 14 (14.74%) Root Cause Analysis
13 13 (13.68%) Scrum
14 12 (12.63%) Customer Service
15 11 (11.58%) Computer Science
16 10 (10.53%) Continuous Integration
17 9 (9.47%) Collaborative Working
17 9 (9.47%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 18 (18.95%) SQL
2 15 (15.79%) JavaScript
3 14 (14.74%) C#
4 7 (7.37%) TypeScript
5 6 (6.32%) Python
6 3 (3.16%) Java
7 2 (2.11%) Bash
7 2 (2.11%) PHP
Qualifications
1 25 (26.32%) ISTQB
2 13 (13.68%) Degree
2 13 (13.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 11 (11.58%) Security Cleared
4 8 (8.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (5.26%) DV Cleared
6 3 (3.16%) Master's Degree
6 3 (3.16%) SC Cleared
7 1 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.05%) ISEB
7 1 (1.05%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (51.58%) QA
2 17 (17.89%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.11%) GDPR
3 2 (2.11%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 5 (5.26%) Active Directory
2 3 (3.16%) Terminal Server
2 3 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (2.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (4.21%) SCCM
1 4 (4.21%) SCOM
2 2 (2.11%) Grafana
2 2 (2.11%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.11%) Nessus
2 2 (2.11%) Prometheus
2 2 (2.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 6 (6.32%) Microsoft
1 6 (6.32%) Salesforce
2 4 (4.21%) VMware
3 3 (3.16%) Cisco
3 3 (3.16%) Juniper
3 3 (3.16%) McAfee
3 3 (3.16%) ServiceNow
4 2 (2.11%) Oracle
5 1 (1.05%) Genesys
5 1 (1.05%) Siebel
5 1 (1.05%) Splunk