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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 424 416 435
Rank change year-on-year -8 +19 -13
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 91 138 203
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.20% 0.40% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.26% 0.44% 0.51%
Number of salaries quoted 65 91 176
10th Percentile £31,750 £31,500 £33,875
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,875 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year - +11.76% -15.00%
75th Percentile £59,250 £57,500 £55,000
90th Percentile £63,750 £65,250 £66,137
UK median annual salary £52,000 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year +4.00% +11.11% -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 35,030 31,118 40,043
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.52% 90.06% 87.40%
Number of salaries quoted 20,301 13,869 30,593
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £34,250 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%

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 31 January 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 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
South West +18 29 £47,500 -5.00% 2
South East +25 28 £52,500 +10.53% 22
Midlands -4 17 £37,500 -21.05% 9
East Midlands -4 13 £35,000 -36.36% 3
East of England +29 9 £45,000 +44.00% 8
North of England -31 6 £52,500 +16.67% 8
West Midlands +5 4 £46,750 -1.58% 6
North West +2 2 £45,000 - 5
North East -6 2 £55,000 -8.33%
Yorkshire -16 2 £57,500 +91.67% 3
Scotland -11 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland -16 1 £52,500 -
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 (1.10%) Apache
1 1 (1.10%) CMS
1 1 (1.10%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 9 (9.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.10%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 30 (32.97%) Azure DevOps
2 26 (28.57%) Azure
3 6 (6.59%) AWS
4 2 (2.20%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (1.10%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (1.10%) Power Platform
5 1 (1.10%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.20%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.69%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.20%) Metadata
2 2 (2.20%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.10%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 24 (26.37%) Selenium
2 21 (23.08%) JIRA
3 12 (13.19%) Cypress.io
4 11 (12.09%) Postman
5 9 (9.89%) eCATT
6 6 (6.59%) Jenkins
7 3 (3.30%) Git
7 3 (3.30%) JMeter
7 3 (3.30%) Subversion
7 3 (3.30%) TestRail
8 2 (2.20%) GitLab
8 2 (2.20%) LoadRunner
8 2 (2.20%) Robot Framework
8 2 (2.20%) Zephyr
9 1 (1.10%) CircleCI
9 1 (1.10%) Gatling
9 1 (1.10%) JUnit
9 1 (1.10%) Katalon Studio
9 1 (1.10%) Locust
9 1 (1.10%) TestNG
General
1 13 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 12 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
2 12 (13.19%) Finance
3 9 (9.89%) Influencing Skills
3 9 (9.89%) Manufacturing
3 9 (9.89%) Marketing
3 9 (9.89%) Presentation Skills
4 4 (4.40%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (3.30%) Law
5 3 (3.30%) Tech for Good
6 2 (2.20%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.20%) Health Technology
6 2 (2.20%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.10%) Automotive
7 1 (1.10%) Games
7 1 (1.10%) Legal
Job Titles
1 21 (23.08%) Test Engineer
1 21 (23.08%) Tester
2 20 (21.98%) Analyst
3 18 (19.78%) Senior
4 17 (18.68%) Test Analyst
5 14 (15.38%) QA Engineer
6 12 (13.19%) Lead
7 11 (12.09%) Test Automation Engineer
8 9 (9.89%) Automation Test Analyst
9 8 (8.79%) QA Leader
9 8 (8.79%) Test Leader
10 7 (7.69%) Senior Test Engineer
11 6 (6.59%) Automation Tester
11 6 (6.59%) Graduate
11 6 (6.59%) Graduate Test Engineer
11 6 (6.59%) Manual Tester
12 5 (5.49%) Software Test Engineer
13 4 (4.40%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
13 4 (4.40%) Software Tester
14 3 (3.30%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (19.78%) Playwright
2 3 (3.30%) RESTful
3 2 (2.20%) .NET
3 2 (2.20%) AngularJS
3 2 (2.20%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (2.20%) React
3 2 (2.20%) REST
3 2 (2.20%) XML
4 1 (1.10%) CSS
4 1 (1.10%) HTML
4 1 (1.10%) JWT
4 1 (1.10%) OAuth
4 1 (1.10%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 5 (5.49%) Product Ownership
2 3 (3.30%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (2.20%) IoT
3 2 (2.20%) Virtual Team
4 1 (1.10%) Cyber Defence
4 1 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.10%) Low-Code
4 1 (1.10%) Operational Technology
4 1 (1.10%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.40%) Windows
2 3 (3.30%) Linux
2 3 (3.30%) Windows Server
2 3 (3.30%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (79.12%) Test Automation
2 37 (40.66%) Agile
3 33 (36.26%) Regression Testing
4 29 (31.87%) Software Testing
5 28 (30.77%) CI/CD
6 27 (29.67%) DevOps
7 26 (28.57%) API Testing
8 22 (24.18%) Continuous Improvement
9 21 (23.08%) Test Scripting
10 19 (20.88%) Test Strategy
11 17 (18.68%) User Acceptance Testing
12 16 (17.58%) End-to-End Testing
12 16 (17.58%) Scenario Testing
12 16 (17.58%) Scrum
13 15 (16.48%) SDLC
14 12 (13.19%) Acceptance Criteria
14 12 (13.19%) Integration Testing
14 12 (13.19%) Test Management
15 11 (12.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 10 (10.99%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 28 (30.77%) SQL
2 17 (18.68%) C#
3 12 (13.19%) JavaScript
4 7 (7.69%) Java
5 5 (5.49%) Python
6 4 (4.40%) TypeScript
7 2 (2.20%) Bash
8 1 (1.10%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 23 (25.27%) ISTQB
2 17 (18.68%) Security Cleared
3 14 (15.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 9 (9.89%) Degree
5 7 (7.69%) SC Cleared
6 5 (5.49%) DV Cleared
7 4 (4.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (3.30%) Master's Degree
9 1 (1.10%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (42.86%) QA
2 14 (15.38%) Accessibility
System Software
1 4 (4.40%) Active Directory
1 4 (4.40%) Docker
2 2 (2.20%) Terminal Server
2 2 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 9 (9.89%) HP ALM
2 4 (4.40%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.30%) SCCM
3 3 (3.30%) SCOM
4 2 (2.20%) Grafana
4 2 (2.20%) Nessus
4 2 (2.20%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.20%) Terraform
Vendors
1 9 (9.89%) HP
1 9 (9.89%) SAP
2 4 (4.40%) Oracle
2 4 (4.40%) ServiceNow
3 3 (3.30%) VMware
4 2 (2.20%) Cisco
4 2 (2.20%) Juniper
4 2 (2.20%) McAfee
5 1 (1.10%) Genesys
5 1 (1.10%) Siebel
5 1 (1.10%) Splunk