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 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 491 390 533
Rank change year-on-year -101 +143 -120
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 94 126 220
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.14% 0.44% 0.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.48% 0.38%
Number of salaries quoted 64 97 189
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £33,750
25th Percentile £40,938 £36,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £43,250 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.83% +1.76% -5.56%
75th Percentile £57,500 £53,000 £52,500
90th Percentile £63,000 £60,250 £66,137
UK median annual salary £48,750 £47,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year +2.63% +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 46,547 26,336 57,251
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.99% 92.03% 83.46%
Number of salaries quoted 29,838 13,716 40,951
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -9.84%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 -29 33 £47,500 +18.75% 7
South East -32 23 £52,500 +10.53% 14
North of England -27 16 £50,000 +16.62% 5
Midlands -46 13 £30,000 -33.33% 5
North West +4 12 £50,000 +13.31% 1
East Midlands -25 11 £30,000 -45.45% 1
East of England -26 7 £45,000 -15.09% 6
Wales -29 2 £25,000 - 4
West Midlands -36 2 £56,250 +32.35% 4
North East -40 2 £55,000 +59.42% 2
Yorkshire -62 2 £50,000 +58.73% 2
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 (1.06%) Apache
1 1 (1.06%) CMS
1 1 (1.06%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 36 (38.30%) Azure
2 35 (37.23%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (3.19%) AWS
3 3 (3.19%) SaaS
4 2 (2.13%) BrowserStack
5 1 (1.06%) AWS CodePipeline
5 1 (1.06%) Copilot Studio
5 1 (1.06%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
5 1 (1.06%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.19%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (2.13%) HTTP
3 1 (1.06%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.19%) Metadata
1 3 (3.19%) Relational Database
2 1 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 25 (26.60%) Selenium
2 20 (21.28%) Cypress.io
3 15 (15.96%) JIRA
4 14 (14.89%) Postman
5 7 (7.45%) Jenkins
6 6 (6.38%) Git
7 5 (5.32%) Zephyr
8 4 (4.26%) Subversion
9 3 (3.19%) GitLab
10 2 (2.13%) JMeter
10 2 (2.13%) JUnit
10 2 (2.13%) LoadRunner
10 2 (2.13%) SoapUI
11 1 (1.06%) CircleCI
11 1 (1.06%) Gatling
11 1 (1.06%) Locust
11 1 (1.06%) REST Assured
11 1 (1.06%) TestRail
General
1 14 (14.89%) Finance
2 10 (10.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 10 (10.64%) Social Skills
3 3 (3.19%) Aerospace
3 3 (3.19%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (3.19%) Health Technology
3 3 (3.19%) Tech for Good
4 2 (2.13%) Back Office
4 2 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (1.06%) Advertising
5 1 (1.06%) Aviation
5 1 (1.06%) Electronics
5 1 (1.06%) Games
5 1 (1.06%) Law
5 1 (1.06%) Military
Job Titles
1 24 (25.53%) Test Engineer
2 20 (21.28%) Lead
3 15 (15.96%) QA Engineer
3 15 (15.96%) QA Leader
4 12 (12.77%) Senior
4 12 (12.77%) Test Leader
5 10 (10.64%) Tester
6 9 (9.57%) Software Test Engineer
7 8 (8.51%) Test Automation Engineer
8 7 (7.45%) Analyst
8 7 (7.45%) Head of Testing
9 6 (6.38%) Graduate
9 6 (6.38%) Graduate Test Engineer
10 5 (5.32%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.32%) Manual Tester
10 5 (5.32%) QA Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.32%) Test Analyst
11 4 (4.26%) Senior Test Engineer
12 3 (3.19%) QA Analyst
12 3 (3.19%) Test Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (25.53%) Playwright
2 2 (2.13%) CSS
2 2 (2.13%) HTML
2 2 (2.13%) Laravel
2 2 (2.13%) Vue
3 1 (1.06%) .NET
3 1 (1.06%) .NET Core
3 1 (1.06%) .NET Framework
3 1 (1.06%) ADO
3 1 (1.06%) Blazor
3 1 (1.06%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (1.06%) pytest
3 1 (1.06%) React Native
3 1 (1.06%) REST
3 1 (1.06%) Spring
3 1 (1.06%) Swagger
3 1 (1.06%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 10 (10.64%) Product Ownership
2 3 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (2.13%) Embedded Systems
4 1 (1.06%) Hackathon
4 1 (1.06%) IoT
4 1 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.06%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 7 (7.45%) Windows
2 4 (4.26%) Linux
2 4 (4.26%) Windows Server
2 4 (4.26%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.06%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (85.11%) Test Automation
2 42 (44.68%) Agile
2 42 (44.68%) CI/CD
3 41 (43.62%) DevOps
4 36 (38.30%) Software Testing
5 30 (31.91%) Regression Testing
6 27 (28.72%) API Testing
7 24 (25.53%) Test Strategy
8 22 (23.40%) Test Scripting
9 21 (22.34%) SDLC
10 20 (21.28%) Continuous Improvement
10 20 (21.28%) User Acceptance Testing
11 17 (18.09%) Acceptance Criteria
12 15 (15.96%) Scrum
13 14 (14.89%) Customer Service
14 12 (12.77%) Root Cause Analysis
15 11 (11.70%) Computer Science
15 11 (11.70%) Continuous Integration
16 10 (10.64%) Waterfall
17 9 (9.57%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 16 (17.02%) SQL
2 10 (10.64%) JavaScript
3 9 (9.57%) C#
4 7 (7.45%) Python
5 5 (5.32%) TypeScript
6 3 (3.19%) Java
6 3 (3.19%) MATLAB
7 2 (2.13%) PHP
Qualifications
1 19 (20.21%) ISTQB
2 13 (13.83%) Degree
3 9 (9.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 9 (9.57%) Security Cleared
4 5 (5.32%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (3.19%) Chartered Engineer
6 3 (3.19%) DV Cleared
6 3 (3.19%) Master's Degree
7 2 (2.13%) SC Cleared
8 1 (1.06%) ISEB
8 1 (1.06%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (47.87%) QA
2 17 (18.09%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 2 (2.13%) GDPR
4 2 (2.13%) PCI DSS
5 1 (1.06%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 5 (5.32%) Active Directory
2 3 (3.19%) Terminal Server
2 3 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (4.26%) SCCM
1 4 (4.26%) SCOM
Vendors
1 9 (9.57%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.45%) Salesforce
3 4 (4.26%) ServiceNow
3 4 (4.26%) VMware
4 3 (3.19%) Cisco
4 3 (3.19%) Juniper
4 3 (3.19%) McAfee