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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 437 427 423
Rank change year-on-year -10 -4 +23
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 80 153 128
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.19% 0.41% 0.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.24% 0.47% 0.46%
Number of salaries quoted 56 99 106
10th Percentile £31,875 £31,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,938 £37,500 £38,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £61,250 £57,500 £54,688
90th Percentile £63,750 £67,500 £65,000
UK median annual salary £52,500 £51,250 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.44% +2.50% -1.96%

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 33,380 32,892 27,855
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 79.58% 88.28% 90.59%
Number of salaries quoted 19,063 15,104 20,736
10th Percentile £27,707 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,755 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.91% +4.76% -4.50%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,070
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 1 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 1 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 East +23 26 £52,500 +10.53% 27
South West +15 26 £40,000 -20.00% 11
Midlands 0 15 £40,000 -27.27% 23
East Midlands -7 11 £37,500 -31.82% 8
North of England -8 6 £52,500 +18.98% 35
East of England +23 5 £60,000 +92.00% 18
West Midlands -3 4 £46,750 -15.00% 14
North West +7 2 £45,000 - 14
North East +3 2 £55,000 -8.33% 1
Yorkshire -12 2 £57,500 +84.04% 20
Scotland -3 1 - - 6
Northern Ireland -8 1 £52,500 - 1
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 (1.25%) Apache
1 1 (1.25%) CMS
1 1 (1.25%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 9 (11.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.25%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 24 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
2 21 (26.25%) Azure
3 7 (8.75%) AWS
4 2 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (1.25%) dbt
5 1 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (1.25%) Power Platform
5 1 (1.25%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.50%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (8.75%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.50%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.25%) Metadata
3 1 (1.25%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 20 (25.00%) JIRA
1 20 (25.00%) Selenium
2 13 (16.25%) Postman
3 10 (12.50%) Cypress.io
4 9 (11.25%) eCATT
5 8 (10.00%) Jenkins
6 6 (7.50%) Git
7 4 (5.00%) TestRail
8 3 (3.75%) JMeter
8 3 (3.75%) LoadRunner
9 2 (2.50%) CircleCI
9 2 (2.50%) Gatling
9 2 (2.50%) GitLab
9 2 (2.50%) Locust
9 2 (2.50%) Robot Framework
9 2 (2.50%) Subversion
9 2 (2.50%) Zephyr
10 1 (1.25%) Katalon Studio
10 1 (1.25%) SoapUI
10 1 (1.25%) TestNG
General
1 13 (16.25%) Analytical Skills
1 13 (16.25%) Social Skills
2 12 (15.00%) Finance
3 9 (11.25%) Influencing Skills
3 9 (11.25%) Manufacturing
3 9 (11.25%) Marketing
3 9 (11.25%) Presentation Skills
4 4 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (3.75%) Law
5 3 (3.75%) Tech for Good
6 2 (2.50%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.50%) Health Technology
6 2 (2.50%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.25%) Automotive
7 1 (1.25%) Games
7 1 (1.25%) Legal
Job Titles
1 23 (28.75%) Tester
2 20 (25.00%) Analyst
3 18 (22.50%) Senior
4 17 (21.25%) Test Analyst
5 14 (17.50%) QA Engineer
5 14 (17.50%) Test Engineer
6 9 (11.25%) Automation Test Analyst
7 7 (8.75%) Lead
7 7 (8.75%) Senior Test Engineer
7 7 (8.75%) Test Automation Engineer
8 6 (7.50%) Automation Tester
8 6 (7.50%) Manual Tester
8 6 (7.50%) Software Tester
9 4 (5.00%) QA Leader
9 4 (5.00%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
9 4 (5.00%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
9 4 (5.00%) Test Specialist
10 3 (3.75%) Automation Engineer
10 3 (3.75%) Graduate Test Engineer
10 3 (3.75%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (18.75%) Playwright
2 3 (3.75%) RESTful
2 3 (3.75%) XML
3 2 (2.50%) .NET
3 2 (2.50%) AngularJS
3 2 (2.50%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (2.50%) React
3 2 (2.50%) REST
4 1 (1.25%) CSS
4 1 (1.25%) HTML
4 1 (1.25%) JWT
4 1 (1.25%) OAuth
4 1 (1.25%) SAML
4 1 (1.25%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 4 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 3 (3.75%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (2.50%) IoT
3 2 (2.50%) Virtual Team
4 1 (1.25%) Cyber Defence
4 1 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.25%) Low-Code
4 1 (1.25%) Operational Technology
4 1 (1.25%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 4 (5.00%) Windows
2 3 (3.75%) Linux
2 3 (3.75%) Windows Server
2 3 (3.75%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.25%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (77.50%) Test Automation
2 40 (50.00%) Agile
3 27 (33.75%) CI/CD
4 26 (32.50%) Regression Testing
4 26 (32.50%) Software Testing
5 23 (28.75%) Test Scripting
6 22 (27.50%) DevOps
7 21 (26.25%) API Testing
7 21 (26.25%) Continuous Improvement
8 19 (23.75%) Test Strategy
9 17 (21.25%) End-to-End Testing
10 15 (18.75%) Scenario Testing
11 14 (17.50%) Scrum
12 13 (16.25%) Integration Testing
12 13 (16.25%) Test Management
13 12 (15.00%) User Acceptance Testing
14 11 (13.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 10 (12.50%) Risk Management
16 9 (11.25%) ERP
16 9 (11.25%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 28 (35.00%) SQL
2 17 (21.25%) C#
3 15 (18.75%) JavaScript
4 8 (10.00%) Java
5 6 (7.50%) Python
5 6 (7.50%) TypeScript
6 2 (2.50%) Bash
7 1 (1.25%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 23 (28.75%) ISTQB
2 16 (20.00%) Security Cleared
3 14 (17.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 9 (11.25%) Degree
4 9 (11.25%) SC Cleared
5 5 (6.25%) DV Cleared
6 4 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (3.75%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.25%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (42.50%) QA
2 8 (10.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.25%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (5.00%) Active Directory
1 4 (5.00%) Docker
2 2 (2.50%) Terminal Server
2 2 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 9 (11.25%) HP ALM
2 4 (5.00%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.75%) SCCM
3 3 (3.75%) SCOM
4 2 (2.50%) Grafana
4 2 (2.50%) Nessus
4 2 (2.50%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 9 (11.25%) HP
1 9 (11.25%) SAP
2 4 (5.00%) Oracle
3 3 (3.75%) ServiceNow
3 3 (3.75%) VMware
4 2 (2.50%) Cisco
4 2 (2.50%) Juniper
4 2 (2.50%) McAfee
5 1 (1.25%) Genesys
5 1 (1.25%) Siebel
5 1 (1.25%) Splunk