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 30 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 450 379 487
Rank change year-on-year -71 +108 -54
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 95 118 236
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.17% 0.45% 0.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.50% 0.44%
Number of salaries quoted 70 97 204
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,925 £33,750
25th Percentile £37,500 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £42,500 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% - -5.56%
75th Percentile £57,500 £48,750 £52,500
90th Percentile £61,375 £62,500 £66,137
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year - +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 41,701 23,832 53,586
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 74.01% 91.38% 84.96%
Number of salaries quoted 25,383 13,673 39,250
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%
75th Percentile £67,500 £69,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £83,750 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +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 30 March 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 30 March 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 32 £47,500 +18.75% 6
Midlands -33 21 £36,250 -19.44% 11
South East -48 20 £52,500 +10.53% 22
East Midlands -34 17 £32,500 -40.91% 2
North of England -58 12 £50,000 +44.93% 8
North West -23 7 £46,250 +4.82% 4
East of England -25 7 £45,000 +28.57% 6
West Midlands -21 4 £47,500 +11.76% 9
Yorkshire -55 3 £50,000 +69.49% 3
North East -22 2 £55,000 +61.76% 1
Wales -24 2 £25,000 - 3
Northern Ireland -34 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 (1.05%) 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 37 (38.95%) Azure
2 33 (34.74%) 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 4 (4.21%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.11%) Metadata
3 1 (1.05%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 26 (27.37%) Selenium
2 23 (24.21%) Cypress.io
3 19 (20.00%) JIRA
4 12 (12.63%) Postman
5 7 (7.37%) 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 8 (8.42%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (5.26%) Finance
4 4 (4.21%) Tech for Good
5 3 (3.16%) Health Technology
6 2 (2.11%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.11%) Law
7 1 (1.05%) Back Office
7 1 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.05%) Electronics
7 1 (1.05%) Games
7 1 (1.05%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 21 (22.11%) Lead
2 19 (20.00%) Tester
3 18 (18.95%) QA Engineer
4 17 (17.89%) QA Leader
4 17 (17.89%) Test Engineer
5 12 (12.63%) Analyst
6 11 (11.58%) Test Leader
7 10 (10.53%) Senior
8 9 (9.47%) Test Analyst
9 8 (8.42%) Test Automation Engineer
10 7 (7.37%) Manual Tester
11 6 (6.32%) Automation Engineer
11 6 (6.32%) Automation Tester
11 6 (6.32%) Graduate
11 6 (6.32%) Graduate Test Engineer
11 6 (6.32%) QA Automation Engineer
12 5 (5.26%) Software Test Engineer
13 4 (4.21%) QA Analyst
14 3 (3.16%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
14 3 (3.16%) Test Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (28.42%) 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%) React Native
4 1 (1.05%) SAML
4 1 (1.05%) Spring
4 1 (1.05%) WebAssembly
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.47%) Product Ownership
2 4 (4.21%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (2.11%) IoT
3 2 (2.11%) Virtual Team
4 1 (1.05%) Embedded Systems
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%) Linux
1 5 (5.26%) Windows
2 4 (4.21%) Windows Server
2 4 (4.21%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.05%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (1.05%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (83.16%) Test Automation
2 43 (45.26%) CI/CD
3 42 (44.21%) Agile
4 40 (42.11%) DevOps
5 33 (34.74%) Software Testing
6 31 (32.63%) Regression Testing
7 29 (30.53%) API Testing
8 24 (25.26%) Test Strategy
8 24 (25.26%) User Acceptance Testing
9 23 (24.21%) SDLC
9 23 (24.21%) Test Scripting
10 22 (23.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 19 (20.00%) Acceptance Criteria
12 15 (15.79%) Scrum
13 14 (14.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 12 (12.63%) Customer Service
15 11 (11.58%) Computer Science
16 9 (9.47%) Software Engineering
16 9 (9.47%) Waterfall
17 8 (8.42%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (22.11%) 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 15 (15.79%) Degree
3 14 (14.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 11 (11.58%) Security Cleared
5 8 (8.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (5.26%) DV Cleared
7 3 (3.16%) Master's Degree
7 3 (3.16%) SC Cleared
8 1 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (1.05%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (52.63%) 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 4 (4.21%) Oracle
1 4 (4.21%) VMware
2 3 (3.16%) Cisco
2 3 (3.16%) Juniper
2 3 (3.16%) McAfee
2 3 (3.16%) ServiceNow
3 2 (2.11%) Microsoft
3 2 (2.11%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.05%) Genesys
4 1 (1.05%) Siebel
4 1 (1.05%) Splunk