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 27 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 485 375 513
Rank change year-on-year -110 +138 -94
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 90 120 229
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.14% 0.45% 0.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.19% 0.49% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 64 93 196
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,100 £33,750
25th Percentile £39,375 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £42,500 £42,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +1.19% -6.67%
75th Percentile £57,500 £48,750 £52,500
90th Percentile £62,500 £62,500 £64,318
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 46,768 24,580 56,973
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.12% 91.19% 83.98%
Number of salaries quoted 28,644 13,847 40,931
10th Percentile £29,000 £28,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £36,250 £37,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,568 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -11.29%

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 27 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 27 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 -31 31 £47,500 +26.67% 8
South East -51 19 £52,500 +10.53% 15
Midlands -61 16 £30,000 -33.33% 5
North of England -61 15 £50,000 +16.62% 8
East Midlands -48 13 £30,000 -45.45% 2
North West -29 11 £42,500 -5.56% 6
East of England -36 7 £45,000 +28.57% 5
West Midlands -37 3 £55,000 +29.41% 3
Wales -29 2 £25,000 -
North East -47 2 £55,000 +59.42%
Yorkshire -57 2 £50,000 +53.92% 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 (1.11%) Apache
1 1 (1.11%) CMS
Business Applications
1 1 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.11%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 40 (44.44%) Azure
2 37 (41.11%) Azure DevOps
3 4 (4.44%) AWS
4 3 (3.33%) SaaS
5 2 (2.22%) BrowserStack
6 1 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (1.11%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.33%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (2.22%) HTTP
3 1 (1.11%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.33%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 26 (28.89%) Selenium
2 23 (25.56%) Cypress.io
3 16 (17.78%) JIRA
3 16 (17.78%) Postman
4 6 (6.67%) Jenkins
5 5 (5.56%) Git
6 4 (4.44%) GitLab
6 4 (4.44%) Subversion
6 4 (4.44%) Zephyr
7 2 (2.22%) JMeter
7 2 (2.22%) JUnit
7 2 (2.22%) LoadRunner
7 2 (2.22%) SoapUI
7 2 (2.22%) TestRail
8 1 (1.11%) CircleCI
8 1 (1.11%) Gatling
8 1 (1.11%) Locust
8 1 (1.11%) REST Assured
8 1 (1.11%) Robot Framework
General
1 11 (12.22%) Social Skills
2 10 (11.11%) Finance
3 7 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (7.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (3.33%) Health Technology
4 3 (3.33%) Tech for Good
5 2 (2.22%) Law
6 1 (1.11%) Advertising
6 1 (1.11%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.11%) Back Office
6 1 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.11%) Electronics
6 1 (1.11%) Games
Job Titles
1 22 (24.44%) Lead
2 17 (18.89%) QA Leader
2 17 (18.89%) Test Engineer
3 15 (16.67%) QA Engineer
4 14 (15.56%) Tester
5 12 (13.33%) Test Leader
6 10 (11.11%) Senior
7 8 (8.89%) Test Automation Engineer
8 7 (7.78%) Analyst
8 7 (7.78%) Head of Testing
9 6 (6.67%) Automation Tester
9 6 (6.67%) Graduate
9 6 (6.67%) Graduate Test Engineer
9 6 (6.67%) Manual Tester
10 5 (5.56%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.56%) QA Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.56%) Software Test Engineer
10 5 (5.56%) Test Analyst
11 3 (3.33%) QA Analyst
11 3 (3.33%) Test Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (31.11%) Playwright
2 3 (3.33%) .NET
3 2 (2.22%) AngularJS
3 2 (2.22%) CSS
3 2 (2.22%) HTML
3 2 (2.22%) Laravel
3 2 (2.22%) React
3 2 (2.22%) Vue
4 1 (1.11%) .NET Core
4 1 (1.11%) .NET Framework
4 1 (1.11%) Blazor
4 1 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.11%) pytest
4 1 (1.11%) React Native
4 1 (1.11%) Spring
4 1 (1.11%) WebAssembly
4 1 (1.11%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (8.89%) Product Ownership
2 4 (4.44%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (2.22%) Embedded Systems
4 1 (1.11%) IoT
4 1 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.11%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (1.11%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.56%) Windows
2 4 (4.44%) Linux
2 4 (4.44%) Windows Server
2 4 (4.44%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (1.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (84.44%) Test Automation
2 47 (52.22%) CI/CD
3 44 (48.89%) DevOps
4 40 (44.44%) Agile
5 31 (34.44%) Software Testing
6 30 (33.33%) Regression Testing
7 28 (31.11%) API Testing
8 26 (28.89%) Test Strategy
9 23 (25.56%) Test Scripting
10 21 (23.33%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (22.22%) SDLC
12 19 (21.11%) User Acceptance Testing
13 18 (20.00%) Acceptance Criteria
14 13 (14.44%) Root Cause Analysis
14 13 (14.44%) Scrum
15 12 (13.33%) Customer Service
16 11 (12.22%) Computer Science
17 10 (11.11%) Continuous Integration
18 9 (10.00%) Collaborative Working
18 9 (10.00%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 15 (16.67%) SQL
2 14 (15.56%) C#
2 14 (15.56%) JavaScript
3 7 (7.78%) TypeScript
4 4 (4.44%) Python
5 3 (3.33%) Java
6 2 (2.22%) PHP
7 1 (1.11%) Bash
Qualifications
1 23 (25.56%) ISTQB
2 13 (14.44%) Degree
3 11 (12.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 9 (10.00%) Security Cleared
5 8 (8.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (4.44%) DV Cleared
7 3 (3.33%) Master's Degree
8 2 (2.22%) SC Cleared
9 1 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (1.11%) ISEB
9 1 (1.11%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (51.11%) QA
2 17 (18.89%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.22%) GDPR
3 2 (2.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 5 (5.56%) Active Directory
2 3 (3.33%) Terminal Server
2 3 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (4.44%) SCCM
1 4 (4.44%) SCOM
2 1 (1.11%) Grafana
2 1 (1.11%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.11%) Nessus
2 1 (1.11%) Prometheus
2 1 (1.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (7.78%) Microsoft
1 7 (7.78%) Salesforce
2 4 (4.44%) VMware
3 3 (3.33%) Cisco
3 3 (3.33%) Juniper
3 3 (3.33%) McAfee
3 3 (3.33%) ServiceNow
4 1 (1.11%) Genesys
4 1 (1.11%) Siebel