Software Testing Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Software Testing
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Software Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 269 140 164
Rank change year-on-year -129 +24 -112
Permanent jobs citing Software Testing 298 665 912
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.64% 2.03% 1.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.82% 2.25% 2.12%
Number of salaries quoted 227 359 763
10th Percentile £31,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,625 £42,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £49,990
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.02% -0.02%
75th Percentile £65,625 £65,625 £63,750
90th Percentile £75,000 £81,350 £72,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year - +4.76% -4.55%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Software 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 36,177 29,600 43,006
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.12% 90.56% 86.81%
Number of salaries quoted 21,089 13,401 32,975
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,030 £83,750 £77,757
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Software Testing relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Software Testing job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Software Testing
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Software Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 11 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Software Testing in the UK excluding London

Software 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 Software Testing within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 11 February 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 -17 124 £47,500 -9.52% 70
North of England -88 56 £47,500 -9.52% 49
South West -50 41 £37,500 -25.00% 30
Midlands -44 37 £45,000 -5.26% 44
East of England -25 31 £55,000 -4.35% 22
Yorkshire -27 26 £37,500 -16.67% 17
West Midlands -6 19 £42,500 -15.00% 28
East Midlands -54 18 £55,000 +15.79% 16
North West -56 18 £52,200 -0.57% 32
North East -10 12 £56,500 +52.70%
Scotland -77 7 £52,749 -13.88% 34
Wales -1 3 £50,000 +17.65% 8
Software Testing
UK

Software 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 4 (1.34%) Confluence
2 3 (1.01%) Moodle
3 2 (0.67%) IIS
3 2 (0.67%) WordPress
4 1 (0.34%) Apache
Applications
1 10 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.34%) Simulink
4 3 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.67%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.34%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.34%) Doxygen
6 1 (0.34%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Sage X3
2 2 (0.67%) Misys Midas
3 1 (0.34%) Cognos Business Intelligence
3 1 (0.34%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.34%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.34%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 64 (21.48%) Azure
2 31 (10.40%) Azure DevOps
3 30 (10.07%) AWS
4 26 (8.72%) SaaS
5 12 (4.03%) GCP
6 11 (3.69%) GitHub
7 6 (2.01%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (2.01%) OpenShift
8 5 (1.68%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (1.34%) PaaS
9 4 (1.34%) Serverless
10 3 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (1.01%) Amazon S3
10 3 (1.01%) Azure AKS
10 3 (1.01%) Entra ID
10 3 (1.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (1.01%) Intacct
10 3 (1.01%) Power Platform
11 2 (0.67%) Azure Pipelines
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.34%) Ethernet
2 3 (1.01%) HTTP
2 3 (1.01%) Network Security
3 2 (0.67%) Cisco ISE
3 2 (0.67%) MQTT
4 1 (0.34%) AMQP
4 1 (0.34%) Broadband
4 1 (0.34%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
4 1 (0.34%) SAN
4 1 (0.34%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.34%) WAN
4 1 (0.34%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (7.72%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.36%) OLTP
3 12 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.68%) Relational Database
5 7 (2.35%) MySQL
5 7 (2.35%) NoSQL
6 5 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (1.34%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.34%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.01%) InfluxDB
9 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.67%) GIS
9 2 (0.67%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.34%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.34%) Crystal Reports
10 1 (0.34%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.34%) OLAP
10 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 60 (20.13%) JIRA
2 52 (17.45%) Selenium
3 41 (13.76%) Postman
4 28 (9.40%) Team Foundation Server
5 27 (9.06%) SoapUI
6 26 (8.72%) WebDriver
7 22 (7.38%) GitLab
7 22 (7.38%) Jenkins
8 21 (7.05%) Git
9 13 (4.36%) Cypress.io
10 9 (3.02%) TestRail
11 8 (2.68%) Subversion
12 7 (2.35%) REST Assured
12 7 (2.35%) Visual Studio
13 6 (2.01%) Robot Framework
14 5 (1.68%) Rational Rhapsody
15 4 (1.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 4 (1.34%) Rational DOORS
15 4 (1.34%) SpecFlow
16 3 (1.01%) JMeter
General
1 97 (32.55%) Social Skills
2 42 (14.09%) Finance
3 35 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (8.39%) Electronics
5 13 (4.36%) Retail
6 11 (3.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.36%) Law
8 8 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.35%) Manufacturing
10 6 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.68%) Military
11 5 (1.68%) Public Sector
12 4 (1.34%) Advertising
12 4 (1.34%) Marketing
13 3 (1.01%) Banking
13 3 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (1.01%) Legal
13 3 (1.01%) Publishing
14 2 (0.67%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.67%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 63 (21.14%) Senior
2 44 (14.77%) Analyst
3 40 (13.42%) Developer
4 39 (13.09%) Test Engineer
5 35 (11.74%) Tester
6 31 (10.40%) Test Analyst
7 28 (9.40%) Lead
8 27 (9.06%) Software Engineer
9 24 (8.05%) Software Test Engineer
10 21 (7.05%) Senior Developer
11 20 (6.71%) Software Tester
12 16 (5.37%) Oracle Developer
12 16 (5.37%) Senior Oracle Developer
13 15 (5.03%) Embedded Engineer
13 15 (5.03%) Support Engineer
13 15 (5.03%) Test Automation Engineer
14 14 (4.70%) Software Developer
14 14 (4.70%) Systems Engineer
15 13 (4.36%) Senior PL/SQL Developer
15 13 (4.36%) Senior SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (20.47%) .NET
2 46 (15.44%) HTML
3 42 (14.09%) SOAP
4 20 (6.71%) Playwright
5 17 (5.70%) XML
6 11 (3.69%) React
7 10 (3.36%) REST
8 9 (3.02%) ASP.NET
9 7 (2.35%) .NET Framework
9 7 (2.35%) RESTful
10 6 (2.01%) Web Services
11 5 (1.68%) Elastic Stack
11 5 (1.68%) JSON
11 5 (1.68%) Node.js
12 4 (1.34%) .NET Core
12 4 (1.34%) AngularJS
12 4 (1.34%) CSS
12 4 (1.34%) Gherkin
13 3 (1.01%) Kafka
13 3 (1.01%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.38%) Product Ownership
2 17 (5.70%) Embedded Systems
2 17 (5.70%) Self-Motivation
3 11 (3.69%) Mobile App
4 10 (3.36%) Algorithms
5 8 (2.68%) Cloud Native
6 7 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (2.01%) e-Learning
8 5 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.68%) Life Science
8 5 (1.68%) Web Conferencing
9 4 (1.34%) FPGA
9 4 (1.34%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.34%) PCIe
10 3 (1.01%) Client/Server
10 3 (1.01%) NHS
10 3 (1.01%) N-Tier
10 3 (1.01%) PMI
10 3 (1.01%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.05%) Windows
2 19 (6.38%) Linux
3 8 (2.68%) Android
4 4 (1.34%) Unix
4 4 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.01%) CentOS
5 3 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.67%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.67%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (0.67%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.34%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (39.60%) Agile
2 95 (31.88%) Test Automation
3 83 (27.85%) Problem-Solving
4 62 (20.81%) DevOps
5 61 (20.47%) Software Engineering
6 60 (20.13%) Scrum
7 49 (16.44%) Test Scripting
8 47 (15.77%) Continuous Improvement
8 47 (15.77%) Mentoring
9 46 (15.44%) CI/CD
10 45 (15.10%) Test Management
11 43 (14.43%) API Testing
12 33 (11.07%) Non-Functional Testing
13 31 (10.40%) SDLC
14 29 (9.73%) Regression Testing
15 28 (9.40%) Computer Science
15 28 (9.40%) Manual Testing
16 26 (8.72%) Cross-Browser Testing
17 23 (7.72%) Test Strategy
18 20 (6.71%) Logistics
Programming Languages
1 90 (30.20%) SQL
2 70 (23.49%) C#
3 57 (19.13%) Java
4 44 (14.77%) Python
5 30 (10.07%) C
6 27 (9.06%) C++
7 19 (6.38%) JavaScript
8 16 (5.37%) Bash
8 16 (5.37%) PL/SQL
9 13 (4.36%) TypeScript
10 10 (3.36%) PowerShell
11 8 (2.68%) Go
12 7 (2.35%) T-SQL
13 6 (2.01%) MATLAB
14 4 (1.34%) Fortran
14 4 (1.34%) PHP
15 3 (1.01%) VBScript
16 2 (0.67%) Ada
16 2 (0.67%) Delphi
16 2 (0.67%) VB
Qualifications
1 97 (32.55%) Degree
2 52 (17.45%) ISTQB
3 42 (14.09%) Security Cleared
4 27 (9.06%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 23 (7.72%) SC Cleared
6 18 (6.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 13 (4.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (3.69%) DV Cleared
9 10 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (2.68%) PhD
11 6 (2.01%) ISEB
11 6 (2.01%) Master's Degree
12 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (1.34%) Numerate Degree
13 3 (1.01%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 3 (1.01%) BC Cleared
13 3 (1.01%) CITP
13 3 (1.01%) CREST Certified
13 3 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.67%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (19.80%) QA
2 8 (2.68%) SLA
3 6 (2.01%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.01%) JTAG
6 2 (0.67%) ISO 9001
6 2 (0.67%) Software Quality Assurance
7 1 (0.34%) GDPR
7 1 (0.34%) IEC 61131
7 1 (0.34%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.34%) IEC 62304
7 1 (0.34%) ISO 9000
System Software
1 17 (5.70%) Docker
2 16 (5.37%) Firmware
3 9 (3.02%) Embedded Firmware
4 8 (2.68%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.67%) Terminal Server
7 1 (0.34%) KVM
7 1 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 17 (5.70%) Kubernetes
2 10 (3.36%) Terraform
3 5 (1.68%) Grafana
4 4 (1.34%) Ansible
4 4 (1.34%) SCCM
5 3 (1.01%) Rancher
5 3 (1.01%) SCOM
6 2 (0.67%) Nessus
6 2 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.34%) Kibana
7 1 (0.34%) logstash
7 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.34%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 31 (10.40%) Microsoft
2 23 (7.72%) Oracle
3 7 (2.35%) VMware
4 6 (2.01%) Google
4 6 (2.01%) IBM
5 5 (1.68%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.68%) Zoho
6 4 (1.34%) Altera
6 4 (1.34%) Salesforce
6 4 (1.34%) Siemens
7 3 (1.01%) HubSpot
7 3 (1.01%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.01%) Sage
7 3 (1.01%) Splunk
7 3 (1.01%) Workday
8 2 (0.67%) Freshdesk
8 2 (0.67%) Green Hills
8 2 (0.67%) Guidewire
8 2 (0.67%) Mapbox
8 2 (0.67%) NVIDIA