Exploratory Testing Job Trends

Exploratory Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Exploratory Testing skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 642 757 724
Rank change year-on-year +115 -33 +95
Permanent jobs citing Exploratory Testing 36 44 37
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.073% 0.057% 0.061%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.082% 0.070% 0.064%
Number of salaries quoted 33 24 30
10th Percentile - £34,125 £41,250
25th Percentile £25,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £55,000 £50,560
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +8.78% -10.44%
75th Percentile £62,500 £71,563 £58,750
90th Percentile £63,950 £80,000 £62,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,250 £41,250 £50,000
% change year-on-year +12.12% -17.50% -9.09%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Exploratory 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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 43,797 63,176 57,561
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 88.73% 81.14% 94.37%
Number of salaries quoted 24,693 35,881 43,260
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,000 £32,750
25th Percentile £36,250 £42,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £54,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% -2.78% +2.86%

Exploratory Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Exploratory Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Exploratory Testing in the UK

Exploratory Testing
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Exploratory Testing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Exploratory Testing

Exploratory Testing
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Exploratory Testing over the 6 months to 17 September 2025.

Salary histogram for Exploratory Testing in the UK

Exploratory Testing
Top 13 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Exploratory Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 17 September 2025. 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
England +91 35 £47,500 -9.52% 26
UK excluding London +106 33 £46,250 +12.12% 19
Work from Home +80 14 £50,000 -24.53% 13
North of England +36 12 £26,500 -29.33% 5
Yorkshire +27 11 £26,500 -41.11%
South West +75 7 £46,250 +8.82%
South East +56 6 £50,000 +17.65% 7
Midlands +53 4 £52,500 +31.25% 6
West Midlands +51 4 £52,500 +31.25% 5
London +54 3 £72,500 +1.75% 9
East of England -2 3 £60,000 +60.00% 1
North West +3 1 £52,500 +40.00% 3
Scotland - 1 £45,000 -

Exploratory Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 19 (52.78%) AWS
2 12 (33.33%) SaaS
3 9 (25.00%) Azure
4 5 (13.89%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (8.33%) BrowserStack
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon S3
6 1 (2.78%) GitHub
6 1 (2.78%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.56%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (30.56%) SQL Server
2 3 (8.33%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.78%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (2.78%) Neo4j
3 1 (2.78%) Power BI
3 1 (2.78%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (30.56%) Selenium
2 8 (22.22%) Postman
3 7 (19.44%) Cypress.io
3 7 (19.44%) Git
4 6 (16.67%) Jenkins
5 5 (13.89%) JMeter
6 4 (11.11%) TestRail
6 4 (11.11%) Zephyr
7 3 (8.33%) CircleCI
7 3 (8.33%) Gatling
7 3 (8.33%) JIRA
7 3 (8.33%) LoadRunner
7 3 (8.33%) Locust
8 1 (2.78%) Android Studio
8 1 (2.78%) Bitbucket
8 1 (2.78%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (2.78%) Cucumber
8 1 (2.78%) Jasmine
8 1 (2.78%) JUnit
8 1 (2.78%) Xcode
General
1 16 (44.44%) Analytical Skills
1 16 (44.44%) Social Skills
2 11 (30.56%) Organisational Skills
3 3 (8.33%) Military
4 2 (5.56%) Banking
5 1 (2.78%) Finance
5 1 (2.78%) Games
5 1 (2.78%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 11 (30.56%) IT Engineer
1 11 (30.56%) IT Support
1 11 (30.56%) IT Support Engineer
1 11 (30.56%) Support Engineer
2 10 (27.78%) Senior
3 9 (25.00%) Software Support Engineer
3 9 (25.00%) Test Engineer
4 6 (16.67%) Senior Test Engineer
4 6 (16.67%) Tester
5 5 (13.89%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
5 5 (13.89%) Test Automation Engineer
6 4 (11.11%) Analyst
7 3 (8.33%) Lead
7 3 (8.33%) QA Analyst
7 3 (8.33%) QA Engineer
7 3 (8.33%) QA Test Analyst
7 3 (8.33%) Senior Tester
7 3 (8.33%) Test Analyst
8 2 (5.56%) 1st Line Engineer
8 2 (5.56%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (16.67%) Playwright
2 4 (11.11%) RESTful
3 3 (8.33%) REST
4 2 (5.56%) React
4 2 (5.56%) XML
5 1 (2.78%) AngularJS
5 1 (2.78%) CSS
5 1 (2.78%) Gherkin
5 1 (2.78%) HTML
5 1 (2.78%) MERN Stack
5 1 (2.78%) Vue
5 1 (2.78%) WebGL
5 1 (2.78%) WebGPU
Miscellaneous
1 15 (41.67%) Mobile App
2 11 (30.56%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (8.33%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 12 (33.33%) Android
1 12 (33.33%) Windows
2 1 (2.78%) Apple iOS
2 1 (2.78%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (66.67%) Software Testing
2 20 (55.56%) Agile
3 18 (50.00%) Test Automation
4 14 (38.89%) CI/CD
5 11 (30.56%) Analytical Thinking
5 11 (30.56%) CRM
5 11 (30.56%) Customer Service
5 11 (30.56%) Data Privacy
5 11 (30.56%) DevOps
5 11 (30.56%) Mathematics
5 11 (30.56%) Migration
5 11 (30.56%) Problem-Solving
6 10 (27.78%) Manual Testing
7 9 (25.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 9 (25.00%) Test Management
7 9 (25.00%) Test Strategy
8 7 (19.44%) SDLC
9 6 (16.67%) BDD
9 6 (16.67%) Regression Testing
10 5 (13.89%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 10 (27.78%) Java
1 10 (27.78%) SQL
2 8 (22.22%) JavaScript
3 5 (13.89%) TypeScript
4 4 (11.11%) Python
5 3 (8.33%) C#
6 1 (2.78%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 13 (36.11%) ISTQB
2 6 (16.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
2 6 (16.67%) Security Cleared
3 3 (8.33%) ISEB
3 3 (8.33%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.78%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (44.44%) QA
2 4 (11.11%) Accessibility
3 3 (8.33%) GDPR
System Software
1 5 (13.89%) Docker
2 2 (5.56%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 5 (13.89%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 11 (30.56%) Microsoft
1 11 (30.56%) Zoho