International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for ISTQB qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 11 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 638 543 695
Rank change year-on-year -95 +152 -112
Permanent jobs citing ISTQB 110 139 195
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.28% 0.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.57% 0.79% 0.75%
Number of salaries quoted 89 111 133
10th Percentile £37,200 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,706 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,000 £45,996
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +15.23% -8.01%
75th Percentile £62,500 £67,500 £56,250
90th Percentile £73,250 £71,250 £73,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,000 £40,000
% change year-on-year - +25.00% -14.89%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

ISTQB falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 19,193 17,591 26,062
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 19.51% 35.88% 25.70%
Number of salaries quoted 10,063 7,782 16,338
10th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £43,000 £38,750 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -10.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £72,500 £71,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £90,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,055 £50,000
% change year-on-year +9.88% +0.11% -4.76%

ISTQB
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing ISTQB relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

ISTQB job vacancy trend in the UK

ISTQB
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing ISTQB.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing ISTQB

ISTQB
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing ISTQB over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Salary histogram for ISTQB in the UK

ISTQB
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing ISTQB within the UK over the 6 months to 11 July 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
England -107 93 £50,000 -5.66% 22
UK excluding London -73 74 £50,000 - 23
Work from Home -36 34 £50,000 -5.66% 15
London -35 26 £55,000 -12.70% 5
South West -48 24 £52,500 +31.25% 3
South East -42 16 £47,500 +11.76% 5
Midlands -47 11 £66,500 -1.48% 2
West Midlands -32 10 £66,500 -1.48% 2
North of England -34 9 £57,500 +4.55% 3
North West -9 6 £65,000 +18.18% 2
Wales -42 6 £47,500 -12.44% 2
East of England -22 5 £37,500 -29.25% 4
Scotland +9 3 £62,500 +13.64% 1
Yorkshire -25 2 £50,000 +68.07% 1
East Midlands -30 1 - -
North East - 1 - -

ISTQB
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 10 (9.09%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (1.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.91%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.91%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 43 (39.09%) Azure
2 29 (26.36%) Azure DevOps
3 28 (25.45%) AWS
4 9 (8.18%) GCP
5 8 (7.27%) AWS Lambda
5 8 (7.27%) BrowserStack
5 8 (7.27%) Serverless
6 7 (6.36%) GitHub
7 5 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (3.64%) Amazon EC2
8 4 (3.64%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (3.64%) Amazon S3
8 4 (3.64%) AWS CloudTrail
8 4 (3.64%) AWS Fargate
8 4 (3.64%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (3.64%) Tricentis Tosca
9 3 (2.73%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.82%) Power Platform
11 1 (0.91%) BlazeMeter
11 1 (0.91%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (7.27%) IPv4
1 8 (7.27%) Software-Defined Networking
2 2 (1.82%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.82%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (10.00%) Oracle Database
2 3 (2.73%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 43 (39.09%) JIRA
2 33 (30.00%) Selenium
3 23 (20.91%) Jenkins
4 18 (16.36%) Git
4 18 (16.36%) Postman
5 17 (15.45%) Cypress.io
6 16 (14.55%) JMeter
7 15 (13.64%) GitLab
7 15 (13.64%) Zephyr
8 11 (10.00%) REST Assured
9 9 (8.18%) Bitbucket
9 9 (8.18%) Cucumber
10 8 (7.27%) JUnit
11 7 (6.36%) SpecFlow
12 5 (4.55%) TestRail
13 4 (3.64%) WebDriver
14 3 (2.73%) Burp Suite
14 3 (2.73%) Gatling
14 3 (2.73%) SoapUI
14 3 (2.73%) Visual Studio
General
1 40 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 27 (24.55%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (17.27%) Finance
4 15 (13.64%) Manufacturing
5 9 (8.18%) Public Sector
6 8 (7.27%) Aerospace
6 8 (7.27%) Retail
7 7 (6.36%) Banking
8 6 (5.45%) Electronics
8 6 (5.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (3.64%) Advertising
9 4 (3.64%) Automotive
10 3 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 26 (23.64%) Lead
2 20 (18.18%) QA Engineer
3 18 (16.36%) Test Engineer
4 16 (14.55%) Tester
5 15 (13.64%) Test Leader
6 12 (10.91%) Analyst
6 12 (10.91%) Senior
6 12 (10.91%) Test Analyst
7 11 (10.00%) Automation Engineer
7 11 (10.00%) QA Automation Engineer
8 9 (8.18%) Test Manager
9 8 (7.27%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 7 (6.36%) Software Tester
11 6 (5.45%) Development Engineer
11 6 (5.45%) Software Development Engineer
11 6 (5.45%) Software Engineer
11 6 (5.45%) Test Development Engineer
12 5 (4.55%) Senior Analyst
12 5 (4.55%) Senior Test Analyst
13 4 (3.64%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (22.73%) Playwright
2 6 (5.45%) .NET
3 5 (4.55%) REST
4 4 (3.64%) boto
4 4 (3.64%) Node.js
4 4 (3.64%) React
4 4 (3.64%) Ruby on Rails
4 4 (3.64%) Spring Boot
5 3 (2.73%) Jest
5 3 (2.73%) Spring
5 3 (2.73%) Web Services
6 2 (1.82%) CSS
6 2 (1.82%) HTML
6 2 (1.82%) Nightwatchjs
6 2 (1.82%) RESTful
6 2 (1.82%) SOAP
6 2 (1.82%) XML
7 1 (0.91%) GraphQL
7 1 (0.91%) pytest
7 1 (0.91%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 18 (16.36%) Product Ownership
2 16 (14.55%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (9.09%) Mobile App
4 4 (3.64%) Analytical Mindset
4 4 (3.64%) Cloud Native
4 4 (3.64%) Renewable Energy
5 3 (2.73%) Housing Association
5 3 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (2.73%) Mainframe
6 2 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.82%) NHS
6 2 (1.82%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.91%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.91%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.91%) PKI
7 1 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 19 (17.27%) Windows
2 11 (10.00%) Linux
3 10 (9.09%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.82%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.91%) Android
5 1 (0.91%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (74.55%) Agile
1 82 (74.55%) Test Automation
2 69 (62.73%) CI/CD
3 57 (51.82%) DevOps
4 55 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 55 (50.00%) Test Strategy
5 52 (47.27%) Software Testing
6 34 (30.91%) Manual Testing
6 34 (30.91%) Scrum
7 31 (28.18%) Test Management
8 28 (25.45%) Regression Testing
9 26 (23.64%) Non-Functional Testing
10 25 (22.73%) Computer Science
10 25 (22.73%) Defect Management
10 25 (22.73%) SDLC
11 24 (21.82%) Problem-Solving
12 23 (20.91%) Test Scripting
13 20 (18.18%) Mentoring
13 20 (18.18%) Waterfall
14 19 (17.27%) Test Planning
Programming Languages
1 26 (23.64%) Java
2 21 (19.09%) C#
3 17 (15.45%) Python
4 14 (12.73%) JavaScript
5 11 (10.00%) Bash
5 11 (10.00%) PowerShell
5 11 (10.00%) TypeScript
6 8 (7.27%) Clojure
6 8 (7.27%) SQL
7 4 (3.64%) Ruby
8 1 (0.91%) Apex Code
8 1 (0.91%) C
Qualifications
1 33 (30.00%) Degree
2 23 (20.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 16 (14.55%) Security Cleared
4 15 (13.64%) Computer Science Degree
4 15 (13.64%) ISEB
5 8 (7.27%) AWS Certification
5 8 (7.27%) CCNA
5 8 (7.27%) Cisco Certification
5 8 (7.27%) Microsoft Certification
5 8 (7.27%) OSCP
5 8 (7.27%) RHCE
5 8 (7.27%) RHCSA
6 7 (6.36%) DV Cleared
6 7 (6.36%) Master's Degree
7 6 (5.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 6 (5.45%) SC Cleared
8 2 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.82%) CSQA
9 1 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (45.45%) QA
2 19 (17.27%) Accessibility
3 8 (7.27%) WCAG
4 3 (2.73%) GDPR
4 3 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.73%) Software Quality Assurance
5 2 (1.82%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (1.82%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (11.82%) Docker
2 11 (10.00%) Active Directory
3 10 (9.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (7.27%) Squid
4 8 (7.27%) VMware NSX
4 8 (7.27%) vSphere
5 2 (1.82%) Terminal Server
6 1 (0.91%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 11 (10.00%) Ansible
1 11 (10.00%) Terraform
2 9 (8.18%) Kubernetes
3 8 (7.27%) Packer
3 8 (7.27%) ZABBIX
4 4 (3.64%) Grafana
5 2 (1.82%) SCCM
5 2 (1.82%) SCOM
6 1 (0.91%) Kibana
Vendors
1 24 (21.82%) Oracle
2 17 (15.45%) Microsoft
3 10 (9.09%) VMware
4 9 (8.18%) Splunk
5 8 (7.27%) IFS
5 8 (7.27%) Red Hat
5 8 (7.27%) ServiceNow
6 4 (3.64%) SAP
7 2 (1.82%) Cisco
7 2 (1.82%) Juniper
7 2 (1.82%) McAfee
7 2 (1.82%) Pega
7 2 (1.82%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.91%) Conga
8 1 (0.91%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.91%) GoCardless
8 1 (0.91%) Siebel
8 1 (0.91%) Workday
8 1 (0.91%) YouTube