Manual Testing Job Trends

Manual Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Manual 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 551 600 491
Rank change year-on-year +49 -109 -49
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 127 203 285
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.26% 0.26% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.29% 0.32% 0.50%
Number of salaries quoted 96 120 238
10th Percentile £31,250 £34,875 £36,250
25th Percentile £40,225 £40,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,250 £51,250 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% +2.50% +4.17%
75th Percentile £63,750 £65,813 £65,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £78,700 £77,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £51,000 £45,000 £47,500
% change year-on-year +13.33% -5.26% +5.56%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

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%

Manual Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Manual Testing

Manual Testing
Salary Histogram

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

Salary histogram for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Top 17 Job Locations

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 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 +46 117 £52,000 -0.95% 51
UK excluding London +49 81 £51,000 +13.33% 50
Work from Home +70 58 £53,000 +14.59% 26
London +44 41 £51,500 -20.77% 12
South East +63 29 £46,000 -12.38% 12
South West +60 16 £40,000 -11.11% 11
East of England +9 16 £53,000 +24.71% 6
North of England +13 7 £40,000 -11.11% 6
Midlands +35 6 £55,500 +8.29% 6
Scotland +45 4 £47,500 +18.75% 2
West Midlands +32 4 £43,000 -21.82% 3
Yorkshire +17 3 £35,000 -6.67% 2
East Midlands +32 2 £57,500 +76.92% 3
Northern Ireland +17 2 - - 3
North East +14 2 £45,000 -18.18%
North West -5 2 £45,000 +9.09% 4
Wales +12 1 £60,000 -36.84% 4

Manual 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:

Application Platforms
1 4 (3.15%) Apache Spark
1 4 (3.15%) Confluence
2 1 (0.79%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 3 (2.36%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.57%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.79%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 24 (18.90%) Azure
2 14 (11.02%) Azure DevOps
3 12 (9.45%) AWS
4 9 (7.09%) SaaS
5 4 (3.15%) Azure Data Factory
5 4 (3.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 3 (2.36%) Adobe Analytics
6 3 (2.36%) BrowserStack
6 3 (2.36%) Datadog
6 3 (2.36%) Power Platform
6 3 (2.36%) Sauce Labs
6 3 (2.36%) Tricentis Tosca
7 1 (0.79%) Algolia
7 1 (0.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (0.79%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (0.79%) dbt
7 1 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.79%) GitHub
7 1 (0.79%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.15%) Cisco ISE
2 1 (0.79%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.15%) Big Data
1 4 (3.15%) Delta Lake
2 3 (2.36%) Mixpanel
2 3 (2.36%) MongoDB
2 3 (2.36%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (1.57%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.79%) MySQL
4 1 (0.79%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 47 (37.01%) Selenium
2 42 (33.07%) JIRA
3 26 (20.47%) Postman
4 25 (19.69%) Git
5 11 (8.66%) Cypress.io
5 11 (8.66%) Jenkins
6 8 (6.30%) JMeter
6 8 (6.30%) SoapUI
7 7 (5.51%) Locust
8 6 (4.72%) Katalon Studio
8 6 (4.72%) TestNG
8 6 (4.72%) TestRail
8 6 (4.72%) Zephyr
9 4 (3.15%) Appium
9 4 (3.15%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (3.15%) LoadRunner
9 4 (3.15%) Robot Framework
9 4 (3.15%) SpecFlow
10 3 (2.36%) Charles Proxy
10 3 (2.36%) Gatling
General
1 35 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 22 (17.32%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (14.96%) Law
4 16 (12.60%) Legal
5 11 (8.66%) Finance
6 8 (6.30%) Aerospace
7 6 (4.72%) Games
8 4 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (3.15%) Electronics
8 4 (3.15%) Public Sector
9 3 (2.36%) Automotive
9 3 (2.36%) Marketing
10 2 (1.57%) Digital Healthcare
11 1 (0.79%) Advertising
11 1 (0.79%) Banking
11 1 (0.79%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.79%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.79%) Publishing
11 1 (0.79%) Retail
Job Titles
1 40 (31.50%) Senior
2 25 (19.69%) Tester
3 23 (18.11%) QA Engineer
3 23 (18.11%) Test Engineer
4 15 (11.81%) Analyst
5 11 (8.66%) Lead
5 11 (8.66%) Test Automation Engineer
6 10 (7.87%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
6 10 (7.87%) Senior QA Engineer
7 9 (7.09%) QA Analyst
7 9 (7.09%) QA Leader
7 9 (7.09%) Senior Test Engineer
7 9 (7.09%) Software Tester
7 9 (7.09%) Test Analyst
8 7 (5.51%) Test Specialist
9 6 (4.72%) Automation Tester
9 6 (4.72%) Developer
9 6 (4.72%) Manual Tester
10 5 (3.94%) Quality Engineer
10 5 (3.94%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (11.81%) Playwright
2 9 (7.09%) CSS
2 9 (7.09%) HTML
3 7 (5.51%) Qt
4 5 (3.94%) JSON
4 5 (3.94%) RESTful
5 4 (3.15%) pytest
5 4 (3.15%) REST
5 4 (3.15%) SOAP
5 4 (3.15%) XML
5 4 (3.15%) YAML
6 2 (1.57%) .NET
6 2 (1.57%) Node.js
6 2 (1.57%) WebGL
7 1 (0.79%) .NET Framework
7 1 (0.79%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.79%) CSS3
7 1 (0.79%) HTML5
7 1 (0.79%) Material-UI
7 1 (0.79%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.30%) Embedded Systems
2 5 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 3 (2.36%) Client/Server
3 3 (2.36%) W3C
4 2 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (1.57%) AS400
4 2 (1.57%) FMCG
4 2 (1.57%) Operational Technology
4 2 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (0.79%) CAN bus
5 1 (0.79%) Cyber Defence
5 1 (0.79%) Digital Media
5 1 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (0.79%) Hedge funds
5 1 (0.79%) IoT
5 1 (0.79%) Low-Code
5 1 (0.79%) Mobile App
5 1 (0.79%) NHS
5 1 (0.79%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.79%) Semantic Web
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.30%) Windows
2 5 (3.94%) Windows Server
2 5 (3.94%) Windows Server 2019
3 2 (1.57%) Linux
4 1 (0.79%) Android
4 1 (0.79%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.79%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.79%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.79%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (75.59%) Test Automation
2 83 (65.35%) Agile
3 64 (50.39%) Software Testing
4 38 (29.92%) Test Scripting
5 35 (27.56%) CI/CD
6 31 (24.41%) Regression Testing
7 29 (22.83%) API Testing
8 28 (22.05%) DevOps
9 24 (18.90%) Validation
10 23 (18.11%) Problem-Solving
10 23 (18.11%) Test Strategy
11 21 (16.54%) Scrum
12 18 (14.17%) Defect Management
12 18 (14.17%) User Acceptance Testing
13 16 (12.60%) End-to-End Testing
13 16 (12.60%) Process Improvement
14 15 (11.81%) Waterfall
15 14 (11.02%) Analytics
15 14 (11.02%) Integration Testing
15 14 (11.02%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 40 (31.50%) SQL
2 28 (22.05%) Java
3 27 (21.26%) Python
4 21 (16.54%) JavaScript
5 17 (13.39%) C#
6 8 (6.30%) TypeScript
7 7 (5.51%) C
7 7 (5.51%) C++
8 2 (1.57%) Groovy
9 1 (0.79%) PHP
9 1 (0.79%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 35 (27.56%) ISTQB
2 25 (19.69%) Security Cleared
3 22 (17.32%) SC Cleared
4 9 (7.09%) Degree
5 8 (6.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (4.72%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.79%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.79%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.79%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.79%) CHECK Team Leader
7 1 (0.79%) CHECK Team Member
7 1 (0.79%) CISSP
7 1 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.79%) HNC
7 1 (0.79%) HND
7 1 (0.79%) ISEB
7 1 (0.79%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (50.39%) QA
2 7 (5.51%) Accessibility
3 4 (3.15%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.79%) GDPR
4 1 (0.79%) NCSC
4 1 (0.79%) SLA
System Software
1 7 (5.51%) Docker
2 5 (3.94%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.15%) Terminal Server
3 4 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.79%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.79%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 7 (5.51%) Kubernetes
2 5 (3.94%) SCCM
2 5 (3.94%) SCOM
3 4 (3.15%) Terraform
4 1 (0.79%) Grafana
4 1 (0.79%) HP Quality Center
4 1 (0.79%) Nessus
Vendors
1 9 (7.09%) Microsoft
2 5 (3.94%) VMware
3 4 (3.15%) Cisco
3 4 (3.15%) Databricks
3 4 (3.15%) Juniper
3 4 (3.15%) McAfee
4 3 (2.36%) Adobe
4 3 (2.36%) Tealium
5 2 (1.57%) Pega
5 2 (1.57%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.57%) Workday
6 1 (0.79%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.79%) EMC
6 1 (0.79%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.79%) SAP
6 1 (0.79%) Siebel
6 1 (0.79%) Sitecore