Manual Testing Job Trends

Manual Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Manual Testing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 577 549 602
Rank change year-on-year -28 +53 -85
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 216 139 206
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.28% 0.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.31% 0.31%
Number of salaries quoted 115 103 137
10th Percentile £32,000 £32,500 £33,750
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £46,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £61,899 £62,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £71,000 £80,800
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £45,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year +11.11% - -5.26%

All Process & 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 80,366 44,460 65,769
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.73% 80.84%
Number of salaries quoted 55,743 25,365 40,240
10th Percentile £31,125 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £56,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £51,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.86% -7.07%

Manual Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Manual Testing job vacancy trend 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 31 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Top 16 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 31 August 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
UK excluding London -37 173 £50,000 +11.11% 56
England -71 150 £50,000 +8.70% 65
Work from Home +3 103 £50,000 - 38
Northern Ireland -37 53 - - 2
South West -53 35 £50,000 +25.00% 11
South East -31 32 £52,500 +16.67% 15
London -57 32 £55,000 +8.37% 20
North of England -51 26 £50,000 +25.00% 10
North West +5 16 £47,500 +5.56% 5
Midlands -27 14 £45,000 +5.88% 12
East Midlands -17 10 £42,500 -26.09% 2
East of England -22 9 £55,000 +3.77% 1
North East -56 7 £50,000 +11.11% 4
West Midlands -28 4 £51,250 +36.67% 10
Wales -64 4 £32,000 -46.67% 2
Yorkshire -38 3 £50,000 +42.86% 1

Manual Testing
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 5 (2.31%) Confluence
2 4 (1.85%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.70%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (3.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.93%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.93%) Simulink
5 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 63 (29.17%) SaaS
2 52 (24.07%) Azure
3 38 (17.59%) Azure DevOps
4 15 (6.94%) AWS
5 10 (4.63%) GitHub
6 9 (4.17%) Power Platform
7 5 (2.31%) BrowserStack
7 5 (2.31%) GCP
8 4 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (1.39%) PowerApps
10 2 (0.93%) Azure Service Bus
11 1 (0.46%) Algolia
11 1 (0.46%) Amazon ECS
11 1 (0.46%) Amazon EKS
11 1 (0.46%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.46%) BlazeMeter
11 1 (0.46%) Copilot Studio
11 1 (0.46%) GitHub Copilot
11 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Copilot
11 1 (0.46%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.85%) 5G
1 4 (1.85%) SD-WAN
1 4 (1.85%) WAN
2 2 (0.93%) HTTP
3 1 (0.46%) Broadband
3 1 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
3 1 (0.46%) Internet
3 1 (0.46%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.46%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.31%) Power BI
2 2 (0.93%) Oracle Database
2 2 (0.93%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.93%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.46%) Flink
3 1 (0.46%) Metadata
3 1 (0.46%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 48 (22.22%) Selenium
2 26 (12.04%) JIRA
3 25 (11.57%) Postman
4 18 (8.33%) Jenkins
5 17 (7.87%) Cypress.io
6 15 (6.94%) Git
7 10 (4.63%) Zephyr
8 8 (3.70%) SpecFlow
9 7 (3.24%) JMeter
10 6 (2.78%) LabVIEW
10 6 (2.78%) REST Assured
10 6 (2.78%) TestRail
11 5 (2.31%) JUnit
12 4 (1.85%) Gatling
12 4 (1.85%) GitLab
13 3 (1.39%) Appium
13 3 (1.39%) Bugzilla
13 3 (1.39%) Katalon Studio
13 3 (1.39%) SoapUI
13 3 (1.39%) TestNG
General
1 105 (48.61%) Social Skills
2 55 (25.46%) Legal
3 36 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (12.96%) Finance
4 28 (12.96%) Law
5 20 (9.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (5.56%) Public Sector
7 11 (5.09%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.24%) Electronics
8 7 (3.24%) Retail
9 5 (2.31%) Aviation
10 4 (1.85%) Advertising
11 3 (1.39%) Aerospace
11 3 (1.39%) Back Office
11 3 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.93%) Banking
12 2 (0.93%) Games
12 2 (0.93%) Military
13 1 (0.46%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 84 (38.89%) Senior
2 57 (26.39%) Testing Manager
3 55 (25.46%) Senior Manager
4 38 (17.59%) Test Engineer
5 28 (12.96%) Analyst
5 28 (12.96%) QA Engineer
6 27 (12.50%) Tester
7 19 (8.80%) Test Analyst
8 17 (7.87%) Lead
9 12 (5.56%) Automation Engineer
9 12 (5.56%) QA Automation Engineer
10 11 (5.09%) Senior Test Engineer
11 10 (4.63%) Senior QA Engineer
12 8 (3.70%) Manual Tester
13 7 (3.24%) Automation Tester
13 7 (3.24%) DevOps Engineer
13 7 (3.24%) Head of Testing
13 7 (3.24%) Junior
13 7 (3.24%) Lead DevOps
13 7 (3.24%) Lead DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (16.20%) Playwright
2 13 (6.02%) CSS
3 12 (5.56%) HTML
4 6 (2.78%) Node.js
5 5 (2.31%) pytest
5 5 (2.31%) REST
6 4 (1.85%) .NET
6 4 (1.85%) Kafka
6 4 (1.85%) Terraform
7 3 (1.39%) Gherkin
7 3 (1.39%) React
7 3 (1.39%) Swagger
8 2 (0.93%) Flutter
8 2 (0.93%) JSON
9 1 (0.46%) ADO
9 1 (0.46%) GraphQL
9 1 (0.46%) GStreamer
9 1 (0.46%) Middleware
9 1 (0.46%) RabbitMQ
9 1 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 55 (25.46%) Virtual Team
2 22 (10.19%) Product Ownership
3 14 (6.48%) Mobile App
4 5 (2.31%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.85%) Management Information System
5 4 (1.85%) Self-Driving Car
6 3 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (1.39%) Hackathon
6 3 (1.39%) Housing Association
6 3 (1.39%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.93%) Low-Code
7 2 (0.93%) NHS
7 2 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
8 1 (0.46%) Cloud Native
8 1 (0.46%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.46%) Life Science
8 1 (0.46%) PKI
8 1 (0.46%) Reinsurance
8 1 (0.46%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 19 (8.80%) Windows
2 6 (2.78%) Linux
3 4 (1.85%) Unix
4 3 (1.39%) Android
5 1 (0.46%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.46%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.46%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (91.67%) Test Automation
2 123 (56.94%) DevOps
3 121 (56.02%) Software Testing
4 119 (55.09%) Continuous Improvement
5 95 (43.98%) Test Strategy
6 86 (39.81%) Agile
7 84 (38.89%) Mentoring
8 70 (32.41%) CI/CD
9 64 (29.63%) Software Engineering
10 63 (29.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 58 (26.85%) Project Delivery
12 56 (25.93%) Data Management
13 55 (25.46%) Budget Management
13 55 (25.46%) Change Advisory Board
13 55 (25.46%) Enterprise Architecture
13 55 (25.46%) Performance Management
13 55 (25.46%) Programme Management
13 55 (25.46%) Strategic Planning
13 55 (25.46%) Virtual Team Management
14 46 (21.30%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 84 (38.89%) Python
2 76 (35.19%) JavaScript
3 71 (32.87%) C#
4 62 (28.70%) TypeScript
5 58 (26.85%) PowerShell
6 42 (19.44%) SQL
7 16 (7.41%) Java
8 9 (4.17%) MATLAB
9 4 (1.85%) Bash
10 2 (0.93%) C++
11 1 (0.46%) COBOL
11 1 (0.46%) Groovy
11 1 (0.46%) PHP
11 1 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 27 (12.50%) ISTQB
2 17 (7.87%) Degree
3 16 (7.41%) Security Cleared
4 13 (6.02%) SC Cleared
5 11 (5.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.85%) HND
8 3 (1.39%) Chartered Engineer
8 3 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.93%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (68.98%) QA
2 14 (6.48%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.31%) Software Quality Assurance
4 3 (1.39%) GDPR
4 3 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 3 (1.39%) WAI
4 3 (1.39%) WAI-ARIA
4 3 (1.39%) WCAG
5 1 (0.46%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (1.39%) Docker
1 3 (1.39%) Firmware
2 2 (0.93%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.46%) Terminal Server
3 1 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.85%) Ansible
2 3 (1.39%) Grafana
3 2 (0.93%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.46%) Kibana
4 1 (0.46%) SCCM
4 1 (0.46%) SCOM
Vendors
1 25 (11.57%) Microsoft
2 10 (4.63%) Oracle
3 9 (4.17%) Salesforce
4 5 (2.31%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.39%) Databricks
6 2 (0.93%) Google
7 1 (0.46%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.46%) Cisco
7 1 (0.46%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.46%) HP
7 1 (0.46%) Juniper
7 1 (0.46%) McAfee
7 1 (0.46%) Pega
7 1 (0.46%) VMware