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 9 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 536 477 541
Rank change year-on-year -59 +64 -47
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 145 189 308
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.43% 0.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.26% 0.46% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 106 140 278
10th Percentile £32,500 £32,000 £33,750
25th Percentile £40,313 £37,500 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,000 £64,063 £57,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £71,250 £80,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £45,000 £42,500
% change year-on-year +5.56% +5.88% -5.56%

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 56,331 41,289 73,115
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.05% 93.69% 87.56%
Number of salaries quoted 33,961 22,320 55,807
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.78%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £94,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -43 135 £50,000 +5.26% 73
UK excluding London -37 95 £47,500 +5.56% 60
London -2 41 £55,000 -15.38% 21
Work from Home -4 40 £45,000 -10.00% 42
South West -3 34 £47,500 +18.75% 9
South East -29 26 £52,500 +10.53% 23
Midlands -21 19 £36,250 -19.44% 9
East Midlands -21 15 £32,500 -40.91% 4
East of England +5 7 £45,000 +12.50% 5
North of England -45 7 £50,000 +15.61% 12
West Midlands -6 4 £46,750 +7.47% 5
North West -21 3 £50,000 +11.11% 7
North East -21 2 £55,000 +61.76% 2
Yorkshire -44 2 £50,000 +61.33% 3
Wales -11 1 £25,000 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 £52,500 - 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 4 (2.76%) Confluence
2 1 (0.69%) Apache
2 1 (0.69%) CMS
2 1 (0.69%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (2.07%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.69%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (6.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (2.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.69%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.69%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 51 (35.17%) Azure
2 42 (28.97%) Azure DevOps
3 18 (12.41%) AWS
4 12 (8.28%) GCP
5 10 (6.90%) BrowserStack
6 6 (4.14%) Power Platform
7 5 (3.45%) SaaS
8 2 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.38%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.69%) Algolia
9 1 (0.69%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.69%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (0.69%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.69%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.38%) Cisco ISE
1 2 (1.38%) HTTP
2 1 (0.69%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.69%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.69%) FTP
2 1 (0.69%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.69%) SNMP
2 1 (0.69%) Spanning Tree
2 1 (0.69%) SSH
2 1 (0.69%) TACACS
2 1 (0.69%) WAN
2 1 (0.69%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (6.21%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.07%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.38%) DB2
3 2 (1.38%) Metadata
3 2 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.69%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.69%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.69%) Power BI
4 1 (0.69%) Power Query
4 1 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 34 (23.45%) Selenium
2 30 (20.69%) JIRA
3 22 (15.17%) Cypress.io
4 15 (10.34%) Postman
5 9 (6.21%) eCATT
5 9 (6.21%) Jenkins
6 5 (3.45%) Git
6 5 (3.45%) GitLab
7 4 (2.76%) TestRail
8 3 (2.07%) Cucumber
8 3 (2.07%) SoapUI
8 3 (2.07%) SpecFlow
8 3 (2.07%) Subversion
8 3 (2.07%) Zephyr
9 2 (1.38%) Bitbucket
9 2 (1.38%) LoadRunner
9 2 (1.38%) Robot Framework
9 2 (1.38%) TeamCity
9 2 (1.38%) Visual Studio
9 2 (1.38%) webpack
General
1 33 (22.76%) Social Skills
2 22 (15.17%) Analytical Skills
2 22 (15.17%) Finance
3 13 (8.97%) Marketing
4 10 (6.90%) Manufacturing
5 9 (6.21%) Influencing Skills
5 9 (6.21%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (5.52%) Banking
7 5 (3.45%) Digital Healthcare
8 4 (2.76%) Tech for Good
9 3 (2.07%) Back Office
9 3 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (2.07%) Games
9 3 (2.07%) Health Technology
9 3 (2.07%) Law
9 3 (2.07%) Public Sector
10 2 (1.38%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.38%) Legal
10 2 (1.38%) Retail
10 2 (1.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 28 (19.31%) Analyst
1 28 (19.31%) Tester
2 27 (18.62%) Lead
3 25 (17.24%) Test Analyst
4 22 (15.17%) QA Engineer
5 20 (13.79%) QA Leader
5 20 (13.79%) Test Engineer
6 16 (11.03%) Test Leader
7 13 (8.97%) Senior
7 13 (8.97%) Test Automation Engineer
8 9 (6.21%) Automation Test Analyst
8 9 (6.21%) Software Engineer
9 8 (5.52%) Automation Engineer
9 8 (5.52%) Development Engineer
9 8 (5.52%) Graduate
9 8 (5.52%) Manual Tester
9 8 (5.52%) QA Analyst
9 8 (5.52%) Software Development Engineer
9 8 (5.52%) Test Development Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (26.21%) Playwright
2 9 (6.21%) CSS
2 9 (6.21%) HTML
3 7 (4.83%) React
4 6 (4.14%) .NET
5 5 (3.45%) XML
6 4 (2.76%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (2.07%) FIX Protocol
8 2 (1.38%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.38%) CSS3
8 2 (1.38%) Gherkin
8 2 (1.38%) HTML5
8 2 (1.38%) pytest
8 2 (1.38%) REST
8 2 (1.38%) RESTful
8 2 (1.38%) Sass
9 1 (0.69%) Laravel
9 1 (0.69%) React Native
9 1 (0.69%) Swagger
9 1 (0.69%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 8 (5.52%) Product Ownership
2 5 (3.45%) Analytical Mindset
3 4 (2.76%) Derivative
3 4 (2.76%) Equities
3 4 (2.76%) Fixed Income
4 3 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.07%) IoT
4 3 (2.07%) Mobile App
4 3 (2.07%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.38%) Low-Code
5 2 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.69%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.69%) Operational Technology
6 1 (0.69%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.69%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.83%) Linux
1 7 (4.83%) Windows
2 3 (2.07%) Windows Server
2 3 (2.07%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (0.69%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (82.76%) Test Automation
2 62 (42.76%) CI/CD
3 56 (38.62%) Software Testing
4 54 (37.24%) Agile
5 52 (35.86%) Regression Testing
6 43 (29.66%) DevOps
7 41 (28.28%) API Testing
8 40 (27.59%) Test Scripting
9 39 (26.90%) Continuous Improvement
10 32 (22.07%) SDLC
11 26 (17.93%) User Acceptance Testing
12 25 (17.24%) Test Strategy
13 24 (16.55%) Acceptance Criteria
14 23 (15.86%) Scrum
15 20 (13.79%) Non-Functional Testing
16 19 (13.10%) Performance Testing
17 18 (12.41%) Defect Management
18 17 (11.72%) End-to-End Testing
18 17 (11.72%) Problem-Solving
18 17 (11.72%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 37 (25.52%) SQL
2 30 (20.69%) JavaScript
3 21 (14.48%) TypeScript
4 19 (13.10%) C#
5 14 (9.66%) Python
6 9 (6.21%) Java
7 6 (4.14%) Bash
8 3 (2.07%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.38%) C++
9 2 (1.38%) COBOL
9 2 (1.38%) PHP
9 2 (1.38%) RPG
Qualifications
1 43 (29.66%) ISTQB
2 20 (13.79%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 17 (11.72%) Degree
4 14 (9.66%) Security Cleared
5 7 (4.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 6 (4.14%) SC Cleared
7 5 (3.45%) ISEB
8 3 (2.07%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (47.59%) QA
2 30 (20.69%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.38%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.38%) Section 508
3 2 (1.38%) WCAG
4 1 (0.69%) GDPR
4 1 (0.69%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 5 (3.45%) Docker
2 4 (2.76%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.38%) Terminal Server
3 2 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (6.90%) HP ALM
2 5 (3.45%) Kubernetes
2 5 (3.45%) Terraform
3 3 (2.07%) Ansible
3 3 (2.07%) SCCM
3 3 (2.07%) SCOM
4 2 (1.38%) Grafana
4 2 (1.38%) Nessus
4 2 (1.38%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 12 (8.28%) HP
2 11 (7.59%) SAP
3 6 (4.14%) Microsoft
4 4 (2.76%) Oracle
5 3 (2.07%) Cisco
5 3 (2.07%) VMware
6 2 (1.38%) IBM
6 2 (1.38%) Juniper
6 2 (1.38%) McAfee
6 2 (1.38%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.38%) Siebel
7 1 (0.69%) Charles River
7 1 (0.69%) Genesys
7 1 (0.69%) Meraki
7 1 (0.69%) Murex
7 1 (0.69%) Splunk