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 1 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 587 502 614
Rank change year-on-year -85 +112 -113
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 135 170 296
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.14% 0.39% 0.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.42% 0.35%
Number of salaries quoted 96 124 255
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% +4.44% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £63,375 £57,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £85,600
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £42,500 £42,500
% change year-on-year +11.76% - -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 68,914 40,901 84,819
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.88% 93.19% 83.44%
Number of salaries quoted 45,055 21,599 60,884
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £40,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.69%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.01% +1.93% -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 1 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Top 15 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 1 June 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 -83 122 £50,000 +7.53% 54
UK excluding London -52 93 £47,500 +11.76% 47
Work from Home -14 35 £52,500 -0.94% 36
South West -39 31 £47,500 +18.75% 6
London -52 30 £55,000 -12.70% 14
South East -28 23 £51,250 +17.14% 12
North of England -31 16 £50,000 +42.86% 12
Midlands -36 14 £30,000 -27.71% 6
North West -1 12 £50,000 +14.29% 11
East Midlands -30 11 £30,000 -45.45% 1
East of England -28 7 £45,000 -15.09% 4
West Midlands -37 3 £57,500 +41.98% 5
Wales -36 2 £25,000 -58.33% 1
North East -48 2 £55,000 +59.42%
Yorkshire -51 2 £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 3 (2.22%) Confluence
2 1 (0.74%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (3.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.74%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 57 (42.22%) Azure
2 41 (30.37%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (14.07%) AWS
4 13 (9.63%) GCP
5 11 (8.15%) BrowserStack
6 5 (3.70%) Power Platform
7 4 (2.96%) GitHub
8 3 (2.22%) SaaS
9 2 (1.48%) Azure Service Bus
9 2 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.74%) Algolia
10 1 (0.74%) AWS CodePipeline
10 1 (0.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 1 (0.74%) BlazeMeter
10 1 (0.74%) Copilot Studio
10 1 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.74%) Microsoft Copilot
10 1 (0.74%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.22%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.48%) 5G
2 2 (1.48%) HTTP
2 2 (1.48%) SD-WAN
2 2 (1.48%) WAN
3 1 (0.74%) Broadband
3 1 (0.74%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.96%) Power BI
2 3 (2.22%) Metadata
2 3 (2.22%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (1.48%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.74%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.74%) DB2
4 1 (0.74%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.74%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.74%) Power Query
4 1 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 37 (27.41%) Selenium
2 24 (17.78%) JIRA
3 22 (16.30%) Cypress.io
4 19 (14.07%) Postman
5 12 (8.89%) Jenkins
6 11 (8.15%) Git
7 9 (6.67%) Zephyr
8 7 (5.19%) SpecFlow
9 6 (4.44%) REST Assured
10 5 (3.70%) GitLab
10 5 (3.70%) TestRail
11 4 (2.96%) JUnit
12 3 (2.22%) Cucumber
12 3 (2.22%) SoapUI
12 3 (2.22%) Subversion
13 2 (1.48%) Bitbucket
13 2 (1.48%) JMeter
13 2 (1.48%) LabVIEW
13 2 (1.48%) TeamCity
14 1 (0.74%) Maven
General
1 36 (26.67%) Social Skills
2 21 (15.56%) Finance
3 17 (12.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 15 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (3.70%) Digital Healthcare
5 5 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (3.70%) Electronics
5 5 (3.70%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.96%) Advertising
7 3 (2.22%) Aerospace
7 3 (2.22%) Banking
7 3 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.48%) Back Office
8 2 (1.48%) Law
8 2 (1.48%) Military
8 2 (1.48%) Retail
9 1 (0.74%) Aviation
9 1 (0.74%) Games
9 1 (0.74%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.74%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 29 (21.48%) Test Engineer
2 23 (17.04%) Lead
3 22 (16.30%) QA Engineer
4 16 (11.85%) Senior
4 16 (11.85%) Tester
5 15 (11.11%) QA Leader
6 13 (9.63%) Test Leader
7 11 (8.15%) Software Engineer
8 10 (7.41%) Software Test Engineer
9 9 (6.67%) Analyst
9 9 (6.67%) Automation Engineer
9 9 (6.67%) QA Automation Engineer
10 8 (5.93%) Development Engineer
10 8 (5.93%) Graduate
10 8 (5.93%) Software Development Engineer
10 8 (5.93%) Test Analyst
10 8 (5.93%) Test Development Engineer
11 7 (5.19%) Head of Testing
11 7 (5.19%) Junior
11 7 (5.19%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (24.44%) Playwright
2 6 (4.44%) CSS
3 5 (3.70%) HTML
4 4 (2.96%) .NET
4 4 (2.96%) React
4 4 (2.96%) REST
4 4 (2.96%) Swagger
5 3 (2.22%) Kafka
5 3 (2.22%) pytest
6 2 (1.48%) Laravel
6 2 (1.48%) RESTful
6 2 (1.48%) Vue
7 1 (0.74%) .NET Core
7 1 (0.74%) ADO
7 1 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.74%) GraphQL
7 1 (0.74%) GStreamer
7 1 (0.74%) HTML5
7 1 (0.74%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (0.74%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 14 (10.37%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.22%) Embedded Systems
2 3 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (2.22%) Housing Association
2 3 (2.22%) Mobile App
3 2 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (1.48%) Hackathon
3 2 (1.48%) NHS
3 2 (1.48%) Onboarding
3 2 (1.48%) Self-Driving Car
3 2 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (1.48%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (0.74%) Low-Code
4 1 (0.74%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.74%) Reinsurance
4 1 (0.74%) Robotics
4 1 (0.74%) Virtual Team
4 1 (0.74%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.93%) Windows
2 3 (2.22%) Linux
2 3 (2.22%) Windows Server
2 3 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
3 2 (1.48%) Unix
4 1 (0.74%) Android
4 1 (0.74%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.74%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (90.37%) Test Automation
2 70 (51.85%) CI/CD
3 61 (45.19%) Software Testing
4 60 (44.44%) Agile
5 57 (42.22%) DevOps
6 46 (34.07%) Continuous Improvement
7 41 (30.37%) Regression Testing
8 39 (28.89%) Test Strategy
9 34 (25.19%) API Testing
10 33 (24.44%) SDLC
11 30 (22.22%) Scrum
12 29 (21.48%) User Acceptance Testing
13 26 (19.26%) Test Scripting
14 25 (18.52%) Defect Management
15 24 (17.78%) Acceptance Criteria
16 23 (17.04%) Mentoring
17 16 (11.85%) Continuous Integration
17 16 (11.85%) Customer Service
18 15 (11.11%) Coaching
18 15 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 23 (17.04%) SQL
2 18 (13.33%) JavaScript
3 15 (11.11%) TypeScript
4 13 (9.63%) C#
5 12 (8.89%) Python
6 7 (5.19%) Java
7 5 (3.70%) MATLAB
8 3 (2.22%) C++
9 2 (1.48%) Bash
9 2 (1.48%) COBOL
9 2 (1.48%) PHP
9 2 (1.48%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.74%) Groovy
10 1 (0.74%) RPG
Qualifications
1 33 (24.44%) ISTQB
2 18 (13.33%) Degree
3 13 (9.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 9 (6.67%) Security Cleared
5 6 (4.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.96%) SC Cleared
7 3 (2.22%) Chartered Engineer
7 3 (2.22%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.48%) HND
9 1 (0.74%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.74%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (48.15%) QA
2 31 (22.96%) Accessibility
3 3 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 2 (1.48%) GDPR
4 2 (1.48%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.74%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 3 (2.22%) Active Directory
1 3 (2.22%) Docker
1 3 (2.22%) Terminal Server
1 3 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.74%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 3 (2.22%) SCCM
1 3 (2.22%) SCOM
2 2 (1.48%) Ansible
2 2 (1.48%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.48%) Terraform
3 1 (0.74%) Grafana
3 1 (0.74%) Kibana
Vendors
1 15 (11.11%) Microsoft
2 8 (5.93%) Salesforce
3 6 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 3 (2.22%) Cisco
4 3 (2.22%) Juniper
4 3 (2.22%) McAfee
4 3 (2.22%) VMware
5 2 (1.48%) HP
6 1 (0.74%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.74%) IBM
6 1 (0.74%) Oracle
6 1 (0.74%) Pega