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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 519 499 529
Rank change year-on-year -20 +30 -59
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 151 197 292
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.41% 0.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.28% 0.44% 0.44%
Number of salaries quoted 110 127 260
10th Percentile £33,750 £32,000 £33,975
25th Percentile £42,563 £39,750 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,750 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.95% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £60,938 £64,375 £57,500
90th Percentile £67,625 £71,250 £75,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £45,000 £41,500
% change year-on-year +5.56% +8.43% -7.78%

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 54,541 44,858 66,633
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.08% 92.63% 88.37%
Number of salaries quoted 32,717 22,158 51,477
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £29,440
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 -6 141 £51,750 +8.95% 62
UK excluding London -41 98 £47,500 +5.56% 52
Work from Home +10 48 £50,000 -9.09% 30
London +27 44 £55,000 -15.38% 22
South West +6 34 £47,500 +5.56% 8
South East -5 28 £53,500 +12.63% 17
Midlands -10 19 £37,500 -18.03% 11
East Midlands -20 14 £32,500 -40.91% 4
East of England +20 8 £45,000 +44.00% 4
North of England -43 7 £50,000 +15.61% 11
West Midlands +2 5 £53,500 +22.29% 7
North West -18 3 £50,000 +11.11% 6
North East -19 2 £55,000 +61.76% 1
Yorkshire -33 2 £50,000 +61.33% 4
Scotland -4 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland -25 1 £52,500 -

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 (2.65%) Confluence
2 1 (0.66%) Apache
2 1 (0.66%) CMS
2 1 (0.66%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.66%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (6.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.66%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.66%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 49 (32.45%) Azure
2 40 (26.49%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (13.25%) AWS
4 12 (7.95%) GCP
5 10 (6.62%) BrowserStack
6 6 (3.97%) Power Platform
7 5 (3.31%) SaaS
8 2 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.32%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.66%) Adobe Analytics
9 1 (0.66%) Algolia
9 1 (0.66%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.66%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (0.66%) Datadog
9 1 (0.66%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.66%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.32%) Cisco ISE
1 2 (1.32%) HTTP
2 1 (0.66%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.66%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.66%) FTP
2 1 (0.66%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.66%) SNMP
2 1 (0.66%) Spanning Tree
2 1 (0.66%) SSH
2 1 (0.66%) TACACS
2 1 (0.66%) WAN
2 1 (0.66%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (6.62%) Relational Database
2 3 (1.99%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.32%) DB2
3 2 (1.32%) Metadata
3 2 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.66%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.66%) Mixpanel
4 1 (0.66%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.66%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.66%) Power BI
4 1 (0.66%) Power Query
4 1 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (25.17%) Selenium
2 34 (22.52%) JIRA
3 21 (13.91%) Postman
4 19 (12.58%) Cypress.io
5 10 (6.62%) Jenkins
6 9 (5.96%) eCATT
7 7 (4.64%) Git
8 5 (3.31%) GitLab
8 5 (3.31%) SoapUI
9 4 (2.65%) SpecFlow
9 4 (2.65%) TestRail
9 4 (2.65%) Zephyr
10 3 (1.99%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.99%) Subversion
11 2 (1.32%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.32%) JMeter
11 2 (1.32%) JUnit
11 2 (1.32%) LoadRunner
11 2 (1.32%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 34 (22.52%) Social Skills
2 24 (15.89%) Finance
3 23 (15.23%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (9.93%) Marketing
5 10 (6.62%) Manufacturing
6 9 (5.96%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (5.96%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (3.97%) Banking
7 6 (3.97%) Games
8 5 (3.31%) Digital Healthcare
8 5 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (2.65%) Law
9 4 (2.65%) Tech for Good
10 3 (1.99%) Back Office
10 3 (1.99%) Health Technology
10 3 (1.99%) Legal
10 3 (1.99%) Public Sector
11 2 (1.32%) Aerospace
11 2 (1.32%) Electronics
11 2 (1.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 29 (19.21%) Lead
1 29 (19.21%) Tester
2 26 (17.22%) Analyst
3 25 (16.56%) QA Engineer
4 24 (15.89%) Test Engineer
5 23 (15.23%) Test Analyst
6 21 (13.91%) QA Leader
7 19 (12.58%) Senior
8 16 (10.60%) Test Automation Engineer
9 15 (9.93%) Test Leader
10 9 (5.96%) Automation Test Analyst
11 8 (5.30%) Development Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) QA Analyst
11 8 (5.30%) Quality Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) Software Development Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) Software Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) Test Development Engineer
12 7 (4.64%) Automation Engineer
12 7 (4.64%) Automation Tester
12 7 (4.64%) Manual Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (23.84%) Playwright
2 9 (5.96%) CSS
2 9 (5.96%) HTML
3 7 (4.64%) React
4 6 (3.97%) .NET
5 5 (3.31%) XML
6 4 (2.65%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (1.99%) FIX Protocol
7 3 (1.99%) REST
7 3 (1.99%) RESTful
8 2 (1.32%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.32%) CSS3
8 2 (1.32%) Gherkin
8 2 (1.32%) HTML5
8 2 (1.32%) pytest
8 2 (1.32%) Sass
9 1 (0.66%) OAuth
9 1 (0.66%) React Native
9 1 (0.66%) SAML
9 1 (0.66%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.96%) Product Ownership
2 6 (3.97%) Analytical Mindset
3 4 (2.65%) Derivative
3 4 (2.65%) Equities
3 4 (2.65%) Fixed Income
4 3 (1.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (1.99%) IoT
4 3 (1.99%) Low-Code
4 3 (1.99%) Mobile App
4 3 (1.99%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.66%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.66%) Operational Technology
6 1 (0.66%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.66%) W3C
6 1 (0.66%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.64%) Linux
1 7 (4.64%) Windows
2 3 (1.99%) Windows Server
2 3 (1.99%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (0.66%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (82.12%) Test Automation
2 64 (42.38%) CI/CD
3 60 (39.74%) Agile
4 58 (38.41%) Software Testing
5 52 (34.44%) Regression Testing
6 45 (29.80%) API Testing
7 43 (28.48%) DevOps
8 40 (26.49%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (24.50%) Test Scripting
10 31 (20.53%) SDLC
11 29 (19.21%) Test Strategy
12 26 (17.22%) Non-Functional Testing
12 26 (17.22%) Scrum
13 24 (15.89%) User Acceptance Testing
14 22 (14.57%) Acceptance Criteria
15 20 (13.25%) Defect Management
16 19 (12.58%) End-to-End Testing
16 19 (12.58%) Performance Testing
17 18 (11.92%) Problem-Solving
17 18 (11.92%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 43 (28.48%) SQL
2 31 (20.53%) JavaScript
3 23 (15.23%) C#
4 20 (13.25%) TypeScript
5 18 (11.92%) Python
6 14 (9.27%) Java
7 6 (3.97%) Bash
8 3 (1.99%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.32%) RPG
10 1 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 45 (29.80%) ISTQB
2 21 (13.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 19 (12.58%) Security Cleared
4 15 (9.93%) Degree
5 9 (5.96%) SC Cleared
6 7 (4.64%) DV Cleared
7 6 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (3.31%) ISEB
9 3 (1.99%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (49.01%) QA
2 31 (20.53%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.99%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.32%) Section 508
4 2 (1.32%) WCAG
5 1 (0.66%) GDPR
5 1 (0.66%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 6 (3.97%) Docker
2 4 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.32%) Terminal Server
3 2 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (6.62%) HP ALM
2 6 (3.97%) Kubernetes
3 5 (3.31%) Terraform
4 3 (1.99%) Ansible
4 3 (1.99%) SCCM
4 3 (1.99%) SCOM
5 2 (1.32%) Grafana
5 2 (1.32%) Nessus
5 2 (1.32%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 11 (7.28%) SAP
2 10 (6.62%) HP
3 4 (2.65%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.65%) Oracle
3 4 (2.65%) ServiceNow
4 3 (1.99%) Cisco
4 3 (1.99%) VMware
5 2 (1.32%) IBM
5 2 (1.32%) Juniper
5 2 (1.32%) McAfee
5 2 (1.32%) Siebel
6 1 (0.66%) Adobe
6 1 (0.66%) Charles River
6 1 (0.66%) Genesys
6 1 (0.66%) Meraki
6 1 (0.66%) Murex
6 1 (0.66%) Splunk
6 1 (0.66%) Tealium