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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 557 526 627
Rank change year-on-year -31 +101 -127
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 215 152 202
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.31% 0.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.28% 0.34% 0.29%
Number of salaries quoted 118 114 158
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,000 £34,625
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,063 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £45,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £57,875 £62,188 £63,438
90th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £82,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £40,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -

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 76,038 44,320 69,725
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.68% 89.51% 81.15%
Number of salaries quoted 52,466 25,228 46,329
10th Percentile £30,603 £28,500 £30,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.41%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 1 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 1 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 -10 168 £50,000 +25.00% 48
England -67 150 £50,000 +11.11% 54
Work from Home +22 105 £50,000 +4.17% 27
Northern Ireland -30 48 - - 2
South West -48 38 £45,000 +12.50% 13
London -51 34 £50,000 -20.32% 14
South East -41 30 £52,500 +23.53% 13
North of England -31 23 £50,000 +42.86% 8
North West +8 15 £50,000 +17.65% 5
Midlands -25 15 £43,750 +2.94% 9
East Midlands -19 11 £40,000 -13.51% 2
East of England -24 9 £55,000 +3.77% 1
North East -53 6 £50,000 +44.93% 1
Wales -57 5 £32,000 -46.67% 2
West Midlands -32 4 £56,250 +32.35% 7
Yorkshire -30 2 £50,000 +42.86% 2

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 (2.33%) Confluence
2 4 (1.86%) SharePoint
Applications
1 13 (6.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (3.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.93%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.47%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (0.47%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.47%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 62 (28.84%) Azure
2 55 (25.58%) SaaS
3 44 (20.47%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (8.37%) AWS
5 10 (4.65%) Power Platform
6 9 (4.19%) GitHub
7 7 (3.26%) GCP
8 6 (2.79%) BrowserStack
9 4 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (1.40%) PowerApps
11 2 (0.93%) Azure Service Bus
12 1 (0.47%) Amazon ECS
12 1 (0.47%) Amazon EKS
12 1 (0.47%) AWS CodePipeline
12 1 (0.47%) Azure AKS
12 1 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
12 1 (0.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 1 (0.47%) Copilot Studio
12 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Copilot
12 1 (0.47%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.86%) 5G
1 4 (1.86%) SD-WAN
1 4 (1.86%) WAN
2 3 (1.40%) HTTP
3 1 (0.47%) Broadband
3 1 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
3 1 (0.47%) Internet
3 1 (0.47%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.47%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.79%) Power BI
2 3 (1.40%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (0.93%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.93%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.47%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.47%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.47%) Flink
4 1 (0.47%) Metadata
4 1 (0.47%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.47%) Power Query
4 1 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 50 (23.26%) Selenium
2 27 (12.56%) JIRA
2 27 (12.56%) Postman
3 25 (11.63%) Cypress.io
4 19 (8.84%) Jenkins
5 16 (7.44%) Git
6 10 (4.65%) Zephyr
7 8 (3.72%) SpecFlow
8 7 (3.26%) TestRail
9 6 (2.79%) GitLab
9 6 (2.79%) JMeter
9 6 (2.79%) REST Assured
10 5 (2.33%) JUnit
10 5 (2.33%) LabVIEW
11 3 (1.40%) Appium
11 3 (1.40%) Bugzilla
11 3 (1.40%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.93%) Gatling
12 2 (0.93%) Katalon Studio
12 2 (0.93%) TestNG
General
1 97 (45.12%) Social Skills
2 50 (23.26%) Legal
3 33 (15.35%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (13.02%) Finance
5 27 (12.56%) Law
6 19 (8.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (5.58%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (4.65%) Public Sector
9 7 (3.26%) Electronics
10 5 (2.33%) Aviation
10 5 (2.33%) Digital Healthcare
11 4 (1.86%) Advertising
11 4 (1.86%) Retail
12 3 (1.40%) Aerospace
12 3 (1.40%) Back Office
12 3 (1.40%) Banking
12 3 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.93%) Games
13 2 (0.93%) Military
14 1 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 73 (33.95%) Senior
2 51 (23.72%) Testing Manager
3 50 (23.26%) Senior Manager
4 34 (15.81%) Test Engineer
5 27 (12.56%) Analyst
5 27 (12.56%) Tester
6 24 (11.16%) QA Engineer
7 21 (9.77%) Lead
8 20 (9.30%) Test Analyst
9 13 (6.05%) QA Leader
10 12 (5.58%) Junior
11 10 (4.65%) Automation Engineer
11 10 (4.65%) QA Automation Engineer
11 10 (4.65%) Test Leader
12 9 (4.19%) Quality Engineer
12 9 (4.19%) Senior Test Engineer
13 8 (3.72%) Manual Tester
14 7 (3.26%) Automation Tester
14 7 (3.26%) Head of Testing
14 7 (3.26%) Infrastructure Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (18.14%) Playwright
2 12 (5.58%) CSS
3 11 (5.12%) HTML
4 5 (2.33%) Node.js
4 5 (2.33%) pytest
4 5 (2.33%) REST
5 4 (1.86%) .NET
5 4 (1.86%) Kafka
6 3 (1.40%) Gherkin
6 3 (1.40%) React
6 3 (1.40%) Swagger
7 2 (0.93%) Laravel
7 2 (0.93%) Vue
8 1 (0.47%) .NET Framework
8 1 (0.47%) ADO
8 1 (0.47%) GStreamer
8 1 (0.47%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.47%) React Native
8 1 (0.47%) RESTful
8 1 (0.47%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 50 (23.26%) Virtual Team
2 17 (7.91%) Product Ownership
3 10 (4.65%) Mobile App
4 4 (1.86%) Embedded Systems
4 4 (1.86%) Self-Driving Car
5 3 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (1.40%) Hackathon
5 3 (1.40%) Housing Association
6 2 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (0.93%) Management Information System
6 2 (0.93%) NHS
6 2 (0.93%) Onboarding
6 2 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
7 1 (0.47%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.47%) Low-Code
7 1 (0.47%) PKI
7 1 (0.47%) PropTech
7 1 (0.47%) Robotics
7 1 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.47%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 17 (7.91%) Windows
2 5 (2.33%) Linux
3 4 (1.86%) Unix
4 1 (0.47%) Android
4 1 (0.47%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.47%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.47%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (90.23%) Test Automation
2 122 (56.74%) DevOps
3 118 (54.88%) Software Testing
4 113 (52.56%) Continuous Improvement
5 90 (41.86%) Test Strategy
6 85 (39.53%) Mentoring
7 80 (37.21%) Agile
8 79 (36.74%) CI/CD
9 59 (27.44%) Software Engineering
10 58 (26.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 52 (24.19%) Data Management
11 52 (24.19%) Project Delivery
11 52 (24.19%) Regression Testing
12 50 (23.26%) Budget Management
12 50 (23.26%) Change Advisory Board
12 50 (23.26%) Enterprise Architecture
12 50 (23.26%) Performance Management
12 50 (23.26%) Programme Management
12 50 (23.26%) Strategic Planning
12 50 (23.26%) Virtual Team Management
Programming Languages
1 77 (35.81%) Python
2 71 (33.02%) JavaScript
3 67 (31.16%) C#
4 60 (27.91%) TypeScript
5 54 (25.12%) PowerShell
6 41 (19.07%) SQL
7 14 (6.51%) Java
8 8 (3.72%) MATLAB
9 5 (2.33%) Bash
10 3 (1.40%) C++
11 2 (0.93%) COBOL
11 2 (0.93%) PHP
12 1 (0.47%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 31 (14.42%) ISTQB
2 22 (10.23%) Degree
3 12 (5.58%) Security Cleared
4 11 (5.12%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 10 (4.65%) SC Cleared
6 6 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 6 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.86%) HND
8 3 (1.40%) Chartered Engineer
9 2 (0.93%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.47%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (66.05%) QA
2 17 (7.91%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.33%) Software Quality Assurance
4 3 (1.40%) GDPR
4 3 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 2 (0.93%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.93%) WAI
5 2 (0.93%) WAI-ARIA
5 2 (0.93%) WCAG
6 1 (0.47%) Data Quality
System Software
1 3 (1.40%) Docker
2 2 (0.93%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.93%) Firmware
3 1 (0.47%) Terminal Server
3 1 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 5 (2.33%) Ansible
1 5 (2.33%) Terraform
2 2 (0.93%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.47%) Grafana
3 1 (0.47%) Kibana
3 1 (0.47%) SCCM
3 1 (0.47%) SCOM
Vendors
1 26 (12.09%) Microsoft
2 10 (4.65%) Oracle
3 8 (3.72%) Salesforce
4 5 (2.33%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.40%) Databricks
6 2 (0.93%) HP
7 1 (0.47%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.47%) Cisco
7 1 (0.47%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.47%) Juniper
7 1 (0.47%) McAfee
7 1 (0.47%) Pega
7 1 (0.47%) VMware