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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 600 457 586
Rank change year-on-year -143 +129 -92
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 130 185 308
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.44% 0.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.19% 0.47% 0.38%
Number of salaries quoted 94 141 270
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £33,750
25th Percentile £42,563 £37,500 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,750 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £59,688 £63,250 £57,188
90th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £85,100
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £42,500 £42,000
% change year-on-year +11.76% +1.19% -6.67%

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 67,035 39,288 81,690
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.86% 92.85% 85.64%
Number of salaries quoted 41,557 22,685 59,435
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.93%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -116 120 £50,000 +5.26% 57
UK excluding London -106 89 £47,500 +11.76% 49
Work from Home -44 38 £46,750 -6.50% 30
London -28 33 £55,000 -15.38% 17
South West -34 31 £47,500 +26.67% 10
South East -65 19 £52,500 +10.53% 17
Midlands -47 16 £30,000 -33.33% 7
North of England -63 14 £50,000 +16.62% 9
East Midlands -42 13 £30,000 -45.45% 3
North West -28 10 £49,250 +9.44% 5
East of England -25 7 £45,000 +28.57% 5
West Midlands -33 3 £55,000 +29.41% 4
Wales -29 2 £25,000 - 1
North East -46 2 £55,000 +59.42% 1
Yorkshire -62 2 £50,000 +53.92% 3

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 (2.31%) Confluence
2 1 (0.77%) Apache
2 1 (0.77%) CMS
Applications
1 2 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.77%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 58 (44.62%) Azure
2 39 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (15.38%) AWS
4 14 (10.77%) GCP
5 11 (8.46%) BrowserStack
6 4 (3.08%) SaaS
7 1 (0.77%) Algolia
7 1 (0.77%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.77%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.77%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (0.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (0.77%) BlazeMeter
7 1 (0.77%) Power Platform
7 1 (0.77%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.31%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.54%) HTTP
3 1 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
3 1 (0.77%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.77%) FTP
3 1 (0.77%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.77%) SNMP
3 1 (0.77%) Spanning Tree
3 1 (0.77%) SSH
3 1 (0.77%) TACACS
3 1 (0.77%) VoIP
3 1 (0.77%) WAN
3 1 (0.77%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.08%) Relational Database
1 4 (3.08%) SQL Server
2 2 (1.54%) DB2
2 2 (1.54%) Metadata
2 2 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.77%) Data Lake
3 1 (0.77%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.77%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.77%) Power BI
3 1 (0.77%) Power Query
3 1 (0.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 35 (26.92%) Selenium
2 25 (19.23%) JIRA
3 24 (18.46%) Cypress.io
4 20 (15.38%) Postman
5 9 (6.92%) Jenkins
6 7 (5.38%) Zephyr
7 6 (4.62%) Git
7 6 (4.62%) SpecFlow
8 5 (3.85%) TestRail
9 4 (3.08%) Cucumber
9 4 (3.08%) GitLab
9 4 (3.08%) SoapUI
9 4 (3.08%) Subversion
10 3 (2.31%) Bitbucket
10 3 (2.31%) JMeter
10 3 (2.31%) JUnit
10 3 (2.31%) LoadRunner
10 3 (2.31%) TeamCity
11 2 (1.54%) REST Assured
11 2 (1.54%) webpack
General
1 30 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 17 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (11.54%) Finance
4 10 (7.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 5 (3.85%) Banking
5 5 (3.85%) Digital Healthcare
6 4 (3.08%) Advertising
7 3 (2.31%) Health Technology
7 3 (2.31%) Retail
7 3 (2.31%) Tech for Good
8 2 (1.54%) Back Office
8 2 (1.54%) Games
8 2 (1.54%) Law
9 1 (0.77%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.77%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.77%) Electronics
9 1 (0.77%) Marketing
9 1 (0.77%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 26 (20.00%) Lead
2 23 (17.69%) Tester
3 21 (16.15%) QA Engineer
4 19 (14.62%) QA Leader
4 19 (14.62%) Test Engineer
5 14 (10.77%) Test Leader
6 12 (9.23%) Senior
7 10 (7.69%) Software Engineer
8 9 (6.92%) Analyst
8 9 (6.92%) Automation Engineer
8 9 (6.92%) QA Automation Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Development Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Graduate
9 8 (6.15%) Software Development Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Test Automation Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Test Development Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Junior
10 7 (5.38%) Manual Tester
10 7 (5.38%) Quality Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (27.69%) Playwright
2 5 (3.85%) .NET
2 5 (3.85%) CSS
2 5 (3.85%) HTML
2 5 (3.85%) React
3 3 (2.31%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (1.54%) AngularJS
4 2 (1.54%) CSS3
4 2 (1.54%) Gherkin
4 2 (1.54%) HTML5
4 2 (1.54%) Laravel
4 2 (1.54%) RESTful
4 2 (1.54%) Sass
4 2 (1.54%) Swagger
4 2 (1.54%) Vue
4 2 (1.54%) XML
5 1 (0.77%) .NET Framework
5 1 (0.77%) FIX Protocol
5 1 (0.77%) Kafka
5 1 (0.77%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.92%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.31%) Analytical Mindset
2 3 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (2.31%) Housing Association
2 3 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (1.54%) Embedded Systems
3 2 (1.54%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (1.54%) Virtual Team
4 1 (0.77%) Derivative
4 1 (0.77%) Equities
4 1 (0.77%) Fixed Income
4 1 (0.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (0.77%) IoT
4 1 (0.77%) Low-Code
4 1 (0.77%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.77%) Mobile App
4 1 (0.77%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (0.77%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 6 (4.62%) Windows
2 5 (3.85%) Linux
3 4 (3.08%) Windows Server
3 4 (3.08%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.77%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (86.15%) Test Automation
2 74 (56.92%) CI/CD
3 54 (41.54%) DevOps
4 53 (40.77%) Agile
4 53 (40.77%) Software Testing
5 43 (33.08%) Regression Testing
6 37 (28.46%) Continuous Improvement
7 36 (27.69%) API Testing
8 34 (26.15%) Test Strategy
9 32 (24.62%) SDLC
10 28 (21.54%) Test Scripting
11 26 (20.00%) User Acceptance Testing
12 24 (18.46%) Acceptance Criteria
13 21 (16.15%) Scrum
14 20 (15.38%) Defect Management
15 17 (13.08%) Mentoring
15 17 (13.08%) Performance Testing
16 15 (11.54%) Non-Functional Testing
17 13 (10.00%) Continuous Integration
17 13 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 26 (20.00%) JavaScript
2 24 (18.46%) SQL
3 20 (15.38%) C#
4 19 (14.62%) TypeScript
5 9 (6.92%) Python
6 8 (6.15%) Java
7 5 (3.85%) Bash
8 3 (2.31%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.54%) C++
9 2 (1.54%) COBOL
9 2 (1.54%) PHP
9 2 (1.54%) RPG
10 1 (0.77%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 40 (30.77%) ISTQB
2 19 (14.62%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 17 (13.08%) Degree
4 9 (6.92%) Computer Science Degree
4 9 (6.92%) Security Cleared
5 4 (3.08%) DV Cleared
6 3 (2.31%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.54%) ISEB
7 2 (1.54%) SC Cleared
8 1 (0.77%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (48.46%) QA
2 26 (20.00%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.54%) GDPR
3 2 (1.54%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.77%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (3.85%) Active Directory
2 4 (3.08%) Docker
3 3 (2.31%) Terminal Server
3 3 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (3.08%) Kubernetes
1 4 (3.08%) SCCM
1 4 (3.08%) SCOM
1 4 (3.08%) Terraform
2 3 (2.31%) Ansible
3 2 (1.54%) Grafana
4 1 (0.77%) Kibana
4 1 (0.77%) Nessus
4 1 (0.77%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (6.92%) Microsoft
2 8 (6.15%) Salesforce
3 4 (3.08%) Cisco
3 4 (3.08%) VMware
4 3 (2.31%) Juniper
4 3 (2.31%) McAfee
4 3 (2.31%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.54%) HP
5 2 (1.54%) IBM
6 1 (0.77%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.77%) Meraki
6 1 (0.77%) Oracle
6 1 (0.77%) Pega