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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 512 493 526
Rank change year-on-year -19 +33 -29
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 130 217 197
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.40% 0.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.44% 0.41%
Number of salaries quoted 95 131 170
10th Percentile £33,750 £31,925 £33,975
25th Percentile £42,500 £41,625 £40,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.99%
75th Percentile £62,500 £65,000 £57,500
90th Percentile £70,750 £77,500 £73,300
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year - +5.56% -10.00%

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 48,581 48,989 48,580
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.32% 90.25% 90.41%
Number of salaries quoted 28,539 24,001 36,978
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 +26 126 £51,500 +3.00% 108
UK excluding London -9 84 £47,500 - 103
London +31 43 £55,000 -15.38% 17
Work from Home +10 40 £50,000 -9.09% 55
South East +22 26 £52,500 +10.53% 30
South West +18 26 £45,000 -10.00% 11
Midlands +2 16 £40,000 -27.27% 14
East Midlands +3 12 £36,250 -34.09% 8
East of England +24 8 £45,000 +44.00% 19
North of England -19 6 £52,500 +18.98% 20
West Midlands +5 4 £46,750 -10.95% 6
North West +4 2 £45,000 - 6
North East 0 2 £55,000 -8.33% 2
Yorkshire -18 2 £57,500 +84.04% 12
Northern Ireland -6 1 £52,500 - 2
Scotland -14 1 - - 4

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 (3.85%) Confluence
2 1 (0.77%) Apache
2 1 (0.77%) CMS
2 1 (0.77%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.77%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (7.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (2.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.77%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.77%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 32 (24.62%) Azure
2 28 (21.54%) Azure DevOps
3 17 (13.08%) AWS
4 7 (5.38%) Power Platform
5 5 (3.85%) GCP
5 5 (3.85%) SaaS
6 4 (3.08%) BrowserStack
7 3 (2.31%) Adobe Analytics
7 3 (2.31%) Datadog
7 3 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.54%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.77%) Algolia
9 1 (0.77%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.77%) dbt
9 1 (0.77%) GitHub
9 1 (0.77%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.77%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.54%) Cisco ISE
2 1 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.77%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.77%) FTP
2 1 (0.77%) HTTP
2 1 (0.77%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.77%) SNMP
2 1 (0.77%) Spanning Tree
2 1 (0.77%) SSH
2 1 (0.77%) TACACS
2 1 (0.77%) WAN
2 1 (0.77%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.69%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.31%) Mixpanel
2 3 (2.31%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.54%) DB2
3 2 (1.54%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.77%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.77%) Metadata
4 1 (0.77%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 35 (26.92%) Selenium
2 33 (25.38%) JIRA
3 25 (19.23%) Postman
4 12 (9.23%) Jenkins
5 11 (8.46%) Cypress.io
6 10 (7.69%) Git
7 9 (6.92%) eCATT
8 7 (5.38%) SoapUI
9 5 (3.85%) Zephyr
10 4 (3.08%) SpecFlow
10 4 (3.08%) TestNG
10 4 (3.08%) TestRail
11 3 (2.31%) Browser DevTools
11 3 (2.31%) Cucumber
11 3 (2.31%) Fiddler
11 3 (2.31%) GitLab
11 3 (2.31%) JMeter
11 3 (2.31%) LoadRunner
11 3 (2.31%) Maven
11 3 (2.31%) WebDriver
General
1 28 (21.54%) Social Skills
2 25 (19.23%) Analytical Skills
2 25 (19.23%) Finance
3 16 (12.31%) Marketing
4 10 (7.69%) Manufacturing
5 9 (6.92%) Influencing Skills
5 9 (6.92%) Presentation Skills
6 7 (5.38%) Games
7 6 (4.62%) Banking
7 6 (4.62%) Law
8 4 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (3.08%) Electronics
8 4 (3.08%) Public Sector
9 3 (2.31%) Back Office
9 3 (2.31%) Legal
9 3 (2.31%) Tech for Good
10 2 (1.54%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.54%) Health Technology
10 2 (1.54%) Retail
10 2 (1.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 28 (21.54%) Tester
2 27 (20.77%) Test Engineer
3 25 (19.23%) Analyst
3 25 (19.23%) Senior
4 22 (16.92%) Test Analyst
5 21 (16.15%) QA Engineer
6 20 (15.38%) Lead
7 16 (12.31%) Test Automation Engineer
8 14 (10.77%) QA Leader
9 9 (6.92%) Automation Test Analyst
9 9 (6.92%) Senior Test Engineer
10 8 (6.15%) QA Analyst
11 7 (5.38%) Automation Tester
11 7 (5.38%) Manual Tester
11 7 (5.38%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
12 6 (4.62%) QA Test Analyst
12 6 (4.62%) Quality Engineer
12 6 (4.62%) Test Leader
13 5 (3.85%) Senior Quality Engineer
13 5 (3.85%) Software Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (17.69%) Playwright
2 9 (6.92%) CSS
2 9 (6.92%) HTML
3 7 (5.38%) React
4 6 (4.62%) .NET
4 6 (4.62%) XML
5 5 (3.85%) RESTful
6 4 (3.08%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (3.08%) REST
7 3 (2.31%) FIX Protocol
8 2 (1.54%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.54%) CSS3
8 2 (1.54%) Gherkin
8 2 (1.54%) HTML5
8 2 (1.54%) pytest
8 2 (1.54%) Sass
9 1 (0.77%) JSON
9 1 (0.77%) Node.js
9 1 (0.77%) OAuth
9 1 (0.77%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.92%) Product Ownership
2 5 (3.85%) Analytical Mindset
3 4 (3.08%) Derivative
3 4 (3.08%) Equities
3 4 (3.08%) Fixed Income
4 3 (2.31%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.31%) IoT
4 3 (2.31%) Mobile App
4 3 (2.31%) Virtual Team
4 3 (2.31%) W3C
5 2 (1.54%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.54%) Low-Code
5 2 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.77%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.77%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.77%) Operational Technology
6 1 (0.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.38%) Windows
2 6 (4.62%) Linux
3 3 (2.31%) Windows Server
3 3 (2.31%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.77%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 65 (50.00%) Agile
3 51 (39.23%) Software Testing
4 47 (36.15%) CI/CD
5 38 (29.23%) Regression Testing
6 37 (28.46%) API Testing
7 35 (26.92%) Test Scripting
8 33 (25.38%) DevOps
9 30 (23.08%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (20.77%) Test Strategy
11 26 (20.00%) Scrum
12 22 (16.92%) End-to-End Testing
12 22 (16.92%) Non-Functional Testing
13 21 (16.15%) SDLC
13 21 (16.15%) Validation
14 20 (15.38%) Integration Testing
14 20 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
15 19 (14.62%) Scenario Testing
16 18 (13.85%) Defect Management
17 17 (13.08%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 42 (32.31%) SQL
2 27 (20.77%) JavaScript
3 23 (17.69%) C#
4 20 (15.38%) Python
5 19 (14.62%) Java
6 14 (10.77%) TypeScript
7 5 (3.85%) Bash
8 2 (1.54%) Groovy
8 2 (1.54%) PHP
8 2 (1.54%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.54%) RPG
Qualifications
1 40 (30.77%) ISTQB
2 21 (16.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 18 (13.85%) Security Cleared
4 14 (10.77%) Degree
5 11 (8.46%) SC Cleared
6 7 (5.38%) DV Cleared
7 6 (4.62%) ISEB
8 4 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (2.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (50.00%) QA
2 17 (13.08%) Accessibility
3 5 (3.85%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.54%) Section 508
4 2 (1.54%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (5.38%) Docker
2 4 (3.08%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.54%) Terminal Server
3 2 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (7.69%) HP ALM
2 7 (5.38%) Kubernetes
3 4 (3.08%) Terraform
4 3 (2.31%) SCCM
4 3 (2.31%) SCOM
5 2 (1.54%) Ansible
5 2 (1.54%) Grafana
5 2 (1.54%) Nessus
5 2 (1.54%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 11 (8.46%) SAP
2 10 (7.69%) HP
3 5 (3.85%) Microsoft
4 4 (3.08%) Oracle
5 3 (2.31%) Adobe
5 3 (2.31%) Cisco
5 3 (2.31%) ServiceNow
5 3 (2.31%) Tealium
5 3 (2.31%) VMware
6 2 (1.54%) IBM
6 2 (1.54%) Juniper
6 2 (1.54%) McAfee
6 2 (1.54%) Siebel
7 1 (0.77%) Charles River
7 1 (0.77%) Genesys
7 1 (0.77%) Meraki
7 1 (0.77%) Murex
7 1 (0.77%) Pega
7 1 (0.77%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.77%) Sitecore