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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 566 455 585
Rank change year-on-year -111 +130 -82
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 137 190 308
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.45% 0.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.21% 0.49% 0.38%
Number of salaries quoted 100 144 272
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £33,775
25th Percentile £42,500 £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 £60,255 £63,375 £56,250
90th Percentile £65,250 £67,500 £84,875
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 65,992 38,867 81,094
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 75.24% 92.91% 85.83%
Number of salaries quoted 40,690 22,673 59,246
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £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% -10.86%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -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 21 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 21 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 -111 126 £50,000 +5.26% 56
UK excluding London -100 93 £47,500 +11.76% 49
Work from Home -38 39 £46,000 -8.00% 34
London -36 35 £55,000 -15.38% 18
South West -39 31 £47,500 +26.67% 7
South East -66 19 £52,500 +10.53% 18
Midlands -41 18 £40,000 -11.11% 7
North of England -68 16 £50,000 +17.65% 10
East Midlands -53 14 £30,000 -45.45% 3
North West -31 11 £42,500 -5.56% 7
East of England -35 7 £45,000 +28.57% 5
West Midlands -38 4 £47,500 +11.76% 4
Yorkshire -60 3 £50,000 +65.33% 2
Wales -29 2 £25,000 -
North East -43 2 £55,000 +59.42% 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 4 (2.92%) Confluence
2 1 (0.73%) Apache
2 1 (0.73%) CMS
Applications
1 3 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.73%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.73%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.73%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 59 (43.07%) Azure
2 40 (29.20%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (14.60%) AWS
4 14 (10.22%) GCP
5 12 (8.76%) BrowserStack
6 4 (2.92%) SaaS
7 1 (0.73%) Algolia
7 1 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (0.73%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.73%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (0.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (0.73%) BlazeMeter
7 1 (0.73%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (0.73%) Power Platform
7 1 (0.73%) SonarCloud
7 1 (0.73%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.19%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.46%) HTTP
3 1 (0.73%) Cisco IOS
3 1 (0.73%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.73%) FTP
3 1 (0.73%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.73%) SNMP
3 1 (0.73%) Spanning Tree
3 1 (0.73%) SSH
3 1 (0.73%) TACACS
3 1 (0.73%) VoIP
3 1 (0.73%) WAN
3 1 (0.73%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (4.38%) Relational Database
2 4 (2.92%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.46%) DB2
3 2 (1.46%) Metadata
3 2 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.73%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.73%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.73%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.73%) Power BI
4 1 (0.73%) Power Query
4 1 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (27.74%) Selenium
2 28 (20.44%) JIRA
3 24 (17.52%) Cypress.io
4 22 (16.06%) Postman
5 10 (7.30%) Jenkins
6 7 (5.11%) SpecFlow
6 7 (5.11%) Zephyr
7 6 (4.38%) Git
8 5 (3.65%) SoapUI
8 5 (3.65%) TestRail
9 4 (2.92%) Cucumber
9 4 (2.92%) GitLab
9 4 (2.92%) Subversion
10 3 (2.19%) Bitbucket
10 3 (2.19%) JMeter
10 3 (2.19%) JUnit
10 3 (2.19%) LoadRunner
10 3 (2.19%) TeamCity
11 2 (1.46%) Visual Studio
11 2 (1.46%) webpack
General
1 33 (24.09%) Social Skills
2 20 (14.60%) Analytical Skills
3 17 (12.41%) Finance
4 10 (7.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 7 (5.11%) Banking
6 5 (3.65%) Digital Healthcare
7 4 (2.92%) Advertising
7 4 (2.92%) Back Office
8 3 (2.19%) Health Technology
8 3 (2.19%) Retail
8 3 (2.19%) Tech for Good
9 2 (1.46%) Electronics
9 2 (1.46%) Games
9 2 (1.46%) Law
9 2 (1.46%) Marketing
9 2 (1.46%) Public Sector
9 2 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.73%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.73%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 27 (19.71%) Lead
2 25 (18.25%) Tester
3 23 (16.79%) QA Engineer
4 19 (13.87%) QA Leader
4 19 (13.87%) Test Engineer
5 15 (10.95%) Test Leader
6 14 (10.22%) Analyst
7 12 (8.76%) Senior
7 12 (8.76%) Test Analyst
8 10 (7.30%) Software Engineer
9 9 (6.57%) Automation Engineer
9 9 (6.57%) QA Automation Engineer
10 8 (5.84%) Development Engineer
10 8 (5.84%) Graduate
10 8 (5.84%) Software Development Engineer
10 8 (5.84%) Test Automation Engineer
10 8 (5.84%) Test Development Engineer
11 7 (5.11%) Junior
11 7 (5.11%) Manual Tester
11 7 (5.11%) QA Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (27.74%) Playwright
2 7 (5.11%) .NET
2 7 (5.11%) CSS
2 7 (5.11%) HTML
2 7 (5.11%) React
3 4 (2.92%) XML
4 3 (2.19%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (2.19%) FIX Protocol
5 2 (1.46%) AngularJS
5 2 (1.46%) CSS3
5 2 (1.46%) Gherkin
5 2 (1.46%) HTML5
5 2 (1.46%) Laravel
5 2 (1.46%) RESTful
5 2 (1.46%) Sass
5 2 (1.46%) Swagger
5 2 (1.46%) Vue
6 1 (0.73%) Kafka
6 1 (0.73%) pytest
6 1 (0.73%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 10 (7.30%) Product Ownership
2 4 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
3 3 (2.19%) Derivative
3 3 (2.19%) Equities
3 3 (2.19%) Fixed Income
3 3 (2.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 3 (2.19%) Housing Association
3 3 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (2.19%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.46%) Embedded Systems
4 2 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.46%) IoT
5 1 (0.73%) Low-Code
5 1 (0.73%) Management Information System
5 1 (0.73%) Mobile App
5 1 (0.73%) Security Posture
5 1 (0.73%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (0.73%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.84%) Windows
2 7 (5.11%) Linux
3 4 (2.92%) Windows Server
3 4 (2.92%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.73%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (85.40%) Test Automation
2 74 (54.01%) CI/CD
3 56 (40.88%) Agile
3 56 (40.88%) Software Testing
4 54 (39.42%) DevOps
5 46 (33.58%) Regression Testing
6 37 (27.01%) API Testing
6 37 (27.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 36 (26.28%) Test Strategy
8 33 (24.09%) SDLC
9 31 (22.63%) Test Scripting
10 28 (20.44%) User Acceptance Testing
11 26 (18.98%) Acceptance Criteria
12 22 (16.06%) Defect Management
12 22 (16.06%) Scrum
13 18 (13.14%) Performance Testing
14 17 (12.41%) Non-Functional Testing
15 16 (11.68%) Mentoring
16 14 (10.22%) Problem-Solving
16 14 (10.22%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 29 (21.17%) JavaScript
1 29 (21.17%) SQL
2 21 (15.33%) C#
2 21 (15.33%) TypeScript
3 12 (8.76%) Python
4 9 (6.57%) Java
5 5 (3.65%) Bash
6 3 (2.19%) PowerShell
7 2 (1.46%) C++
7 2 (1.46%) COBOL
7 2 (1.46%) PHP
7 2 (1.46%) RPG
Qualifications
1 45 (32.85%) ISTQB
2 22 (16.06%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 18 (13.14%) Degree
4 10 (7.30%) Security Cleared
5 9 (6.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (3.65%) ISEB
7 4 (2.92%) DV Cleared
8 3 (2.19%) Master's Degree
8 3 (2.19%) SC Cleared
9 1 (0.73%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.73%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (48.91%) QA
2 27 (19.71%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.46%) GDPR
3 2 (1.46%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.73%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (3.65%) Active Directory
2 4 (2.92%) Docker
3 3 (2.19%) Terminal Server
3 3 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (2.92%) Kubernetes
1 4 (2.92%) SCCM
1 4 (2.92%) SCOM
1 4 (2.92%) Terraform
2 3 (2.19%) Ansible
3 2 (1.46%) Grafana
4 1 (0.73%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.73%) Kibana
4 1 (0.73%) Nessus
4 1 (0.73%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (6.57%) Microsoft
2 8 (5.84%) Salesforce
3 4 (2.92%) Cisco
3 4 (2.92%) VMware
4 3 (2.19%) HP
4 3 (2.19%) Juniper
4 3 (2.19%) McAfee
4 3 (2.19%) ServiceNow
5 2 (1.46%) IBM
5 2 (1.46%) Oracle
5 2 (1.46%) Siebel
6 1 (0.73%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.73%) Genesys
6 1 (0.73%) Meraki
6 1 (0.73%) SAP
6 1 (0.73%) Splunk