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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 601 479 608
Rank change year-on-year -122 +129 -105
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 136 169 297
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.40% 0.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.42% 0.36%
Number of salaries quoted 94 123 261
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,875 £64,125 £57,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £86,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £42,500 £42,500
% change year-on-year +11.76% - -5.56%

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 68,427 39,782 82,504
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.76% 93.32% 84.70%
Number of salaries quoted 44,356 20,831 59,666
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,797 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.84% +8.18% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +0.96% +4.00% -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 23 May 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 23 May 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 -119 123 £50,000 +5.26% 55
UK excluding London -59 94 £47,500 +11.76% 46
Work from Home -37 34 £50,000 -5.66% 32
South West -37 32 £47,500 +18.75% 5
London -51 30 £55,000 -14.06% 16
South East -34 24 £50,000 +9.89% 11
North of England -50 16 £50,000 +42.86% 11
Midlands -36 14 £30,000 -29.41% 7
North West +2 12 £50,000 +14.29% 8
East Midlands -27 11 £30,000 -47.83% 1
East of England -19 6 £45,000 -15.09% 5
West Midlands -44 3 £57,500 +41.98% 6
Yorkshire -41 2 £50,000 +42.86% 2
North East -46 2 £55,000 +59.42% 1
Wales - 2 £25,000 - 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 3 (2.21%) Confluence
2 1 (0.74%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.74%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 58 (42.65%) Azure
2 42 (30.88%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (13.97%) AWS
4 13 (9.56%) GCP
5 11 (8.09%) BrowserStack
6 3 (2.21%) SaaS
7 2 (1.47%) Azure Service Bus
7 2 (1.47%) GitHub
7 2 (1.47%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.74%) Algolia
8 1 (0.74%) AWS CodePipeline
8 1 (0.74%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (0.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 1 (0.74%) BlazeMeter
8 1 (0.74%) Copilot Studio
8 1 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.74%) Microsoft Copilot
8 1 (0.74%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.21%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.47%) HTTP
3 1 (0.74%) 5G
3 1 (0.74%) Broadband
3 1 (0.74%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.74%) VoIP
3 1 (0.74%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.94%) Relational Database
1 4 (2.94%) SQL Server
2 3 (2.21%) Metadata
2 3 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (1.47%) DB2
4 1 (0.74%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.74%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.74%) Power BI
4 1 (0.74%) Power Query
4 1 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 37 (27.21%) Selenium
2 24 (17.65%) JIRA
3 22 (16.18%) Cypress.io
4 19 (13.97%) Postman
5 12 (8.82%) Jenkins
6 9 (6.62%) Git
7 8 (5.88%) Zephyr
8 6 (4.41%) SpecFlow
9 5 (3.68%) TestRail
10 4 (2.94%) Cucumber
10 4 (2.94%) GitLab
10 4 (2.94%) JUnit
10 4 (2.94%) REST Assured
10 4 (2.94%) Subversion
11 3 (2.21%) Bitbucket
11 3 (2.21%) SoapUI
11 3 (2.21%) TeamCity
12 2 (1.47%) JMeter
12 2 (1.47%) webpack
13 1 (0.74%) Katalon Studio
General
1 32 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 19 (13.97%) Finance
3 16 (11.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 13 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (3.68%) Digital Healthcare
6 4 (2.94%) Advertising
6 4 (2.94%) Banking
6 4 (2.94%) Electronics
6 4 (2.94%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.21%) Aerospace
7 3 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.21%) Retail
8 2 (1.47%) Back Office
8 2 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.47%) Law
8 2 (1.47%) Military
9 1 (0.74%) Aviation
9 1 (0.74%) Games
9 1 (0.74%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.74%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 29 (21.32%) Test Engineer
2 24 (17.65%) Lead
3 21 (15.44%) QA Engineer
4 19 (13.97%) Tester
5 17 (12.50%) Senior
6 16 (11.76%) QA Leader
7 14 (10.29%) Test Leader
8 11 (8.09%) Software Engineer
9 10 (7.35%) Software Test Engineer
10 9 (6.62%) Automation Engineer
10 9 (6.62%) QA Automation Engineer
11 8 (5.88%) Analyst
11 8 (5.88%) Development Engineer
11 8 (5.88%) Graduate
11 8 (5.88%) Software Development Engineer
11 8 (5.88%) Test Development Engineer
12 7 (5.15%) Junior
12 7 (5.15%) Quality Engineer
12 7 (5.15%) Test Analyst
12 7 (5.15%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (24.26%) Playwright
2 5 (3.68%) CSS
2 5 (3.68%) HTML
3 4 (2.94%) .NET
3 4 (2.94%) React
3 4 (2.94%) REST
3 4 (2.94%) Swagger
4 3 (2.21%) RESTful
5 2 (1.47%) CSS3
5 2 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (1.47%) Gherkin
5 2 (1.47%) HTML5
5 2 (1.47%) Kafka
5 2 (1.47%) Laravel
5 2 (1.47%) pytest
5 2 (1.47%) Sass
5 2 (1.47%) Vue
6 1 (0.74%) .NET Core
6 1 (0.74%) GraphQL
6 1 (0.74%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 13 (9.56%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.21%) Embedded Systems
2 3 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (2.21%) Housing Association
2 3 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (1.47%) Hackathon
3 2 (1.47%) Mobile App
3 2 (1.47%) NHS
3 2 (1.47%) Onboarding
3 2 (1.47%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (0.74%) Low-Code
4 1 (0.74%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.74%) Reinsurance
4 1 (0.74%) Robotics
4 1 (0.74%) Self-Driving Car
4 1 (0.74%) Virtual Team
4 1 (0.74%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 9 (6.62%) Windows
2 4 (2.94%) Windows Server
2 4 (2.94%) Windows Server 2019
3 3 (2.21%) Linux
4 1 (0.74%) Android
4 1 (0.74%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.74%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.74%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (88.24%) Test Automation
2 71 (52.21%) CI/CD
3 62 (45.59%) Agile
3 62 (45.59%) Software Testing
4 55 (40.44%) DevOps
5 42 (30.88%) Regression Testing
6 40 (29.41%) Continuous Improvement
7 39 (28.68%) Test Strategy
8 34 (25.00%) API Testing
9 33 (24.26%) SDLC
10 29 (21.32%) User Acceptance Testing
11 28 (20.59%) Scrum
12 26 (19.12%) Test Scripting
13 25 (18.38%) Acceptance Criteria
14 24 (17.65%) Defect Management
15 22 (16.18%) Mentoring
16 16 (11.76%) Continuous Integration
17 15 (11.03%) Coaching
17 15 (11.03%) Customer Service
18 14 (10.29%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 23 (16.91%) SQL
2 20 (14.71%) JavaScript
3 16 (11.76%) TypeScript
4 14 (10.29%) C#
5 11 (8.09%) Python
6 7 (5.15%) Java
7 4 (2.94%) MATLAB
8 3 (2.21%) C++
9 2 (1.47%) Bash
9 2 (1.47%) COBOL
9 2 (1.47%) PHP
9 2 (1.47%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.47%) RPG
10 1 (0.74%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 36 (26.47%) ISTQB
2 19 (13.97%) Degree
3 16 (11.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 10 (7.35%) Security Cleared
5 7 (5.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (2.21%) Chartered Engineer
7 3 (2.21%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.21%) SC Cleared
8 2 (1.47%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.74%) HND
9 1 (0.74%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (44.85%) QA
2 30 (22.06%) Accessibility
3 3 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 2 (1.47%) GDPR
4 2 (1.47%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.74%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 5 (3.68%) Active Directory
2 4 (2.94%) Docker
3 3 (2.21%) Terminal Server
3 3 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.74%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (2.94%) SCCM
1 4 (2.94%) SCOM
2 3 (2.21%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.47%) Ansible
3 2 (1.47%) Terraform
4 1 (0.74%) Grafana
4 1 (0.74%) Kibana
Vendors
1 12 (8.82%) Microsoft
2 8 (5.88%) Salesforce
3 5 (3.68%) ServiceNow
4 4 (2.94%) VMware
5 3 (2.21%) Cisco
5 3 (2.21%) Juniper
5 3 (2.21%) McAfee
6 2 (1.47%) HP
6 2 (1.47%) IBM
7 1 (0.74%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.74%) Oracle
7 1 (0.74%) Pega