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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 558 535 616
Rank change year-on-year -23 +81 -116
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 217 143 201
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.29% 0.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.28% 0.32% 0.30%
Number of salaries quoted 115 105 150
10th Percentile £30,800 £31,850 £34,875
25th Percentile £41,625 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £46,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £61,018 £62,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £70,750 £67,800 £86,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £42,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% -5.56% -5.26%

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 78,774 44,506 67,319
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.34% 89.17% 80.88%
Number of salaries quoted 54,302 25,213 43,010
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 19 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 19 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 -4 173 £50,000 +17.65% 91
England -70 151 £50,000 +8.70% 109
Work from Home +27 104 £50,000 - 59
Northern Ireland -39 53 - - 4
South West -43 36 £47,500 +18.75% 13
London -53 34 £50,000 -20.63% 36
South East -34 30 £52,500 +16.67% 25
North of England -23 27 £50,000 +42.86% 15
North West +1 16 £47,500 +20.25% 9
Midlands -32 13 £42,500 - 17
East Midlands -11 10 £40,000 -30.43% 3
East of England -34 9 £55,000 +3.77% 5
North East -55 7 £50,000 +42.86% 5
Wales -54 5 £32,000 -46.67%
Yorkshire -23 4 £50,000 +42.86% 1
West Midlands -29 3 £55,000 +46.67% 14

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 (2.30%) Confluence
2 4 (1.84%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (4.15%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (3.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.46%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 62 (28.57%) SaaS
2 56 (25.81%) Azure
3 41 (18.89%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (7.37%) AWS
5 9 (4.15%) GitHub
5 9 (4.15%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.76%) BrowserStack
6 6 (2.76%) GCP
7 4 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (1.38%) PowerApps
9 2 (0.92%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (0.46%) Algolia
10 1 (0.46%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (0.46%) Amazon EKS
10 1 (0.46%) AWS CodePipeline
10 1 (0.46%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.46%) BlazeMeter
10 1 (0.46%) Copilot Studio
10 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Copilot
10 1 (0.46%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.84%) 5G
1 4 (1.84%) SD-WAN
1 4 (1.84%) WAN
2 3 (1.38%) HTTP
3 1 (0.46%) Broadband
3 1 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
3 1 (0.46%) Internet
3 1 (0.46%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.46%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.30%) Power BI
2 2 (0.92%) Oracle Database
2 2 (0.92%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.92%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.46%) Flink
3 1 (0.46%) Metadata
3 1 (0.46%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 50 (23.04%) Selenium
2 28 (12.90%) JIRA
3 26 (11.98%) Postman
4 20 (9.22%) Cypress.io
5 19 (8.76%) Jenkins
6 15 (6.91%) Git
7 11 (5.07%) Zephyr
8 8 (3.69%) SpecFlow
9 7 (3.23%) JMeter
9 7 (3.23%) TestRail
10 6 (2.76%) JUnit
10 6 (2.76%) REST Assured
11 5 (2.30%) GitLab
11 5 (2.30%) LabVIEW
12 4 (1.84%) Gatling
13 3 (1.38%) Appium
13 3 (1.38%) Bugzilla
13 3 (1.38%) Katalon Studio
13 3 (1.38%) SoapUI
13 3 (1.38%) TestNG
General
1 107 (49.31%) Social Skills
2 55 (25.35%) Legal
3 35 (16.13%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (13.36%) Finance
5 27 (12.44%) Law
6 20 (9.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (5.53%) Public Sector
8 11 (5.07%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (3.23%) Electronics
10 6 (2.76%) Retail
11 5 (2.30%) Aviation
12 4 (1.84%) Advertising
13 3 (1.38%) Aerospace
13 3 (1.38%) Back Office
13 3 (1.38%) Banking
13 3 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.92%) Games
14 2 (0.92%) Military
14 2 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.46%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 84 (38.71%) Senior
2 57 (26.27%) Testing Manager
3 55 (25.35%) Senior Manager
4 35 (16.13%) Test Engineer
5 29 (13.36%) Analyst
6 28 (12.90%) QA Engineer
6 28 (12.90%) Tester
7 21 (9.68%) Test Analyst
8 19 (8.76%) Lead
9 12 (5.53%) Automation Engineer
9 12 (5.53%) QA Automation Engineer
10 11 (5.07%) Senior Test Engineer
11 10 (4.61%) Senior QA Engineer
12 9 (4.15%) QA Leader
13 8 (3.69%) Junior
13 8 (3.69%) Manual Tester
14 7 (3.23%) Automation Tester
14 7 (3.23%) Head of Testing
14 7 (3.23%) Test Leader
15 6 (2.76%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (16.59%) Playwright
2 14 (6.45%) CSS
3 13 (5.99%) HTML
4 6 (2.76%) Node.js
5 5 (2.30%) .NET
5 5 (2.30%) pytest
5 5 (2.30%) REST
6 4 (1.84%) Kafka
7 3 (1.38%) Gherkin
7 3 (1.38%) React
7 3 (1.38%) Swagger
8 2 (0.92%) Flutter
8 2 (0.92%) JSON
8 2 (0.92%) Laravel
8 2 (0.92%) Vue
9 1 (0.46%) .NET Framework
9 1 (0.46%) ADO
9 1 (0.46%) GStreamer
9 1 (0.46%) RabbitMQ
9 1 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 55 (25.35%) Virtual Team
2 20 (9.22%) Product Ownership
3 14 (6.45%) Mobile App
4 4 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
4 4 (1.84%) Self-Driving Car
5 3 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
5 3 (1.38%) Hackathon
5 3 (1.38%) Housing Association
5 3 (1.38%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.38%) Onboarding
6 2 (0.92%) Low-Code
6 2 (0.92%) NHS
6 2 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
7 1 (0.46%) Cloud Native
7 1 (0.46%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.46%) PKI
7 1 (0.46%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.46%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 19 (8.76%) Windows
2 5 (2.30%) Linux
3 4 (1.84%) Unix
4 3 (1.38%) Android
5 1 (0.46%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.46%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.46%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (90.32%) Test Automation
2 126 (58.06%) DevOps
3 121 (55.76%) Software Testing
4 120 (55.30%) Continuous Improvement
5 95 (43.78%) Test Strategy
6 88 (40.55%) Agile
7 86 (39.63%) Mentoring
8 71 (32.72%) CI/CD
9 66 (30.41%) Software Engineering
10 63 (29.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 57 (26.27%) Project Delivery
12 56 (25.81%) Data Management
13 55 (25.35%) Budget Management
13 55 (25.35%) Change Advisory Board
13 55 (25.35%) Enterprise Architecture
13 55 (25.35%) Performance Management
13 55 (25.35%) Programme Management
13 55 (25.35%) Strategic Planning
13 55 (25.35%) Virtual Team Management
14 46 (21.20%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 83 (38.25%) Python
2 76 (35.02%) JavaScript
3 72 (33.18%) C#
4 62 (28.57%) TypeScript
5 58 (26.73%) PowerShell
6 43 (19.82%) SQL
7 15 (6.91%) Java
8 8 (3.69%) MATLAB
9 4 (1.84%) Bash
10 3 (1.38%) C++
11 2 (0.92%) COBOL
11 2 (0.92%) PHP
12 1 (0.46%) Groovy
12 1 (0.46%) Scala
Qualifications
1 28 (12.90%) ISTQB
2 20 (9.22%) Degree
3 15 (6.91%) Security Cleared
4 12 (5.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 12 (5.53%) SC Cleared
5 6 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.84%) HND
7 3 (1.38%) Chartered Engineer
8 2 (0.92%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 151 (69.59%) QA
2 15 (6.91%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.30%) Software Quality Assurance
4 4 (1.84%) GDPR
5 3 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 12207
5 3 (1.38%) WAI
5 3 (1.38%) WAI-ARIA
5 3 (1.38%) WCAG
6 2 (0.92%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (1.38%) Docker
2 2 (0.92%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.92%) Firmware
3 1 (0.46%) Terminal Server
3 1 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.84%) Ansible
1 4 (1.84%) Terraform
2 3 (1.38%) Grafana
3 2 (0.92%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.46%) Kibana
4 1 (0.46%) SCCM
4 1 (0.46%) SCOM
Vendors
1 26 (11.98%) Microsoft
2 10 (4.61%) Oracle
3 8 (3.69%) Salesforce
4 5 (2.30%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.38%) Databricks
6 2 (0.92%) Google
6 2 (0.92%) HP
7 1 (0.46%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.46%) Cisco
7 1 (0.46%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.46%) Juniper
7 1 (0.46%) McAfee
7 1 (0.46%) Pega
7 1 (0.46%) VMware