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

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 509 494 513
Rank change year-on-year -15 +19 -8
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 126 220 198
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.40% 0.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.26% 0.44% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 91 134 171
10th Percentile £33,750 £31,925 £34,000
25th Percentile £40,775 £41,844 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -1.96%
75th Percentile £62,500 £65,000 £57,500
90th Percentile £71,250 £77,850 £73,750
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 48,456 49,466 47,350
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.78% 90.03% 91.48%
Number of salaries quoted 28,392 24,433 36,177
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,500
25th Percentile £36,750 £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 £80,000
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 2 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 2 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 -10 122 £52,000 +1.46% 72
UK excluding London -20 80 £47,500 - 56
London +25 43 £55,000 -15.38% 24
Work from Home +25 40 £50,000 -9.09% 39
South East +22 26 £52,500 +10.53% 15
South West +22 26 £40,000 -20.00% 3
Midlands +3 15 £40,000 -27.27% 10
East Midlands -16 11 £37,500 -31.82% 2
North of England -12 6 £52,500 +18.98% 18
East of England +27 5 £60,000 +92.00% 6
West Midlands +8 4 £46,750 -10.95% 8
North West +16 2 £45,000 - 8
North East +1 2 £55,000 -8.33%
Yorkshire -13 2 £57,500 +84.04% 10
Northern Ireland -8 1 £52,500 -
Scotland -13 1 - - 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 5 (3.97%) Confluence
2 1 (0.79%) Apache
2 1 (0.79%) CMS
2 1 (0.79%) Office Communications Server
2 1 (0.79%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.79%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (7.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (2.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.79%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.79%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 30 (23.81%) Azure
2 27 (21.43%) Azure DevOps
3 16 (12.70%) AWS
4 7 (5.56%) Power Platform
5 5 (3.97%) SaaS
6 4 (3.17%) GCP
7 3 (2.38%) Adobe Analytics
7 3 (2.38%) BrowserStack
7 3 (2.38%) Datadog
7 3 (2.38%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.59%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.79%) Algolia
9 1 (0.79%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.79%) dbt
9 1 (0.79%) GitHub
9 1 (0.79%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.79%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.59%) Cisco ISE
2 1 (0.79%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.79%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.79%) FTP
2 1 (0.79%) HTTP
2 1 (0.79%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.79%) SNMP
2 1 (0.79%) Spanning Tree
2 1 (0.79%) SSH
2 1 (0.79%) TACACS
2 1 (0.79%) WAN
2 1 (0.79%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.94%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.38%) Mixpanel
2 3 (2.38%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.59%) DB2
3 2 (1.59%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.79%) Metadata
4 1 (0.79%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 34 (26.98%) Selenium
2 33 (26.19%) JIRA
3 26 (20.63%) Postman
4 12 (9.52%) Jenkins
5 11 (8.73%) Cypress.io
5 11 (8.73%) Git
6 9 (7.14%) eCATT
7 7 (5.56%) SoapUI
8 5 (3.97%) Zephyr
9 4 (3.17%) SpecFlow
9 4 (3.17%) TestNG
9 4 (3.17%) TestRail
10 3 (2.38%) Charles Proxy
10 3 (2.38%) Cucumber
10 3 (2.38%) Fiddler
10 3 (2.38%) GitLab
10 3 (2.38%) JMeter
10 3 (2.38%) LoadRunner
10 3 (2.38%) Maven
10 3 (2.38%) WebDriver
General
1 28 (22.22%) Social Skills
2 26 (20.63%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (19.84%) Finance
4 16 (12.70%) Marketing
5 10 (7.94%) Manufacturing
6 9 (7.14%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (7.14%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (5.56%) Games
8 6 (4.76%) Banking
8 6 (4.76%) Law
9 4 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (3.17%) Electronics
9 4 (3.17%) Public Sector
10 3 (2.38%) Back Office
10 3 (2.38%) Legal
10 3 (2.38%) Retail
10 3 (2.38%) Tech for Good
11 2 (1.59%) Aerospace
11 2 (1.59%) Automotive
11 2 (1.59%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 29 (23.02%) Tester
2 26 (20.63%) Analyst
3 25 (19.84%) Senior
4 23 (18.25%) Test Analyst
4 23 (18.25%) Test Engineer
5 21 (16.67%) QA Engineer
6 19 (15.08%) Lead
7 13 (10.32%) QA Leader
7 13 (10.32%) Test Automation Engineer
8 9 (7.14%) Automation Test Analyst
8 9 (7.14%) Senior Test Engineer
9 8 (6.35%) QA Analyst
10 7 (5.56%) Automation Tester
10 7 (5.56%) Manual Tester
10 7 (5.56%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
11 6 (4.76%) QA Test Analyst
11 6 (4.76%) Quality Engineer
11 6 (4.76%) Software Tester
11 6 (4.76%) Test Leader
12 5 (3.97%) Senior Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (18.25%) Playwright
2 9 (7.14%) CSS
2 9 (7.14%) HTML
3 7 (5.56%) React
4 6 (4.76%) .NET
4 6 (4.76%) XML
5 5 (3.97%) RESTful
6 4 (3.17%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (3.17%) REST
7 3 (2.38%) FIX Protocol
8 2 (1.59%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.59%) CSS3
8 2 (1.59%) Gherkin
8 2 (1.59%) HTML5
8 2 (1.59%) pytest
8 2 (1.59%) Sass
9 1 (0.79%) JSON
9 1 (0.79%) Node.js
9 1 (0.79%) OAuth
9 1 (0.79%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (7.14%) Product Ownership
2 5 (3.97%) Analytical Mindset
3 4 (3.17%) Derivative
3 4 (3.17%) Equities
3 4 (3.17%) Fixed Income
4 3 (2.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.38%) IoT
4 3 (2.38%) Mobile App
4 3 (2.38%) Virtual Team
4 3 (2.38%) W3C
5 2 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.59%) Low-Code
5 2 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.79%) Client/Server
6 1 (0.79%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.79%) FMCG
6 1 (0.79%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.79%) Operational Technology
6 1 (0.79%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.56%) Windows
2 6 (4.76%) Linux
3 3 (2.38%) Windows Server
3 3 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.79%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (78.57%) Test Automation
2 67 (53.17%) Agile
3 49 (38.89%) Software Testing
4 46 (36.51%) CI/CD
5 38 (30.16%) Regression Testing
6 36 (28.57%) API Testing
6 36 (28.57%) Test Scripting
7 32 (25.40%) DevOps
8 29 (23.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 27 (21.43%) Test Strategy
10 26 (20.63%) Scrum
11 22 (17.46%) End-to-End Testing
12 21 (16.67%) Integration Testing
12 21 (16.67%) Non-Functional Testing
12 21 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
12 21 (16.67%) Validation
13 19 (15.08%) Scenario Testing
13 19 (15.08%) SDLC
14 17 (13.49%) Defect Management
14 17 (13.49%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (34.13%) SQL
2 27 (21.43%) JavaScript
3 23 (18.25%) C#
4 20 (15.87%) Python
5 19 (15.08%) Java
6 14 (11.11%) TypeScript
7 5 (3.97%) Bash
8 2 (1.59%) Groovy
8 2 (1.59%) PHP
8 2 (1.59%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.59%) RPG
Qualifications
1 39 (30.95%) ISTQB
2 21 (16.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 18 (14.29%) Security Cleared
4 15 (11.90%) Degree
5 11 (8.73%) SC Cleared
6 7 (5.56%) DV Cleared
7 6 (4.76%) ISEB
8 4 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (2.38%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (50.79%) QA
2 15 (11.90%) Accessibility
3 5 (3.97%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.59%) Section 508
4 2 (1.59%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (5.56%) Docker
2 4 (3.17%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.59%) Terminal Server
3 2 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (7.94%) HP ALM
2 7 (5.56%) Kubernetes
3 4 (3.17%) Terraform
4 3 (2.38%) SCCM
4 3 (2.38%) SCOM
5 2 (1.59%) Ansible
5 2 (1.59%) Grafana
5 2 (1.59%) Nessus
5 2 (1.59%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 11 (8.73%) SAP
2 10 (7.94%) HP
3 6 (4.76%) Microsoft
4 4 (3.17%) Oracle
5 3 (2.38%) Adobe
5 3 (2.38%) Cisco
5 3 (2.38%) ServiceNow
5 3 (2.38%) Tealium
5 3 (2.38%) VMware
6 2 (1.59%) IBM
6 2 (1.59%) Juniper
6 2 (1.59%) McAfee
6 2 (1.59%) Siebel
7 1 (0.79%) Charles River
7 1 (0.79%) Genesys
7 1 (0.79%) Murex
7 1 (0.79%) Pega
7 1 (0.79%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.79%) Sitecore
7 1 (0.79%) Splunk