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 29 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 559 466 554
Rank change year-on-year -93 +88 -45
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 141 180 311
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.44% 0.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.47% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 105 140 275
10th Percentile £31,000 £32,000 £33,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,438 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £62,688 £57,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £82,000
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 60,329 38,275 77,225
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.98% 93.09% 86.55%
Number of salaries quoted 37,012 22,459 57,636
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 29 March 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 29 March 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 -81 129 £47,500 - 64
UK excluding London -76 95 £47,500 +11.76% 56
Work from Home -34 40 £45,000 -8.16% 31
London -25 36 £55,000 -15.38% 16
South West -24 32 £47,500 +18.75% 6
Midlands -32 21 £36,250 -19.44% 11
South East -47 20 £52,500 +10.53% 22
East Midlands -34 17 £32,500 -40.91% 2
North of England -57 12 £50,000 +44.93% 8
North West -24 7 £46,250 +4.82% 4
East of England -25 7 £45,000 +28.57% 6
West Midlands -25 4 £47,500 +11.76% 9
Yorkshire -55 3 £50,000 +69.49% 3
Wales -21 2 £25,000 - 3
North East -27 2 £55,000 +61.76% 1
Northern Ireland -35 1 £52,500 -

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 (2.13%) Confluence
2 1 (0.71%) Apache
2 1 (0.71%) CMS
2 1 (0.71%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.71%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (2.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.71%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 54 (38.30%) Azure
2 35 (24.82%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (13.48%) AWS
4 13 (9.22%) GCP
5 11 (7.80%) BrowserStack
6 5 (3.55%) SaaS
7 4 (2.84%) Power Platform
8 2 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (0.71%) Algolia
9 1 (0.71%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.71%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (0.71%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.71%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.13%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (1.42%) HTTP
3 1 (0.71%) Cisco IOS
3 1 (0.71%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.71%) FTP
3 1 (0.71%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.71%) SNMP
3 1 (0.71%) Spanning Tree
3 1 (0.71%) SSH
3 1 (0.71%) TACACS
3 1 (0.71%) VoIP
3 1 (0.71%) WAN
3 1 (0.71%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (4.96%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.13%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.42%) DB2
3 2 (1.42%) Metadata
3 2 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.71%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.71%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.71%) Power BI
4 1 (0.71%) Power Query
4 1 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 34 (24.11%) Selenium
2 27 (19.15%) JIRA
3 24 (17.02%) Cypress.io
4 17 (12.06%) Postman
5 9 (6.38%) Jenkins
6 7 (4.96%) Git
7 6 (4.26%) Zephyr
8 5 (3.55%) GitLab
8 5 (3.55%) SoapUI
8 5 (3.55%) TestRail
9 4 (2.84%) Subversion
10 3 (2.13%) Cucumber
10 3 (2.13%) SpecFlow
11 2 (1.42%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.42%) JMeter
11 2 (1.42%) JUnit
11 2 (1.42%) LoadRunner
11 2 (1.42%) Robot Framework
11 2 (1.42%) TeamCity
11 2 (1.42%) webpack
General
1 36 (25.53%) Social Skills
2 21 (14.89%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (9.93%) Finance
4 7 (4.96%) Banking
5 5 (3.55%) Digital Healthcare
6 4 (2.84%) Back Office
6 4 (2.84%) Marketing
6 4 (2.84%) Tech for Good
7 3 (2.13%) Games
7 3 (2.13%) Health Technology
7 3 (2.13%) Retail
8 2 (1.42%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.42%) Electronics
8 2 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.42%) Law
8 2 (1.42%) Legal
8 2 (1.42%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.42%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.71%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 28 (19.86%) Lead
2 27 (19.15%) Tester
3 23 (16.31%) QA Engineer
4 21 (14.89%) Test Engineer
5 20 (14.18%) QA Leader
6 18 (12.77%) Analyst
7 15 (10.64%) Test Analyst
7 15 (10.64%) Test Leader
8 12 (8.51%) Senior
9 10 (7.09%) Software Engineer
9 10 (7.09%) Test Automation Engineer
10 8 (5.67%) Development Engineer
10 8 (5.67%) Graduate
10 8 (5.67%) Junior
10 8 (5.67%) Manual Tester
10 8 (5.67%) QA Analyst
10 8 (5.67%) Software Development Engineer
10 8 (5.67%) Test Development Engineer
11 7 (4.96%) Automation Engineer
11 7 (4.96%) QA Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (26.95%) Playwright
2 9 (6.38%) CSS
2 9 (6.38%) HTML
3 7 (4.96%) React
4 6 (4.26%) .NET
5 4 (2.84%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (2.84%) XML
6 3 (2.13%) FIX Protocol
7 2 (1.42%) AngularJS
7 2 (1.42%) CSS3
7 2 (1.42%) Gherkin
7 2 (1.42%) HTML5
7 2 (1.42%) Laravel
7 2 (1.42%) RESTful
7 2 (1.42%) Sass
7 2 (1.42%) Vue
8 1 (0.71%) .NET Core
8 1 (0.71%) GraphQL
8 1 (0.71%) React Native
8 1 (0.71%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 12 (8.51%) Product Ownership
2 4 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
3 3 (2.13%) Derivative
3 3 (2.13%) Equities
3 3 (2.13%) Fixed Income
3 3 (2.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 3 (2.13%) IoT
3 3 (2.13%) Mobile App
3 3 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (2.13%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (0.71%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (0.71%) Low-Code
5 1 (0.71%) Management Information System
5 1 (0.71%) Security Posture
5 1 (0.71%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (0.71%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.67%) Linux
1 8 (5.67%) Windows
2 4 (2.84%) Windows Server
2 4 (2.84%) Windows Server 2019
3 1 (0.71%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (0.71%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (84.40%) Test Automation
2 67 (47.52%) CI/CD
3 61 (43.26%) Software Testing
4 58 (41.13%) Agile
5 48 (34.04%) DevOps
6 45 (31.91%) Regression Testing
7 38 (26.95%) API Testing
7 38 (26.95%) Continuous Improvement
8 36 (25.53%) SDLC
9 34 (24.11%) Test Scripting
10 29 (20.57%) Test Strategy
11 28 (19.86%) User Acceptance Testing
12 26 (18.44%) Acceptance Criteria
13 22 (15.60%) Scrum
14 21 (14.89%) Defect Management
15 20 (14.18%) Performance Testing
16 19 (13.48%) Non-Functional Testing
17 16 (11.35%) Problem-Solving
18 15 (10.64%) Mentoring
19 14 (9.93%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 35 (24.82%) SQL
2 31 (21.99%) JavaScript
3 21 (14.89%) TypeScript
4 17 (12.06%) C#
5 14 (9.93%) Python
6 8 (5.67%) Java
7 6 (4.26%) Bash
8 3 (2.13%) PHP
8 3 (2.13%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.42%) C++
9 2 (1.42%) COBOL
9 2 (1.42%) RPG
Qualifications
1 43 (30.50%) ISTQB
2 20 (14.18%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 19 (13.48%) Degree
4 11 (7.80%) Security Cleared
5 8 (5.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 5 (3.55%) ISEB
7 3 (2.13%) Master's Degree
7 3 (2.13%) SC Cleared
8 1 (0.71%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (49.65%) QA
2 29 (20.57%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.42%) GDPR
3 2 (1.42%) PCI DSS
3 2 (1.42%) Section 508
3 2 (1.42%) WCAG
4 1 (0.71%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (3.55%) Active Directory
2 4 (2.84%) Docker
3 3 (2.13%) Terminal Server
3 3 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 5 (3.55%) Terraform
2 4 (2.84%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.84%) SCCM
2 4 (2.84%) SCOM
3 3 (2.13%) Ansible
4 2 (1.42%) Grafana
4 2 (1.42%) Nessus
4 2 (1.42%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.71%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 6 (4.26%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.84%) Cisco
2 4 (2.84%) Oracle
2 4 (2.84%) VMware
3 3 (2.13%) HP
3 3 (2.13%) Juniper
3 3 (2.13%) McAfee
3 3 (2.13%) ServiceNow
4 2 (1.42%) IBM
4 2 (1.42%) Salesforce
4 2 (1.42%) Siebel
5 1 (0.71%) Genesys
5 1 (0.71%) Meraki
5 1 (0.71%) SAP
5 1 (0.71%) Splunk