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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 511 509 520
Rank change year-on-year -2 +11 -40
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 138 207 263
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.39% 0.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.43% 0.44%
Number of salaries quoted 101 128 232
10th Percentile £33,750 £32,328 £35,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £42,281 £36,365
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £62,500 £65,000 £57,500
90th Percentile £70,000 £77,500 £74,900
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £42,500
% change year-on-year - +11.76% -15.00%

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 50,778 48,019 60,381
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.25% 91.58% 88.81%
Number of salaries quoted 30,009 23,112 46,660
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,444
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.45% -8.09%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £76,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -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 29 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 29 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 +8 133 £51,750 +3.50% 72
UK excluding London -21 90 £47,500 - 70
London +31 44 £55,000 -15.38% 18
Work from Home +9 39 £50,000 -13.04% 50
South West +19 29 £47,500 -5.00% 2
South East +18 27 £52,500 +10.53% 34
Midlands -12 17 £37,500 -26.83% 9
East Midlands -11 13 £35,000 -36.36% 4
East of England +27 9 £45,000 +44.00% 15
North of England -19 6 £52,500 +18.98% 7
West Midlands +10 4 £46,750 -1.58% 5
North West +6 2 £45,000 - 3
North East -8 2 £55,000 -8.33% 1
Yorkshire -22 2 £57,500 +91.67% 3
Scotland -9 1 - - 4
Northern Ireland -13 1 £52,500 - 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 5 (3.62%) Confluence
2 1 (0.72%) Apache
2 1 (0.72%) CMS
2 1 (0.72%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.72%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (7.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (2.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.72%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.72%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 37 (26.81%) Azure
2 32 (23.19%) Azure DevOps
3 18 (13.04%) AWS
4 7 (5.07%) GCP
4 7 (5.07%) Power Platform
5 6 (4.35%) BrowserStack
6 4 (2.90%) SaaS
7 3 (2.17%) Adobe Analytics
7 3 (2.17%) Datadog
7 3 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.45%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.72%) Algolia
9 1 (0.72%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.72%) GitHub
9 1 (0.72%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.72%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.45%) Cisco ISE
2 1 (0.72%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.72%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.72%) FTP
2 1 (0.72%) HTTP
2 1 (0.72%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.72%) SNMP
2 1 (0.72%) Spanning Tree
2 1 (0.72%) SSH
2 1 (0.72%) TACACS
2 1 (0.72%) WAN
2 1 (0.72%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.25%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.17%) Mixpanel
2 3 (2.17%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.45%) DB2
3 2 (1.45%) Metadata
3 2 (1.45%) MongoDB
3 2 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.72%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 38 (27.54%) Selenium
2 33 (23.91%) JIRA
3 23 (16.67%) Postman
4 13 (9.42%) Cypress.io
5 10 (7.25%) Jenkins
6 9 (6.52%) eCATT
7 8 (5.80%) Git
8 5 (3.62%) SoapUI
9 4 (2.90%) SpecFlow
9 4 (2.90%) TestNG
9 4 (2.90%) Zephyr
10 3 (2.17%) Charles Proxy
10 3 (2.17%) Cucumber
10 3 (2.17%) Fiddler
10 3 (2.17%) GitLab
10 3 (2.17%) JMeter
10 3 (2.17%) Maven
10 3 (2.17%) Subversion
10 3 (2.17%) TestRail
10 3 (2.17%) WebDriver
General
1 30 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 25 (18.12%) Finance
3 24 (17.39%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (10.87%) Marketing
5 10 (7.25%) Manufacturing
6 9 (6.52%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (6.52%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (4.35%) Banking
7 6 (4.35%) Games
7 6 (4.35%) Law
8 4 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.90%) Electronics
8 4 (2.90%) Public Sector
9 3 (2.17%) Back Office
9 3 (2.17%) Legal
9 3 (2.17%) Tech for Good
10 2 (1.45%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.45%) Health Technology
10 2 (1.45%) Retail
10 2 (1.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 30 (21.74%) Test Engineer
2 27 (19.57%) Tester
3 25 (18.12%) Analyst
3 25 (18.12%) Senior
4 24 (17.39%) Lead
5 22 (15.94%) Test Analyst
6 20 (14.49%) QA Engineer
7 17 (12.32%) Test Automation Engineer
8 16 (11.59%) QA Leader
9 12 (8.70%) Test Leader
10 9 (6.52%) Automation Test Analyst
10 9 (6.52%) Senior Test Engineer
11 7 (5.07%) Automation Tester
11 7 (5.07%) Manual Tester
11 7 (5.07%) QA Analyst
12 6 (4.35%) Graduate
12 6 (4.35%) Graduate Test Engineer
12 6 (4.35%) Quality Engineer
12 6 (4.35%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
13 5 (3.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (18.84%) Playwright
2 9 (6.52%) CSS
2 9 (6.52%) HTML
3 7 (5.07%) React
4 6 (4.35%) .NET
5 5 (3.62%) RESTful
5 5 (3.62%) XML
6 4 (2.90%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (2.90%) REST
7 3 (2.17%) FIX Protocol
8 2 (1.45%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.45%) CSS3
8 2 (1.45%) Gherkin
8 2 (1.45%) HTML5
8 2 (1.45%) pytest
8 2 (1.45%) Sass
9 1 (0.72%) GraphQL
9 1 (0.72%) JWT
9 1 (0.72%) Node.js
9 1 (0.72%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 10 (7.25%) Product Ownership
2 5 (3.62%) Analytical Mindset
3 4 (2.90%) Derivative
3 4 (2.90%) Equities
3 4 (2.90%) Fixed Income
4 3 (2.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.17%) IoT
4 3 (2.17%) Low-Code
4 3 (2.17%) Mobile App
4 3 (2.17%) Virtual Team
4 3 (2.17%) W3C
5 2 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.72%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.72%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.72%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.72%) Operational Technology
6 1 (0.72%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.07%) Windows
2 6 (4.35%) Linux
3 3 (2.17%) Windows Server
3 3 (2.17%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (81.16%) Test Automation
2 63 (45.65%) Agile
3 52 (37.68%) Software Testing
4 51 (36.96%) CI/CD
5 43 (31.16%) Regression Testing
6 40 (28.99%) API Testing
7 37 (26.81%) DevOps
8 34 (24.64%) Test Scripting
9 32 (23.19%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (19.57%) Scrum
10 27 (19.57%) SDLC
11 26 (18.84%) Test Strategy
12 23 (16.67%) Non-Functional Testing
13 21 (15.22%) End-to-End Testing
13 21 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
13 21 (15.22%) User Acceptance Testing
14 20 (14.49%) Scenario Testing
15 19 (13.77%) Integration Testing
15 19 (13.77%) Validation
16 18 (13.04%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 41 (29.71%) SQL
2 27 (19.57%) JavaScript
3 23 (16.67%) C#
4 19 (13.77%) Python
5 18 (13.04%) Java
6 15 (10.87%) TypeScript
7 5 (3.62%) Bash
8 2 (1.45%) Groovy
8 2 (1.45%) PHP
8 2 (1.45%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.45%) RPG
Qualifications
1 41 (29.71%) ISTQB
2 21 (15.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 19 (13.77%) Security Cleared
4 14 (10.14%) Degree
5 9 (6.52%) SC Cleared
6 7 (5.07%) DV Cleared
7 6 (4.35%) ISEB
8 4 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (2.17%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (49.28%) QA
2 25 (18.12%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.90%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.45%) Section 508
4 2 (1.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (5.07%) Docker
2 4 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.45%) Terminal Server
3 2 (1.45%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (7.25%) HP ALM
2 7 (5.07%) Kubernetes
3 4 (2.90%) Terraform
4 3 (2.17%) SCCM
4 3 (2.17%) SCOM
5 2 (1.45%) Ansible
5 2 (1.45%) Grafana
5 2 (1.45%) Nessus
5 2 (1.45%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 11 (7.97%) SAP
2 10 (7.25%) HP
3 5 (3.62%) Microsoft
4 4 (2.90%) Oracle
5 3 (2.17%) Adobe
5 3 (2.17%) Cisco
5 3 (2.17%) ServiceNow
5 3 (2.17%) Tealium
5 3 (2.17%) VMware
6 2 (1.45%) IBM
6 2 (1.45%) Juniper
6 2 (1.45%) McAfee
6 2 (1.45%) Siebel
7 1 (0.72%) Charles River
7 1 (0.72%) Genesys
7 1 (0.72%) Meraki
7 1 (0.72%) Murex
7 1 (0.72%) Pega
7 1 (0.72%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.72%) Sitecore