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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 588 548 586
Rank change year-on-year -40 +38 -80
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 207 128 207
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.26% 0.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.24% 0.29% 0.33%
Number of salaries quoted 109 98 125
10th Percentile £32,000 £31,250 £34,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £40,725 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £61,018 £63,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £78,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +15.56% -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 84,848 43,853 63,499
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.08% 88.72% 81.26%
Number of salaries quoted 58,707 24,746 35,929
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,585 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 September 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 September 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 -50 169 £50,000 -3.85% 89
England -99 144 £50,000 -4.76% 127
Work from Home -4 99 £50,000 -5.66% 68
Northern Ireland -28 53 - - 10
South West -57 34 £50,000 +25.00% 6
South East -47 31 £52,500 +14.13% 23
London -82 29 £58,009 +12.64% 61
North of England -50 27 £50,000 +25.00% 22
North West -6 14 £47,500 +5.56% 9
Midlands -42 11 £43,750 -21.17% 14
East of England -32 10 £53,750 +1.42% 6
North East -61 9 £50,000 +11.11% 4
East Midlands -30 8 £42,500 -26.09% 3
Yorkshire -42 4 - - 9
West Midlands -46 3 £47,500 +10.47% 11
Wales -71 3 £32,000 -46.67% 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 (2.42%) Confluence
1 5 (2.42%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.48%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 13 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.86%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (3.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.97%) Simulink
5 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.48%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 61 (29.47%) SaaS
2 48 (23.19%) Azure
3 36 (17.39%) Azure DevOps
4 14 (6.76%) AWS
5 11 (5.31%) GitHub
6 10 (4.83%) Power Platform
7 5 (2.42%) BrowserStack
7 5 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (1.93%) GCP
9 3 (1.45%) PowerApps
10 1 (0.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 1 (0.48%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (0.48%) Amazon EKS
10 1 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.48%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.48%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (0.48%) Copilot Studio
10 1 (0.48%) GitHub Copilot
10 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Copilot
10 1 (0.48%) SonarCloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.93%) 5G
1 4 (1.93%) SD-WAN
1 4 (1.93%) WAN
2 1 (0.48%) Broadband
2 1 (0.48%) HTTP
2 1 (0.48%) Internet
2 1 (0.48%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.48%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.90%) Power BI
2 2 (0.97%) Oracle Database
2 2 (0.97%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.97%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.48%) Flink
3 1 (0.48%) Metadata
3 1 (0.48%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 46 (22.22%) Selenium
2 22 (10.63%) Postman
3 21 (10.14%) JIRA
4 17 (8.21%) Jenkins
5 15 (7.25%) Cypress.io
6 13 (6.28%) Git
7 9 (4.35%) JMeter
8 8 (3.86%) SpecFlow
8 8 (3.86%) Zephyr
9 6 (2.90%) LabVIEW
10 5 (2.42%) REST Assured
10 5 (2.42%) TestRail
11 4 (1.93%) Appium
11 4 (1.93%) Gatling
11 4 (1.93%) GitLab
11 4 (1.93%) JUnit
12 3 (1.45%) Bugzilla
12 3 (1.45%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (1.45%) TestNG
13 2 (0.97%) LoadRunner
General
1 103 (49.76%) Social Skills
2 55 (26.57%) Legal
3 38 (18.36%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (13.53%) Law
5 26 (12.56%) Finance
6 20 (9.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (6.76%) Public Sector
8 11 (5.31%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (3.86%) Electronics
10 7 (3.38%) Retail
11 5 (2.42%) Aviation
12 4 (1.93%) Advertising
12 4 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (1.45%) Aerospace
13 3 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.97%) Back Office
14 2 (0.97%) Military
15 1 (0.48%) Banking
15 1 (0.48%) Games
15 1 (0.48%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 82 (39.61%) Senior
2 57 (27.54%) Testing Manager
3 55 (26.57%) Senior Manager
4 38 (18.36%) Test Engineer
5 30 (14.49%) Analyst
6 29 (14.01%) QA Engineer
7 23 (11.11%) Tester
8 19 (9.18%) Test Analyst
9 14 (6.76%) Automation Engineer
9 14 (6.76%) QA Automation Engineer
10 13 (6.28%) Lead
11 11 (5.31%) Senior QA Engineer
12 10 (4.83%) Senior Test Engineer
13 7 (3.38%) DevOps Engineer
13 7 (3.38%) Head of Testing
13 7 (3.38%) Lead DevOps
13 7 (3.38%) Lead DevOps Engineer
13 7 (3.38%) Test Automation Engineer
14 6 (2.90%) Automation Tester
14 6 (2.90%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (17.39%) Playwright
2 14 (6.76%) CSS
3 13 (6.28%) HTML
4 8 (3.86%) Node.js
5 6 (2.90%) REST
6 5 (2.42%) pytest
7 4 (1.93%) .NET
7 4 (1.93%) Gherkin
7 4 (1.93%) Kafka
7 4 (1.93%) React
7 4 (1.93%) Terraform
8 3 (1.45%) Swagger
9 2 (0.97%) Flutter
9 2 (0.97%) JSON
10 1 (0.48%) ADO
10 1 (0.48%) GraphQL
10 1 (0.48%) GStreamer
10 1 (0.48%) Middleware
10 1 (0.48%) RabbitMQ
10 1 (0.48%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 55 (26.57%) Virtual Team
2 21 (10.14%) Product Ownership
3 15 (7.25%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.90%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.93%) Self-Driving Car
6 3 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (1.45%) Hackathon
6 3 (1.45%) Housing Association
6 3 (1.45%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.45%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.97%) Low-Code
7 2 (0.97%) NHS
8 1 (0.48%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.48%) Digital Signage
8 1 (0.48%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.48%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.48%) Operational Technology
8 1 (0.48%) PKI
8 1 (0.48%) PropTech
8 1 (0.48%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.18%) Windows
2 8 (3.86%) Linux
3 4 (1.93%) Android
3 4 (1.93%) Unix
4 2 (0.97%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.48%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.48%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (93.24%) Test Automation
2 118 (57.00%) DevOps
3 113 (54.59%) Continuous Improvement
3 113 (54.59%) Software Testing
4 90 (43.48%) Test Strategy
5 80 (38.65%) Agile
6 78 (37.68%) Mentoring
7 69 (33.33%) CI/CD
8 64 (30.92%) Software Engineering
9 62 (29.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 57 (27.54%) Project Delivery
11 56 (27.05%) Data Management
12 55 (26.57%) Budget Management
12 55 (26.57%) Change Advisory Board
12 55 (26.57%) Enterprise Architecture
12 55 (26.57%) Performance Management
12 55 (26.57%) Programme Management
12 55 (26.57%) Strategic Planning
12 55 (26.57%) Virtual Team Management
13 49 (23.67%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 86 (41.55%) Python
2 81 (39.13%) JavaScript
3 71 (34.30%) C#
4 63 (30.43%) TypeScript
5 58 (28.02%) PowerShell
6 44 (21.26%) SQL
7 16 (7.73%) Java
8 9 (4.35%) MATLAB
9 4 (1.93%) Bash
10 1 (0.48%) C
10 1 (0.48%) C++
10 1 (0.48%) Groovy
10 1 (0.48%) Scala
Qualifications
1 24 (11.59%) ISTQB
2 18 (8.70%) Security Cleared
3 16 (7.73%) Degree
4 15 (7.25%) SC Cleared
5 9 (4.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (2.42%) HND
8 3 (1.45%) Chartered Engineer
8 3 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.48%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.48%) HNC
9 1 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 145 (70.05%) QA
2 11 (5.31%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.42%) Software Quality Assurance
4 3 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 12207
4 3 (1.45%) WAI
4 3 (1.45%) WAI-ARIA
4 3 (1.45%) WCAG
5 2 (0.97%) GDPR
System Software
1 4 (1.93%) Docker
2 3 (1.45%) Firmware
3 1 (0.48%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (1.93%) Ansible
1 4 (1.93%) Grafana
2 3 (1.45%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.48%) Kibana
3 1 (0.48%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 25 (12.08%) Microsoft
2 10 (4.83%) Oracle
3 9 (4.35%) Salesforce
4 4 (1.93%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.45%) Databricks
6 2 (0.97%) Google
7 1 (0.48%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.48%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.48%) EMC
7 1 (0.48%) Pega