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 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 519 499 509
Rank change year-on-year -20 +10 -1
Permanent jobs citing Manual Testing 126 224 197
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.40% 0.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.26% 0.45% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 91 138 170
10th Percentile £33,750 £31,925 £33,975
25th Percentile £40,775 £42,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -0.99%
75th Percentile £62,500 £65,000 £57,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £77,650 £73,775
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 48,537 49,891 46,757
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 82.05% 89.96% 91.45%
Number of salaries quoted 28,419 24,819 35,711
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,750
25th Percentile £36,532 £45,000 £42,750
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% -4.34%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025. 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 -4 122 £52,000 -3.26% 247
UK excluding London -20 80 £47,500 - 225
London +35 43 £55,000 -15.38% 43
Work from Home +27 40 £50,000 -9.09% 101
South East +27 26 £52,500 +10.53% 51
South West +23 26 £40,000 -20.00% 22
Midlands +6 15 £40,000 -27.27% 39
East Midlands -7 11 £37,500 -31.82% 15
North of England -20 6 £52,500 +18.98% 58
East of England +23 5 £60,000 +92.00% 37
West Midlands +9 4 £46,750 -15.00% 21
North West +7 2 £45,000 - 28
North East +3 2 £55,000 -8.33% 2
Yorkshire -11 2 £57,500 +84.04% 28
Northern Ireland -4 1 £52,500 - 3
Scotland -5 1 - - 11

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 31 (24.60%) Azure
2 28 (22.22%) Azure DevOps
3 17 (13.49%) AWS
4 7 (5.56%) Power Platform
5 6 (4.76%) 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 27 (21.43%) Postman
4 12 (9.52%) Cypress.io
4 12 (9.52%) Jenkins
5 11 (8.73%) Git
6 9 (7.14%) eCATT
7 7 (5.56%) SoapUI
8 5 (3.97%) Zephyr
9 4 (3.17%) TestNG
9 4 (3.17%) TestRail
10 3 (2.38%) Browser DevTools
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%) Katalon Studio
10 3 (2.38%) Maven
10 3 (2.38%) SpecFlow
10 3 (2.38%) WebDriver
General
1 29 (23.02%) 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 28 (22.22%) 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%) GraphQL
9 1 (0.79%) JWT
9 1 (0.79%) Node.js
9 1 (0.79%) Swagger
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%) Virtual Team
4 3 (2.38%) W3C
5 2 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.59%) Low-Code
5 2 (1.59%) Mobile App
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%) Onboarding
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 66 (52.38%) Agile
3 48 (38.10%) Software Testing
4 47 (37.30%) CI/CD
5 39 (30.95%) Regression Testing
6 37 (29.37%) API Testing
7 36 (28.57%) Test Scripting
8 33 (26.19%) DevOps
9 29 (23.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (21.43%) Test Strategy
11 25 (19.84%) Scrum
12 22 (17.46%) End-to-End Testing
13 21 (16.67%) Integration Testing
13 21 (16.67%) Non-Functional Testing
13 21 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
13 21 (16.67%) Validation
14 19 (15.08%) Scenario Testing
14 19 (15.08%) SDLC
15 18 (14.29%) Test Management
16 17 (13.49%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (34.13%) SQL
2 28 (22.22%) JavaScript
3 22 (17.46%) C#
4 21 (16.67%) Python
5 20 (15.87%) 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 38 (30.16%) ISTQB
2 20 (15.87%) 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