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UK - Top QA & Testing Jobs in 2025: Roles, Pay, and Skill Trends
The testing domain is evolving fast. Traditional functional testers remain essential, but automation and SDET roles are expanding rapidly. At the upper end, Senior SDETs and Test Architects are shaping QA strategies across organisations and commanding top-tier salaries. Bolster your career by progressing from manual testing, gaining automation expertise, and ultimately moving into leadership or architect positions.
Below is our market analysis of current job opportunities, in-demand skills, and typical salary ranges for key testing roles.
| Role | Typical Salary / Rate | Core Skills Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Functional Tester | £ 31k–75k | Manual/functional/nonโfunctional testing, Agile, SQL |
| Test Automation Engineer / SDET | £ 60k–80k+ | Cypress/Appium/Playwright, CI/CD, API testing |
| Senior Automation Engineer | £ 45k–70k perm, up to £ 475/day contract | Advanced automation, DevOps, frameworks, mentoring |
| Senior SDET | £ 75k–90k+ perm, up to £ 550/day contract | Full-stack automation, cloud, leadership, architecture |
| Test Architect | £ 80k–100k+ perm, up to £ 675/day contract | QA strategy, framework design, enterprise-level, leadership |
Why Software Testing Skills Matter More Than Ever in 2025
In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, delivering quality software is not just important—it’s essential. With businesses shipping updates weekly, sometimes daily, software failures can lead to major financial loss and damage to brand trust. Just think of outages history in Barclays banking, Google outage, BA airline and Twitter platforms—most traced back to untested code or missed edge cases.
That’s why software testing has moved from being a “nice-to-have” to a core pillar of every development process.
The demand for skilled QA professionals has surged, with roles expanding far beyond manual testing. From test automation engineers and SDETs to API testers, performance testers, and test architects—companies are hiring across the board. In fact, industry reports show that QA is now one of the top five most in-demand tech roles globally, and the UK is no exception. Automation tools like Cypress, Selenium, and Playwright, along with Agile and DevOps practices, have made continuous testing a must-have skill in modern teams.
Learning software testing today means future-proofing your career. Whether you're a fresh graduate, a manual tester looking to switch to automation, or someone exploring a tech career from another industry—there’s never been a better time to start. The testing field is evolving rapidly, and those with practical, real-world skills are the ones thriving.