The Datum Report

Occupation 2136 · Professional occupations

IT quality and testing professionals

Half of full-time it quality and testing professionals in the UK earn more than £47,118 a year, and half earn less.

IT quality and testing professionals test the quality of IT software, systems and computer games and identify and recommend solutions to problems and improvements that could be made.

How people enter it

Entrants usually possess a degree or equivalent qualification, although entry with other academic qualifications and/or significant relevant experience is possible. There is a variety of relevant vocational, professional and postgraduate qualifications available.

What the work involves

• undertakes the testing of software, systems or computer games for errors, identifies source of problems and proposes solutions
• develops, implements and documents test plans for IT software, systems and computer games
• develops quality standards and validation techniques
• makes recommendations concerning software/system quality

Also called

IT auditor · Quality analyst (computing/IT) · Software testing consultant · Systems tester (computing/IT) · Test analyst (computing/IT) · Test engineer (professional, software)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for it quality and testing professionals, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 7 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Cyber security professionals · IT business analysts, architects and systems designers · IT managers · IT network professionals · IT project managers · Information technology professionals n.e.c. · Programmers and software development professionals