Software Testing development

This story, from CIOL.com, clearly shows that software testing certification is on the rise.

The QAI Global Institute, which administers Software Certifications' examinations, having certified in excess of 35,000 professionals worldwide in 43 countries on the international standard for software testing practitioner certifications, Certified Software Tester (CSTE), announced the launch of their entry level certification called Certified Associate of Software Testing (CAST).

The top ten IT firms in India have been quick in creating large independent software testing practices in-house. The figures indicate that hardly 9 to 10 percent of the output from 17000 + Engineering colleges and 300 + universities are employable. This iterates the need to have standards at entry level so that the employability quotient can be increased.


For example, the graph of a testing professional could be assessed on his skills and experience at various levels. The entry level certification examination is called CAST (Certified Associate in Software Testing) after which the individual can become a CSTE (Certified Software Tester). Post that, he can get recognized as a CMST (Certified Manager of Software Testing).

UK Software testing market

How many software testers are there in the UK? I've never seen a definitive answer to this but here is a stab at estimating it. There are approximately 350,000 software testers in the USA according to The News and Views of EddieC

'How many software testers are there?' Being editor of a magazine about software testing, that's a number I should have know cold. At the time, I offered an estimate of about 250,000. A wild guess, really; I had no idea.

As it turns out, it wasn’t all that wild. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2007, the latest year for which data is available, there were 349,140 people in the United States doing that job. The government says these people: “Research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and network distribution software for medical, industrial, military, communications, aerospace, business, scientific, and general computing applications. Set operational specifications and formulate and analyze software requirements. Apply principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis.”

To all you software testers out there, does that sound anything like what you do? My guess is that it probably does. There are other similar jobs listed under the broad heading of “Computer and Mathematical Occupations,” but none included “software testing” in their description except “computer software engineers, systems software,” the job described above.

So there are that many software testers in a country with a population of 300 million. I have no idea whether the IT industries of the USA and the UK are equally proportional to the population of the two countries, but to make a stab at estimating the figure let's assume they are. The population of the UK is approxiamately 60.5 million which using the same ratio as the number of software testers in the USA would result in an estimate of about 70,000 software testers employed in the UK.

So there is a rough estimate. If you know a more accurate measure I'm sure there are a lot of people (mainly in the software testing industry) that would be interested in it.