Acceptance Criteria Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Acceptance Criteria
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cheshire requiring Acceptance Criteria skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 62 51 42
Rank change year-on-year -11 -9 +21
Contract jobs citing Acceptance Criteria 14 2 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Cheshire 2.11% 0.38% 1.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.31% 0.45% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 2 1
10th Percentile £269 £372 -
25th Percentile £323 £397 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £437 £447 £495
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -9.75% +4.21%
75th Percentile £469 £506 -
90th Percentile £489 £536 -
North West median daily rate £408 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -18.50% - +16.62%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Cheshire

Acceptance Criteria falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 605 447 333
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 90.98% 85.63% 87.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 453 277 190
10th Percentile £304 £323 £265
25th Percentile £358 £390 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £446 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.11% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £520 £575 £587
90th Percentile £688 £650 £638
North West median daily rate £450 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 16 30
10th Percentile - £16.00 £16.93
25th Percentile £12.82 £30.31 £22.13
Median hourly rate £17.75 £35.00 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year -49.29% +14.60% +46.19%
75th Percentile £35.38 £43.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £47.50 £40.00
North West median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -40.82% +21.43% +57.30%

Acceptance Criteria
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

Job postings citing Acceptance Criteria as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Cheshire.

Job vacancy trend for Acceptance Criteria in Cheshire

Acceptance Criteria
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Acceptance Criteria.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance Criteria
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Acceptance Criteria in Cheshire over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Acceptance Criteria in Cheshire

Acceptance Criteria
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Acceptance Criteria within the Cheshire region over the 6 months to 19 September 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Knutsford -9 13 £420 +17.98% 1
Acceptance Criteria
North West

Acceptance Criteria
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Cheshire by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (14.29%) CICS
2 1 (7.14%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (28.57%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 4 (28.57%) AWS
1 4 (28.57%) GitHub
1 4 (28.57%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (14.29%) DB2
1 2 (14.29%) Oracle Database
1 2 (14.29%) Relational Database
1 2 (14.29%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (57.14%) JIRA
2 6 (42.86%) Cucumber
2 6 (42.86%) Git
2 6 (42.86%) Jenkins
3 4 (28.57%) GitLab
3 4 (28.57%) JUnit
4 3 (21.43%) TestRail
5 2 (14.29%) Eclipse
5 2 (14.29%) IntelliJ
5 2 (14.29%) Maven
5 2 (14.29%) REST Assured
5 2 (14.29%) Selenium
General
1 11 (78.57%) Analytical Skills
2 8 (57.14%) Social Skills
3 6 (42.86%) Finance
4 4 (28.57%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (28.57%) Presentation Skills
4 4 (28.57%) Publishing
5 2 (14.29%) Banking
Job Titles
1 5 (35.71%) Tester
2 4 (28.57%) Developer
2 4 (28.57%) Java Developer
3 3 (21.43%) Service Manager
3 3 (21.43%) Service Transition Manager
3 3 (21.43%) Transition Manager
3 3 (21.43%) UAT Tester
4 2 (14.29%) Automation Tester
4 2 (14.29%) AWS Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Mainframe Tester
5 1 (7.14%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (28.57%) Kafka
1 4 (28.57%) React
1 4 (28.57%) REST
1 4 (28.57%) RESTful
1 4 (28.57%) Spring
1 4 (28.57%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 4 (28.57%) Management Information System
2 2 (14.29%) Mainframe
2 2 (14.29%) VSAM
3 1 (7.14%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (64.29%) Agile
2 8 (57.14%) Release Management
3 7 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
3 7 (50.00%) SDLC
3 7 (50.00%) Test Management
3 7 (50.00%) User Acceptance Testing
4 6 (42.86%) Computer Science
4 6 (42.86%) DevOps
5 5 (35.71%) Scrum
5 5 (35.71%) Sprint Planning
5 5 (35.71%) Test Scripting
5 5 (35.71%) Test Strategy
6 4 (28.57%) Microservices
6 4 (28.57%) Performance Optimisation
6 4 (28.57%) Programme Governance
6 4 (28.57%) Project Delivery
6 4 (28.57%) Requirements Gathering
6 4 (28.57%) Service Design
6 4 (28.57%) Sprint Retrospective
6 4 (28.57%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 6 (42.86%) Java
1 6 (42.86%) SQL
2 4 (28.57%) Python
3 2 (14.29%) COBOL
3 2 (14.29%) JCL
Qualifications
1 6 (42.86%) Degree
2 4 (28.57%) ITIL Certification
3 2 (14.29%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (14.29%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (7.14%) CSPO
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (28.57%) QA
Systems Management
1 3 (21.43%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 5 (35.71%) Microsoft
2 4 (28.57%) ServiceNow
3 3 (21.43%) HP
4 2 (14.29%) Oracle