Software Testing Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Software Testing
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Software Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 101 104
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +8
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 32 19 23
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 1.45% 1.09% 1.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.61% 1.16% 1.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 13 16
10th Percentile £463 £362 £375
25th Percentile £494 £413 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +22.04% -23.35%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £618
90th Percentile £696 £765 £634
Central London median daily rate £550 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +22.22% -7.79% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £27.50 -
Central London median hourly rate - £27.50 -

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

Software Testing 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 the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,987 1,642 1,946
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.11% 94.37% 91.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,373 1,103 1,211
10th Percentile £368 £325 £363
25th Percentile £455 £420 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £763 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -3.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 20 19
10th Percentile £16.98 £17.02 £15.60
25th Percentile £17.60 £21.54 £21.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £27.83 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% -27.73% +40.00%
75th Percentile £36.13 £47.00 £102.25
90th Percentile £59.70 £66.25 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £25.00 £28.33 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.74% -19.07% +30.84%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Testing relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Software Testing job vacancy trend in the City of London

Software Testing
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in the City of London over the 6 months to 3 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in the City of London

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 2 (6.25%) Confluence
1 2 (6.25%) SharePoint
2 1 (3.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (3.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (3.13%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 10 (31.25%) Azure
2 5 (15.63%) AWS
2 5 (15.63%) GitHub
3 3 (9.38%) GitHub Actions
3 3 (9.38%) GitHub Copilot
3 3 (9.38%) Power Platform
4 2 (6.25%) Amazon S3
4 2 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
4 2 (6.25%) SaaS
4 2 (6.25%) Serverless
5 1 (3.13%) Amazon EC2
5 1 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
5 1 (3.13%) Amazon SQS
5 1 (3.13%) AWS Control Tower
5 1 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (3.13%) Entra ID
5 1 (3.13%) GCP
5 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Copilot
5 1 (3.13%) Tricentis Tosca
5 1 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.13%) Firewall
1 1 (3.13%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (9.38%) Relational Database
1 3 (9.38%) SQL Server
2 1 (3.13%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (3.13%) Amazon QuickSight
2 1 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (3.13%) Chroma
2 1 (3.13%) DynamoDB
2 1 (3.13%) KDB
2 1 (3.13%) Kdb+
2 1 (3.13%) Milvus
2 1 (3.13%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 8 (25.00%) Selenium
2 5 (15.63%) Git
2 5 (15.63%) JIRA
2 5 (15.63%) Postman
3 4 (12.50%) Appium
3 4 (12.50%) Cucumber
3 4 (12.50%) SoapUI
4 3 (9.38%) eggPlant
4 3 (9.38%) GitLab
4 3 (9.38%) Jenkins
4 3 (9.38%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 3 (9.38%) Visual Studio
4 3 (9.38%) Zephyr
5 2 (6.25%) HP UFT
5 2 (6.25%) JMeter
5 2 (6.25%) LoadRunner
5 2 (6.25%) SonarQube
5 2 (6.25%) WebDriver
6 1 (3.13%) TestRail
6 1 (3.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 12 (37.50%) Finance
2 11 (34.38%) Banking
3 10 (31.25%) Social Skills
4 6 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (9.38%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (9.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (9.38%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (6.25%) Front Office
7 1 (3.13%) Automotive
7 1 (3.13%) Back Office
7 1 (3.13%) Law
7 1 (3.13%) Manufacturing
7 1 (3.13%) Military
7 1 (3.13%) Police
7 1 (3.13%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 6 (18.75%) Automation Engineer
1 6 (18.75%) Developer
1 6 (18.75%) Senior
2 5 (15.63%) Test Manager
3 4 (12.50%) Software Developer
3 4 (12.50%) Tester
4 3 (9.38%) Applications Tester
4 3 (9.38%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Lead
4 3 (9.38%) QA Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Senior QA Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Azure Developer
5 2 (6.25%) Developer in Test
5 2 (6.25%) Python Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) QA Automation Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Senior Automation Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Software Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) Architect
6 1 (3.13%) Coordinator
6 1 (3.13%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (31.25%) .NET
2 5 (15.63%) HTML
3 4 (12.50%) Kafka
3 4 (12.50%) XBRL
4 3 (9.38%) AngularJS
4 3 (9.38%) Middleware
4 3 (9.38%) SOAP
4 3 (9.38%) Web Services
5 2 (6.25%) Node.js
5 2 (6.25%) Playwright
5 2 (6.25%) XML
6 1 (3.13%) Android SDK
6 1 (3.13%) FastAPI
6 1 (3.13%) Gherkin
6 1 (3.13%) Hugging Face
6 1 (3.13%) iOS SDK
6 1 (3.13%) LangChain
6 1 (3.13%) LangGraph
6 1 (3.13%) LlamaIndex
6 1 (3.13%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 6 (18.75%) Cloud Native
2 5 (15.63%) Self-Motivation
3 4 (12.50%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (9.38%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (6.25%) Distributed Applications
5 2 (6.25%) Distributed Architecture
5 2 (6.25%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (3.13%) AS400
6 1 (3.13%) Data Structures
6 1 (3.13%) Fixed Income
6 1 (3.13%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 5 (15.63%) Linux
1 5 (15.63%) Unix
2 2 (6.25%) Android
2 2 (6.25%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (62.50%) CI/CD
2 19 (59.38%) Test Automation
3 16 (50.00%) Agile
4 10 (31.25%) SDLC
4 10 (31.25%) User Acceptance Testing
5 9 (28.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 7 (21.88%) AI
6 7 (21.88%) Full-Stack Development
6 7 (21.88%) Regression Testing
6 7 (21.88%) Software Delivery
6 7 (21.88%) Test Management
6 7 (21.88%) Test Scripting
6 7 (21.88%) Test Strategy
7 6 (18.75%) Defect Management
7 6 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
8 5 (15.63%) Computer Science
8 5 (15.63%) DevOps
8 5 (15.63%) Scrum
8 5 (15.63%) Software Engineering
8 5 (15.63%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 11 (34.38%) Python
1 11 (34.38%) SQL
2 9 (28.13%) Java
3 6 (18.75%) C#
4 5 (15.63%) JavaScript
5 4 (12.50%) Korn
6 2 (6.25%) TypeScript
7 1 (3.13%) Bash
7 1 (3.13%) COBOL
7 1 (3.13%) PL/SQL
7 1 (3.13%) RPG
7 1 (3.13%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 12 (37.50%) SC Cleared
1 12 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 5 (15.63%) Degree
3 3 (9.38%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (6.25%) ISTQB
5 1 (3.13%) DV Cleared
5 1 (3.13%) ISEB
5 1 (3.13%) PMI Certification
5 1 (3.13%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (37.50%) QA
2 1 (3.13%) Accessibility
2 1 (3.13%) SLA
2 1 (3.13%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 6 (18.75%) Docker
2 1 (3.13%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 7 (21.88%) Kubernetes
2 2 (6.25%) HP Fortify
3 1 (3.13%) Ansible
3 1 (3.13%) Grafana
3 1 (3.13%) Prometheus
3 1 (3.13%) Puppet
3 1 (3.13%) Salt
Vendors
1 8 (25.00%) Microsoft
2 5 (15.63%) IBM
3 3 (9.38%) Oracle
4 2 (6.25%) SAP
5 1 (3.13%) Avaloq
5 1 (3.13%) Databricks
5 1 (3.13%) Fortinet
5 1 (3.13%) Guidewire