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 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 101 109
Rank change year-on-year -11 +8 +44
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 15 19 26
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.80% 1.01% 1.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.90% 1.10% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 14 18
10th Percentile £249 - £371
25th Percentile £375 £413 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £595 £563
Median % change year-on-year -21.47% +5.78% +7.14%
75th Percentile £631 £633 £717
90th Percentile £676 £681 £775
Central London median daily rate £460 £565 £563
% change year-on-year -18.67% +0.44% +7.14%

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 1,674 1,722 2,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.04% 91.89% 89.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,167 1,039 1,569
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £431 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +1.05% -4.37%
75th Percentile £675 £679 £688
90th Percentile £775 £781 £800
Central London median daily rate £543 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -5.65% +2.22% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 9 15
10th Percentile £19.98 £13.45 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.66 £22.00 £19.42
Median hourly rate £31.00 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.62% +18.18% -21.43%
75th Percentile £42.65 £43.75 £43.38
90th Percentile £49.83 £112.00 £64.35
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

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 31 January 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 1 (6.67%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 1 (6.67%) Algo Collateral
Cloud Services
1 5 (33.33%) Azure
1 5 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
2 3 (20.00%) AWS
3 2 (13.33%) GitHub
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon Bedrock
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon OpenSearch
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon S3
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Fargate
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (6.67%) Nutanix
4 1 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 1 (6.67%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (26.67%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (20.00%) Relational Database
3 2 (13.33%) MySQL
3 2 (13.33%) SQL Server
4 1 (6.67%) DynamoDB
4 1 (6.67%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 5 (33.33%) Selenium
2 3 (20.00%) Cucumber
2 3 (20.00%) Git
2 3 (20.00%) Postman
3 2 (13.33%) Bitbucket
3 2 (13.33%) JIRA
4 1 (6.67%) JMeter
4 1 (6.67%) WebDriver
General
1 4 (26.67%) Finance
2 3 (20.00%) Front Office
3 2 (13.33%) Back Office
3 2 (13.33%) Banking
3 2 (13.33%) Investment Banking
3 2 (13.33%) Social Skills
4 1 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (6.67%) Documentation Skills
4 1 (6.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (6.67%) Manufacturing
4 1 (6.67%) Organisational Skills
4 1 (6.67%) Pharmaceutical
4 1 (6.67%) Police
4 1 (6.67%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 5 (33.33%) Developer
2 3 (20.00%) Test Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Analyst
3 2 (13.33%) Python Developer
3 2 (13.33%) Test Analyst
3 2 (13.33%) Test Automation Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Tester
4 1 (6.67%) Applications Manager
4 1 (6.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Developer in Test
4 1 (6.67%) DevOps Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Full-Stack Developer
4 1 (6.67%) Migration Manager
4 1 (6.67%) Senior
4 1 (6.67%) Senior Developer
4 1 (6.67%) Software Developer
4 1 (6.67%) Systems Tester
4 1 (6.67%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (33.33%) .NET
2 2 (13.33%) Django
2 2 (13.33%) GraphQL
2 2 (13.33%) React
2 2 (13.33%) RESTful
3 1 (6.67%) AWS CDK
3 1 (6.67%) CSS
3 1 (6.67%) Faiss
3 1 (6.67%) FastAPI
3 1 (6.67%) Gherkin
3 1 (6.67%) HTML
3 1 (6.67%) JSON
3 1 (6.67%) LangChain
3 1 (6.67%) LangGraph
3 1 (6.67%) Playwright
3 1 (6.67%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 1 (6.67%) AI Agents
1 1 (6.67%) Cloud Native
1 1 (6.67%) Data Structures
1 1 (6.67%) Derivative
1 1 (6.67%) Legacy Systems
1 1 (6.67%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (26.67%) Linux
2 1 (6.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (60.00%) Test Automation
2 8 (53.33%) CI/CD
3 6 (40.00%) Agile
3 6 (40.00%) DevOps
4 5 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
4 5 (33.33%) Test Scripting
5 4 (26.67%) Scenario Testing
5 4 (26.67%) Validation
6 3 (20.00%) Computer Science
6 3 (20.00%) Containerisation
6 3 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 3 (20.00%) End-to-End Testing
6 3 (20.00%) Regression Testing
7 2 (13.33%) Clean Code
7 2 (13.33%) Integration Testing
7 2 (13.33%) Performance Testing
7 2 (13.33%) Refactoring
7 2 (13.33%) Roadmaps
7 2 (13.33%) Test Management
7 2 (13.33%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 5 (33.33%) Python
1 5 (33.33%) SQL
2 4 (26.67%) Java
3 3 (20.00%) C#
4 2 (13.33%) VB.NET
5 1 (6.67%) JavaScript
5 1 (6.67%) PL/SQL
5 1 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 1 (6.67%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 4 (26.67%) Degree
2 3 (20.00%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (20.00%) SC Cleared
2 3 (20.00%) Security Cleared
3 1 (6.67%) CCNA
3 1 (6.67%) Cisco Certification
3 1 (6.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (46.67%) QA
System Software
1 4 (26.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (13.33%) Kubernetes
1 2 (13.33%) Terraform
2 1 (6.67%) Ansible
2 1 (6.67%) Packer
Vendors
1 2 (13.33%) Microsoft
1 2 (13.33%) Oracle
1 2 (13.33%) UiPath
2 1 (6.67%) IBM
2 1 (6.67%) MuleSoft
2 1 (6.67%) Salesforce
2 1 (6.67%) SmartStream
2 1 (6.67%) VMware