ISTQB Foundation Certification Contract Job Trends in England

ISTQB-BCS Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) formerly ISEB Foundation
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for ISTQB Foundation Certification qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 568 479 501
Rank change year-on-year -89 +22 +59
Contract jobs citing ISTQB Foundation Certification 56 33 32
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.12% 0.12% 0.097%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.39% 0.38% 0.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 29 26
10th Percentile £313 £305 £350
25th Percentile £350 £325 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -18.18% +1.38%
75th Percentile £558 £508 £575
90th Percentile £613 £545 £603
UK median daily rate £435 £450 £506
% change year-on-year -3.33% -11.11% -4.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £64.80 - -
25th Percentile £68.25 - -
Median hourly rate £74.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £74.00 - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

ISTQB Foundation Certification falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 14,481 8,747 10,114
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.69% 31.47% 30.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,770 5,471 6,455
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £433 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £526
% change year-on-year - -0.19% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,126 677 736
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +114.71% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £75.00 £56.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.32 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing ISTQB Foundation Certification relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

ISTQB Foundation Certification job vacancy trend in England

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB Foundation Certification.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB Foundation Certification

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing ISTQB Foundation Certification in England over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for ISTQB Foundation Certification in England

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB Foundation Certification.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing ISTQB Foundation Certification

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing ISTQB Foundation Certification within the England region over the 6 months to 17 August 2026. 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
South East -66 18 £550 +18.92% 3
Midlands -33 14 £387 +6.74% 3
West Midlands -39 14 £387 +6.74% 3
London -67 9 £538 +30.62% 4
South West -40 8 £375 +17.19% 2
East of England -16 5 £72 -76.96%
North of England - 4 £350 -
Yorkshire - 4 £350 -
ISTQB Foundation Certification
UK

ISTQB Foundation Certification
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 6 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 3 (5.36%) WebLogic
3 2 (3.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (1.79%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (5.36%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (7.14%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (5.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (3.57%) Maximo
4 1 (1.79%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 14 (25.00%) Azure
2 12 (21.43%) Azure DevOps
3 7 (12.50%) AWS
4 3 (5.36%) Dynamics 365
4 3 (5.36%) Power Automate
4 3 (5.36%) Tricentis Tosca
5 2 (3.57%) OpenShift
6 1 (1.79%) GCP
6 1 (1.79%) SaaS
6 1 (1.79%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.79%) Firewall
1 1 (1.79%) FTP
1 1 (1.79%) LAN
1 1 (1.79%) SD-WAN
1 1 (1.79%) WAN
1 1 (1.79%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.14%) Data Warehouse
1 4 (7.14%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.57%) Oracle Database
2 2 (3.57%) Tableau
3 1 (1.79%) BigQuery
3 1 (1.79%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (1.79%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 19 (33.93%) JIRA
2 16 (28.57%) Postman
3 9 (16.07%) Selenium
4 8 (14.29%) Git
5 5 (8.93%) Jenkins
5 5 (8.93%) Zephyr
6 4 (7.14%) Cucumber
6 4 (7.14%) REST Assured
6 4 (7.14%) SoapUI
7 3 (5.36%) Cypress.io
7 3 (5.36%) JMeter
7 3 (5.36%) LoadRunner
7 3 (5.36%) NUnit
7 3 (5.36%) Protractor
7 3 (5.36%) Toad
7 3 (5.36%) WebDriver
8 2 (3.57%) eggPlant
8 2 (3.57%) GitLab
8 2 (3.57%) HP UFT
8 2 (3.57%) JUnit
General
1 19 (33.93%) Analytical Skills
2 18 (32.14%) Social Skills
3 14 (25.00%) Public Sector
4 11 (19.64%) Finance
5 3 (5.36%) Banking
5 3 (5.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.79%) Law
6 1 (1.79%) Police
6 1 (1.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 20 (35.71%) Analyst
2 14 (25.00%) Test Analyst
3 11 (19.64%) Tester
4 10 (17.86%) Senior
5 9 (16.07%) Test Engineer
6 6 (10.71%) Business Analyst
6 6 (10.71%) Software Engineer
7 5 (8.93%) Lead
8 4 (7.14%) QA Tester
8 4 (7.14%) Salesforce Engineer
8 4 (7.14%) SAP Analyst
8 4 (7.14%) SAP Test Analyst
9 3 (5.36%) Infrastructure Tester
9 3 (5.36%) Principal Engineer
9 3 (5.36%) Principal Software Engineer
9 3 (5.36%) Senior Analyst
9 3 (5.36%) Senior Business Analyst
9 3 (5.36%) Senior Software Engineer
9 3 (5.36%) Test Leader
9 3 (5.36%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (21.43%) XML
2 7 (12.50%) Playwright
3 5 (8.93%) Kafka
4 4 (7.14%) JSON
4 4 (7.14%) React
5 3 (5.36%) .NET
5 3 (5.36%) Gherkin
5 3 (5.36%) SOAP
5 3 (5.36%) XSLT
6 2 (3.57%) ADO
6 2 (3.57%) Flask
6 2 (3.57%) HTML
6 2 (3.57%) Middleware
6 2 (3.57%) pytest
6 2 (3.57%) Web Services
6 2 (3.57%) XBRL
7 1 (1.79%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.79%) ebXML
7 1 (1.79%) REST
7 1 (1.79%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 5 (8.93%) Embedded Systems
1 5 (8.93%) PKI
2 4 (7.14%) Enterprise Software
2 4 (7.14%) Virtual Team
3 3 (5.36%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 3 (5.36%) Taxonomies
4 2 (3.57%) Data Centre
4 2 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (1.79%) IoT
5 1 (1.79%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.79%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.79%) PMI
5 1 (1.79%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.79%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 14 (25.00%) Windows
2 10 (17.86%) Linux
3 4 (7.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (71.43%) Agile
2 30 (53.57%) Test Automation
3 23 (41.07%) Software Testing
4 20 (35.71%) Defect Management
4 20 (35.71%) Test Scripting
5 19 (33.93%) End-to-End Testing
5 19 (33.93%) Integration Testing
6 18 (32.14%) DevOps
7 17 (30.36%) User Acceptance Testing
8 16 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
9 15 (26.79%) CI/CD
9 15 (26.79%) SDLC
10 13 (23.21%) API Testing
11 12 (21.43%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (21.43%) Manual Testing
11 12 (21.43%) Stakeholder Management
12 11 (19.64%) Regression Testing
13 10 (17.86%) Scaled Agile Framework
13 10 (17.86%) Scrum
13 10 (17.86%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 17 (30.36%) SQL
2 12 (21.43%) Java
3 11 (19.64%) Python
4 7 (12.50%) JavaScript
5 5 (8.93%) C++
6 4 (7.14%) Apex Code
7 2 (3.57%) VB.NET
8 1 (1.79%) C#
Qualifications
1 56 (100.00%) ISTQB
2 37 (66.07%) Security Cleared
3 29 (51.79%) SC Cleared
4 17 (30.36%) ISEB
5 8 (14.29%) Degree
5 8 (14.29%) DV Cleared
6 3 (5.36%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 2 (3.57%) IIBA
8 1 (1.79%) Azure Certification
8 1 (1.79%) CBAP
8 1 (1.79%) CCNA
8 1 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.79%) ISEB Practitioner
8 1 (1.79%) PMI Certification
8 1 (1.79%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (19.64%) QA
2 5 (8.93%) Accessibility
2 5 (8.93%) WCAG
3 4 (7.14%) ISO 20022
4 3 (5.36%) GDPR
4 3 (5.36%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 2 (3.57%) Docker
2 1 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 3 (5.36%) Kubernetes
2 2 (3.57%) Control-M
2 2 (3.57%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 12 (21.43%) Oracle
2 8 (14.29%) SAP
3 6 (10.71%) Microsoft
4 5 (8.93%) Salesforce
5 4 (7.14%) Conga
5 4 (7.14%) GoCardless
5 4 (7.14%) IBM
6 3 (5.36%) webMethods
7 1 (1.79%) Cisco
7 1 (1.79%) Citrix
7 1 (1.79%) Sage