Software Testing Contract Job Trends in England

Software Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Software Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
24 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 264 241 204
Rank change year-on-year -23 -37 -28
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 429 297 421
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.95% 1.09% 1.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 1.20% 1.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 202 297
10th Percentile £266 £313 £312
25th Percentile £400 £352 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £430 £450
Median % change year-on-year +13.95% -4.44% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £525 £588
90th Percentile £683 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £490 £435 £463
% change year-on-year +12.64% -5.95% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 26 39
10th Percentile £17.50 £48.13 £35.41
25th Percentile £53.95 £50.27 £55.95
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% +10.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £82.50 -
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +17.39% -8.00% +8.70%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 38,365 24,818 30,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 90.70% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,059 15,915 19,627
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,375 1,336 1,933
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.23 £13.60
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £17.25
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -37.13% -8.32%
75th Percentile £69.63 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -6.98%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Software Testing job vacancy trend in England

Software Testing
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in England over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software Testing

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Testing in England over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
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 Software Testing within the England region over the 6 months to 24 July 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
London -57 149 £500 +17.65% 78
South East -59 65 £495 +23.75% 70
North of England -44 58 £475 +9.20% 48
Midlands -8 56 £513 +48.55% 35
West Midlands -17 50 £513 +30.99% 25
East of England +2 49 £300 -36.95% 33
South West -24 45 £409 -13.89% 33
North East -11 27 £475 - 18
Yorkshire -50 17 £475 +9.20% 12
North West -41 16 £475 +11.76% 20
East Midlands -11 6 £575 +69.12% 10
Software Testing
UK

Software Testing
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 13 (3.03%) Confluence
2 12 (2.80%) Apache Airflow
3 10 (2.33%) SAS
4 8 (1.86%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.47%) IIS
5 2 (0.47%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.23%) Apache
6 1 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.23%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.17%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.47%) Simulink
5 2 (0.47%) Trello
6 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.40%) Findur
1 6 (1.40%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.93%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.70%) Primavera
4 2 (0.47%) Maximo
5 1 (0.23%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.23%) Eikon
5 1 (0.23%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.23%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.23%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.23%) Shopify
5 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 95 (22.14%) Azure
2 84 (19.58%) AWS
3 50 (11.66%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (8.39%) GitHub
5 20 (4.66%) GCP
5 20 (4.66%) Serverless
6 18 (4.20%) AWS Lambda
7 17 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
8 15 (3.50%) Amazon S3
9 11 (2.56%) PaaS
10 10 (2.33%) GitHub Copilot
11 8 (1.86%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.86%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (1.63%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (1.63%) OpenShift
12 7 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 6 (1.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 5 (1.17%) Amazon SQS
14 5 (1.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.10%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.40%) DNS
3 5 (1.17%) Firewall
3 5 (1.17%) Software-Defined Radio
3 5 (1.17%) Wireless
4 4 (0.93%) Network Security
4 4 (0.93%) RS-232
4 4 (0.93%) RS-422
5 3 (0.70%) DHCP
5 3 (0.70%) Internet
5 3 (0.70%) Modbus
5 3 (0.70%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (0.70%) RS-485
6 2 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.23%) BGP
7 1 (0.23%) Broadband
7 1 (0.23%) FTP
7 1 (0.23%) GSM
7 1 (0.23%) MPLS
7 1 (0.23%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (4.20%) Relational Database
2 16 (3.73%) Oracle Database
3 15 (3.50%) SQL Server
4 12 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.33%) DynamoDB
5 10 (2.33%) MySQL
5 10 (2.33%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 10 (2.33%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 9 (2.10%) Big Data
7 8 (1.86%) MongoDB
7 8 (1.86%) NoSQL
8 6 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (1.40%) Power BI
9 5 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (0.93%) Redis
11 3 (0.70%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.70%) Parquet
11 3 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 72 (16.78%) JIRA
2 49 (11.42%) Git
3 46 (10.72%) Selenium
4 31 (7.23%) Postman
5 30 (6.99%) GitLab
6 29 (6.76%) Jenkins
7 27 (6.29%) Cucumber
8 23 (5.36%) JUnit
9 22 (5.13%) REST Assured
10 13 (3.03%) Cypress.io
10 13 (3.03%) Rational DOORS
11 11 (2.56%) Gatling
11 11 (2.56%) TestRail
11 11 (2.56%) WebDriver
11 11 (2.56%) Zephyr
12 10 (2.33%) JMeter
13 7 (1.63%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 6 (1.40%) Visual Studio
15 5 (1.17%) Maven
15 5 (1.17%) TestNG
General
1 126 (29.37%) Social Skills
2 87 (20.28%) Finance
3 67 (15.62%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (11.89%) Public Sector
5 34 (7.93%) Banking
6 22 (5.13%) Aerospace
7 21 (4.90%) Automotive
8 13 (3.03%) Back Office
9 10 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (2.33%) Electronics
9 10 (2.33%) Front Office
9 10 (2.33%) Law
9 10 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.63%) Military
10 7 (1.63%) Retail
11 6 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.17%) Avionics
12 5 (1.17%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.17%) Telecoms
13 4 (0.93%) Legal
Job Titles
1 66 (15.38%) Software Engineer
2 65 (15.15%) Test Engineer
3 64 (14.92%) Senior
4 60 (13.99%) Developer
5 35 (8.16%) Analyst
6 29 (6.76%) Lead
7 28 (6.53%) Tester
8 25 (5.83%) Software Test Engineer
9 22 (5.13%) Java Developer
10 19 (4.43%) Architect
11 18 (4.20%) Software Developer
12 17 (3.96%) Principal Engineer
12 17 (3.96%) QA Engineer
13 16 (3.73%) Senior Developer
13 16 (3.73%) Test Manager
14 15 (3.50%) Principal Software Engineer
15 14 (3.26%) Test Analyst
16 13 (3.03%) Salesforce Engineer
16 13 (3.03%) Software Architect
16 13 (3.03%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (9.79%) React
2 41 (9.56%) REST
3 38 (8.86%) Playwright
4 32 (7.46%) Spring
5 29 (6.76%) .NET
6 22 (5.13%) Spring Boot
7 21 (4.90%) RESTful
8 19 (4.43%) Kafka
9 16 (3.73%) Node.js
10 14 (3.26%) CSS
10 14 (3.26%) HTML
11 12 (2.80%) Redux
12 11 (2.56%) AngularJS
13 9 (2.10%) CSS3
13 9 (2.10%) HTML5
13 9 (2.10%) Jest
14 8 (1.86%) Spring MVC
15 6 (1.40%) .NET Framework
15 6 (1.40%) SOAP
15 6 (1.40%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.26%) Product Ownership
2 33 (7.69%) Enterprise Software
3 27 (6.29%) Cloud Native
4 26 (6.06%) Embedded Systems
5 22 (5.13%) Self-Motivation
6 20 (4.66%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (3.26%) Management Information System
8 13 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
9 11 (2.56%) Data Centre
10 10 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
12 6 (1.40%) Onboarding
12 6 (1.40%) Public Cloud
13 5 (1.17%) FPGA
13 5 (1.17%) PCIe
14 4 (0.93%) Derivative
14 4 (0.93%) Distributed Architecture
15 3 (0.70%) AI Agents
15 3 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
15 3 (0.70%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 26 (6.06%) Windows
2 22 (5.13%) Linux
3 7 (1.63%) Unix
4 6 (1.40%) FreeRTOS
4 6 (1.40%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.70%) Android
5 3 (0.70%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.70%) Embedded Linux
5 3 (0.70%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.47%) zOS
7 1 (0.23%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (45.69%) Test Automation
2 185 (43.12%) Agile
3 154 (35.90%) CI/CD
4 134 (31.24%) DevOps
5 128 (29.84%) Software Engineering
6 95 (22.14%) Continuous Improvement
7 91 (21.21%) Problem-Solving
8 74 (17.25%) SDLC
9 70 (16.32%) Scrum
10 69 (16.08%) Test Scripting
11 63 (14.69%) Validation
12 62 (14.45%) Test Strategy
13 55 (12.82%) Regression Testing
14 54 (12.59%) User Acceptance Testing
15 52 (12.12%) Defect Management
16 51 (11.89%) AI
17 48 (11.19%) Microservices
18 47 (10.96%) Code Quality
18 47 (10.96%) Mentoring
19 45 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 77 (17.95%) Java
2 75 (17.48%) Python
3 56 (13.05%) SQL
4 44 (10.26%) JavaScript
5 38 (8.86%) C#
6 33 (7.69%) TypeScript
7 22 (5.13%) C++
8 19 (4.43%) C
9 14 (3.26%) PowerShell
10 6 (1.40%) Bash
11 5 (1.17%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.17%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.93%) Go
13 3 (0.70%) Ada
13 3 (0.70%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.70%) Rust
13 3 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.47%) JCL
14 2 (0.47%) REXX
Qualifications
1 136 (31.70%) Security Cleared
2 110 (25.64%) SC Cleared
3 46 (10.72%) Degree
4 34 (7.93%) ISTQB
5 21 (4.90%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 12 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.33%) ISEB
8 9 (2.10%) DV Cleared
9 8 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (1.63%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 4 (0.93%) CEH
11 4 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (0.93%) CISSP
11 4 (0.93%) CompTIA Security+
12 3 (0.70%) CCNA
13 2 (0.47%) A+ Certification
13 2 (0.47%) ISEB Practitioner
13 2 (0.47%) Network+ Certification
13 2 (0.47%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.47%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (20.75%) QA
2 23 (5.36%) Accessibility
3 12 (2.80%) WCAG
4 10 (2.33%) Data Quality
5 8 (1.86%) PMO
6 5 (1.17%) Software Quality Assurance
7 4 (0.93%) NIST
8 3 (0.70%) GRC
8 3 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.47%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.47%) MiFID
9 2 (0.47%) SLA
10 1 (0.23%) MIL-STD-1553
10 1 (0.23%) SEPA
System Software
1 41 (9.56%) Docker
2 12 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.93%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.93%) Firmware
5 4 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.70%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.70%) VMware Workstation
7 2 (0.47%) NFS
7 2 (0.47%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.23%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 51 (11.89%) Kubernetes
2 27 (6.29%) Terraform
3 16 (3.73%) Ansible
4 12 (2.80%) Prometheus
5 10 (2.33%) Grafana
6 7 (1.63%) HP ALM
7 6 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (1.40%) Packer
8 4 (0.93%) SCCM
9 3 (0.70%) HP Quality Center
9 3 (0.70%) Puppet
9 3 (0.70%) Salt
10 2 (0.47%) Kibana
10 2 (0.47%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 1 (0.23%) Oracle ZFS
11 1 (0.23%) PTC Integrity
11 1 (0.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 31 (7.23%) Oracle
2 29 (6.76%) Microsoft
3 17 (3.96%) Salesforce
4 16 (3.73%) IBM
5 10 (2.33%) VMware
6 9 (2.10%) Dell
7 8 (1.86%) SAP
8 7 (1.63%) Citrix
8 7 (1.63%) HP
9 6 (1.40%) Conga
9 6 (1.40%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.40%) OpenLink
10 5 (1.17%) Google
10 5 (1.17%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.17%) Splunk
11 4 (0.93%) Ab Initio
11 4 (0.93%) Teradata
12 3 (0.70%) Checkmarx
12 3 (0.70%) Fortinet
12 3 (0.70%) Palo Alto
275 Software Testing jobs in England