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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 248 245 205
Rank change year-on-year -3 -40 -34
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 438 295 406
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.97% 1.07% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.14% 1.18% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 200 283
10th Percentile £258 £313 £314
25th Percentile £400 £350 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year +15.29% -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £525 £594
90th Percentile £675 £638 £674
UK median daily rate £490 £435 £463
% change year-on-year +12.64% -5.95% -6.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 27 35
10th Percentile £17.50 £38.25 £31.14
25th Percentile £54.00 £50.00 £55.95
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.50 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -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 38,532 24,959 29,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.75% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,999 19,151
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,433 1,365 1,791
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.22 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £17.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -48 153 £500 +17.65% 79
South East -60 68 £470 +17.50% 65
Midlands -9 61 £513 +48.55% 31
North of England -48 56 £475 +9.20% 52
West Midlands -15 55 £513 +30.99% 21
East of England +8 49 £300 -36.95% 30
South West -18 44 £410 -10.25% 30
North East -20 27 £475 - 16
North West -46 16 £475 +28.38% 24
Yorkshire -53 15 £475 +7.34% 13
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 (2.97%) Confluence
2 12 (2.74%) Apache Airflow
3 10 (2.28%) SAS
4 7 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.46%) IIS
5 2 (0.46%) 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 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.05%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.68%) Trello
6 2 (0.46%) Simulink
7 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.37%) Findur
1 6 (1.37%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.91%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.68%) Primavera
4 2 (0.46%) 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 97 (22.15%) Azure
2 91 (20.78%) AWS
3 48 (10.96%) Azure DevOps
4 41 (9.36%) GitHub
5 23 (5.25%) GCP
6 18 (4.11%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (4.11%) Serverless
7 16 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
8 15 (3.42%) GitHub Copilot
9 13 (2.97%) Amazon S3
10 11 (2.51%) PaaS
11 8 (1.83%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.83%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.37%) OpenShift
13 6 (1.37%) Snowflake
13 6 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 5 (1.14%) SaaS
15 4 (0.91%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.05%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.37%) DNS
3 5 (1.14%) Firewall
3 5 (1.14%) Software-Defined Radio
3 5 (1.14%) Wireless
4 4 (0.91%) Network Security
4 4 (0.91%) RS-232
4 4 (0.91%) RS-422
5 3 (0.68%) DHCP
5 3 (0.68%) Internet
5 3 (0.68%) Modbus
5 3 (0.68%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (0.68%) RS-485
6 2 (0.46%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.23%) Broadband
7 1 (0.23%) FTP
7 1 (0.23%) GSM
7 1 (0.23%) MPLS
7 1 (0.23%) SSL
7 1 (0.23%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.88%) Relational Database
2 14 (3.20%) Oracle Database
2 14 (3.20%) SQL Server
3 11 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (2.28%) MongoDB
4 10 (2.28%) MySQL
4 10 (2.28%) SAS Enterprise Guide
4 10 (2.28%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 9 (2.05%) DynamoDB
6 8 (1.83%) Big Data
7 7 (1.60%) NoSQL
8 6 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (1.37%) Power BI
9 5 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (0.91%) Redis
11 3 (0.68%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.68%) Parquet
11 3 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 71 (16.21%) JIRA
2 56 (12.79%) Git
3 49 (11.19%) Selenium
4 37 (8.45%) GitLab
5 32 (7.31%) Cucumber
6 31 (7.08%) Postman
7 30 (6.85%) Jenkins
8 28 (6.39%) JUnit
9 24 (5.48%) REST Assured
10 15 (3.42%) Gatling
11 13 (2.97%) Rational DOORS
12 12 (2.74%) Cypress.io
13 11 (2.51%) TestRail
13 11 (2.51%) Zephyr
14 10 (2.28%) JMeter
14 10 (2.28%) WebDriver
15 7 (1.60%) SonarQube
15 7 (1.60%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 6 (1.37%) Visual Studio
17 5 (1.14%) TestNG
General
1 131 (29.91%) Social Skills
2 88 (20.09%) Finance
3 69 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (11.64%) Public Sector
5 37 (8.45%) Banking
6 22 (5.02%) Aerospace
6 22 (5.02%) Automotive
7 13 (2.97%) Back Office
8 11 (2.51%) Front Office
9 10 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (2.28%) Electronics
9 10 (2.28%) Law
9 10 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.60%) Military
10 7 (1.60%) Retail
11 6 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.14%) Avionics
12 5 (1.14%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.14%) Telecoms
13 4 (0.91%) Legal
Job Titles
1 68 (15.53%) Software Engineer
1 68 (15.53%) Test Engineer
2 65 (14.84%) Senior
3 59 (13.47%) Developer
4 35 (7.99%) Analyst
5 28 (6.39%) Lead
6 27 (6.16%) Software Test Engineer
7 26 (5.94%) Tester
8 21 (4.79%) Java Developer
9 20 (4.57%) QA Engineer
10 18 (4.11%) Architect
10 18 (4.11%) Software Developer
10 18 (4.11%) Test Manager
11 17 (3.88%) Principal Engineer
12 15 (3.42%) Principal Software Engineer
12 15 (3.42%) Senior Developer
13 14 (3.20%) Test Analyst
13 14 (3.20%) Test Automation Engineer
14 13 (2.97%) Quality Engineer
14 13 (2.97%) Software Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (9.82%) Playwright
1 43 (9.82%) REST
2 42 (9.59%) React
3 34 (7.76%) Spring
4 30 (6.85%) .NET
5 23 (5.25%) RESTful
6 20 (4.57%) Kafka
6 20 (4.57%) Spring Boot
7 18 (4.11%) Node.js
8 13 (2.97%) AngularJS
9 11 (2.51%) CSS
9 11 (2.51%) HTML
10 10 (2.28%) Redux
11 8 (1.83%) CSS3
11 8 (1.83%) HTML5
11 8 (1.83%) Jest
11 8 (1.83%) pytest
12 7 (1.60%) JSON
12 7 (1.60%) Spring MVC
12 7 (1.60%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 45 (10.27%) Product Ownership
2 34 (7.76%) Enterprise Software
3 30 (6.85%) Cloud Native
4 26 (5.94%) Embedded Systems
5 21 (4.79%) Self-Motivation
6 19 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (2.97%) Management Information System
8 11 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (2.05%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (1.37%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.37%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.14%) FPGA
12 5 (1.14%) PCIe
13 4 (0.91%) Data Structures
13 4 (0.91%) Derivative
13 4 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
13 4 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 3 (0.68%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 27 (6.16%) Windows
2 23 (5.25%) Linux
3 7 (1.60%) Unix
4 6 (1.37%) FreeRTOS
4 6 (1.37%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.68%) Android
5 3 (0.68%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.68%) Embedded Linux
5 3 (0.68%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.46%) zOS
7 1 (0.23%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (46.80%) Test Automation
2 193 (44.06%) Agile
3 164 (37.44%) CI/CD
4 134 (30.59%) DevOps
5 133 (30.37%) Software Engineering
6 99 (22.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 95 (21.69%) Problem-Solving
8 79 (18.04%) SDLC
9 78 (17.81%) Scrum
10 65 (14.84%) Test Scripting
11 64 (14.61%) Test Strategy
11 64 (14.61%) Validation
12 57 (13.01%) AI
13 55 (12.56%) Regression Testing
14 54 (12.33%) Defect Management
14 54 (12.33%) User Acceptance Testing
15 51 (11.64%) Mentoring
16 50 (11.42%) Microservices
16 50 (11.42%) Stakeholder Management
17 45 (10.27%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 86 (19.63%) Java
2 78 (17.81%) Python
3 54 (12.33%) SQL
4 45 (10.27%) JavaScript
5 37 (8.45%) C#
6 32 (7.31%) TypeScript
7 24 (5.48%) C++
8 19 (4.34%) C
9 14 (3.20%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.60%) Kotlin
11 6 (1.37%) Bash
12 5 (1.14%) Apex Code
12 5 (1.14%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.68%) Ada
13 3 (0.68%) Go
13 3 (0.68%) Korn
13 3 (0.68%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.68%) Rust
13 3 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.46%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 136 (31.05%) Security Cleared
2 109 (24.89%) SC Cleared
3 48 (10.96%) Degree
4 36 (8.22%) ISTQB
5 21 (4.79%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 14 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.28%) DV Cleared
7 10 (2.28%) ISEB
8 9 (2.05%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 8 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (0.91%) CEH
10 4 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.91%) CISSP
10 4 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.68%) CCNA
12 2 (0.46%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.46%) ISEB Practitioner
12 2 (0.46%) Network+ Certification
12 2 (0.46%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.46%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (21.92%) QA
2 26 (5.94%) Accessibility
3 16 (3.65%) WCAG
4 10 (2.28%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.37%) PMO
6 5 (1.14%) Software Quality Assurance
7 4 (0.91%) NIST
8 3 (0.68%) GRC
8 3 (0.68%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.46%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.46%) MiFID
9 2 (0.46%) SLA
10 1 (0.23%) MIL-STD-1553
10 1 (0.23%) SEPA
System Software
1 45 (10.27%) Docker
2 12 (2.74%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.91%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.91%) Firmware
5 4 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.68%) VMware Workstation
7 2 (0.46%) NFS
7 2 (0.46%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.23%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 57 (13.01%) Kubernetes
2 28 (6.39%) Terraform
3 17 (3.88%) Ansible
4 13 (2.97%) Prometheus
5 10 (2.28%) Grafana
6 7 (1.60%) HP ALM
7 6 (1.37%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (1.37%) Packer
8 4 (0.91%) Puppet
8 4 (0.91%) SCCM
9 3 (0.68%) HP Quality Center
9 3 (0.68%) Salt
10 2 (0.46%) Kibana
10 2 (0.46%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 1 (0.23%) Argo
11 1 (0.23%) Oracle ZFS
11 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.23%) PTC Integrity
11 1 (0.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 31 (7.08%) Microsoft
1 31 (7.08%) Oracle
2 17 (3.88%) Salesforce
3 16 (3.65%) IBM
4 11 (2.51%) VMware
5 8 (1.83%) SAP
6 7 (1.60%) Citrix
6 7 (1.60%) Dell
6 7 (1.60%) HP
7 6 (1.37%) Conga
7 6 (1.37%) GoCardless
7 6 (1.37%) OpenLink
8 5 (1.14%) Google
8 5 (1.14%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.14%) Splunk
9 3 (0.68%) Ab Initio
9 3 (0.68%) Databricks
9 3 (0.68%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.68%) Palo Alto
9 3 (0.68%) Teradata