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 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 219 177
Rank change year-on-year -22 -42 +9
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 407 305 494
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.04% 1.25% 1.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.21% 1.37% 1.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 253 194 330
10th Percentile £338 £313 £250
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.07% +2.11% -12.20%
75th Percentile £550 £617 £596
90th Percentile £611 £713 £688
UK median daily rate £450 £444 £450
% change year-on-year +1.35% -1.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 23 67
10th Percentile £36.90 £31.21 £37.33
25th Percentile £60.75 £53.94 £56.25
Median hourly rate £68.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.80% - +19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £86.15 -
UK median hourly rate £69.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.40% - +18.52%

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 33,547 22,212 32,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 91.02% 86.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,492 14,606 21,309
10th Percentile £314 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,069 881 2,207
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.09 £18.51 £15.76
Median hourly rate £41.56 £31.76 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -7.16% -8.77%
75th Percentile £66.25 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.25 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
% change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -20 174 £460 +5.03% 40
South East -36 66 £495 -16.63% 72
Midlands -34 52 £515 +17.87% 41
North of England -49 49 £405 -4.71% 47
West Midlands -33 41 £514 +14.73% 28
South West -14 40 £409 +2.25% 36
Yorkshire -39 25 £409 +0.93% 12
East of England -32 23 £600 +26.32% 44
North West -37 15 £405 -20.20% 27
North East -7 11 £350 - 8
East Midlands -25 11 £575 +400.00% 13
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 17 (4.18%) Confluence
2 16 (3.93%) SAS
3 7 (1.72%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.49%) IIS
5 2 (0.49%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.25%) CMS
6 1 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.25%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.49%) Simulink
6 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (1.47%) Aladdin
2 5 (1.23%) Findur
3 4 (0.98%) Maximo
4 3 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.49%) LabWindows
5 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.25%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.25%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.25%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 126 (30.96%) Azure
2 87 (21.38%) Azure DevOps
3 82 (20.15%) AWS
4 32 (7.86%) GCP
4 32 (7.86%) GitHub
5 28 (6.88%) Serverless
6 27 (6.63%) AWS Lambda
7 26 (6.39%) Amazon S3
8 14 (3.44%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (2.95%) Amazon ECS
9 12 (2.95%) AWS CloudFormation
10 11 (2.70%) Snowflake
11 9 (2.21%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.97%) OpenShift
13 7 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 6 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (1.47%) PaaS
15 5 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 4 (0.98%) AWS Control Tower
17 3 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.72%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.47%) Firewall
3 5 (1.23%) Wireless
4 4 (0.98%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (0.74%) FTP
5 3 (0.74%) Modbus
5 3 (0.74%) RS-232
5 3 (0.74%) RS-422
5 3 (0.74%) RS-485
5 3 (0.74%) SNMP
5 3 (0.74%) Software-Defined Radio
6 2 (0.49%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.49%) DNS
6 2 (0.49%) Internet
6 2 (0.49%) Intranet
6 2 (0.49%) IOS XR
6 2 (0.49%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.49%) Spanning Tree
6 2 (0.49%) SSH
6 2 (0.49%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (7.13%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (4.91%) Relational Database
3 18 (4.42%) MySQL
4 16 (3.93%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 15 (3.69%) Oracle Database
6 14 (3.44%) SQL Server
7 11 (2.70%) Big Data
7 11 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 10 (2.46%) BigQuery
9 9 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (1.97%) MongoDB
11 7 (1.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 7 (1.72%) DynamoDB
12 5 (1.23%) SAS Visual Analytics
13 4 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
13 4 (0.98%) Amazon QuickSight
14 3 (0.74%) Parquet
14 3 (0.74%) Redis
15 2 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
15 2 (0.49%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 74 (18.18%) JIRA
2 50 (12.29%) Selenium
3 48 (11.79%) Git
4 35 (8.60%) Jenkins
5 34 (8.35%) Postman
6 24 (5.90%) Cypress.io
7 23 (5.65%) Cucumber
7 23 (5.65%) JUnit
8 19 (4.67%) REST Assured
9 17 (4.18%) GitLab
10 13 (3.19%) TestRail
11 9 (2.21%) Zephyr
12 8 (1.97%) Rational DOORS
12 8 (1.97%) SonarQube
12 8 (1.97%) WebDriver
13 6 (1.47%) HP UFT
13 6 (1.47%) JMeter
14 5 (1.23%) Gradle
14 5 (1.23%) Maven
14 5 (1.23%) SpecFlow
General
1 111 (27.27%) Social Skills
2 70 (17.20%) Finance
3 66 (16.22%) Analytical Skills
4 46 (11.30%) Public Sector
5 18 (4.42%) Banking
6 16 (3.93%) Aerospace
7 14 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.70%) Back Office
9 8 (1.97%) Front Office
9 8 (1.97%) Military
10 7 (1.72%) Electronics
10 7 (1.72%) Manufacturing
11 6 (1.47%) Telecoms
12 5 (1.23%) Automotive
12 5 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.23%) Investment Banking
12 5 (1.23%) Law
13 4 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.98%) Police
14 3 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 66 (16.22%) Senior
2 59 (14.50%) Developer
3 45 (11.06%) Analyst
4 41 (10.07%) Test Engineer
5 38 (9.34%) Lead
6 35 (8.60%) Software Engineer
6 35 (8.60%) Test Analyst
7 33 (8.11%) Tester
8 28 (6.88%) Consultant
9 22 (5.41%) Java Developer
10 21 (5.16%) QA Engineer
11 18 (4.42%) Java Engineer
11 18 (4.42%) Senior Developer
11 18 (4.42%) Test Manager
12 16 (3.93%) Release Manager
12 16 (3.93%) Senior Analyst
12 16 (3.93%) Senior Test Analyst
13 14 (3.44%) Software Developer
13 14 (3.44%) Software Test Engineer
14 12 (2.95%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (11.06%) Spring
2 36 (8.85%) React
2 36 (8.85%) Spring Boot
3 35 (8.60%) Playwright
4 34 (8.35%) REST
5 31 (7.62%) RESTful
6 27 (6.63%) .NET
7 21 (5.16%) CSS
7 21 (5.16%) HTML
8 20 (4.91%) Node.js
9 17 (4.18%) Kafka
10 12 (2.95%) Redux
11 11 (2.70%) HTML5
12 10 (2.46%) AngularJS
12 10 (2.46%) CSS3
12 10 (2.46%) Gherkin
12 10 (2.46%) Jest
12 10 (2.46%) Spring MVC
13 9 (2.21%) Middleware
14 7 (1.72%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 33 (8.11%) Product Ownership
2 28 (6.88%) Cloud Native
3 19 (4.67%) Self-Motivation
4 15 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
5 12 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (2.70%) Embedded Systems
6 11 (2.70%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.72%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.47%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.98%) Fixed Income
10 4 (0.98%) FPGA
10 4 (0.98%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.74%) CUDA
11 3 (0.74%) Equities
11 3 (0.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 3 (0.74%) NHS
11 3 (0.74%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 31 (7.62%) Windows
2 21 (5.16%) Linux
3 9 (2.21%) Unix
4 4 (0.98%) FreeRTOS
4 4 (0.98%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.49%) Android
5 2 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.25%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (44.96%) Test Automation
2 145 (35.63%) DevOps
3 144 (35.38%) Agile
4 140 (34.40%) CI/CD
5 95 (23.34%) Problem-Solving
6 90 (22.11%) Continuous Improvement
7 79 (19.41%) Test Scripting
8 71 (17.44%) Software Engineering
9 66 (16.22%) Validation
10 58 (14.25%) Test Management
11 57 (14.00%) Test Strategy
12 55 (13.51%) Microservices
13 52 (12.78%) SDLC
14 50 (12.29%) Regression Testing
15 47 (11.55%) Defect Tracking
16 44 (10.81%) API Testing
16 44 (10.81%) Scrum
17 43 (10.57%) Manual Testing
18 42 (10.32%) Defect Management
18 42 (10.32%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 83 (20.39%) Java
2 78 (19.16%) Python
3 73 (17.94%) SQL
4 48 (11.79%) JavaScript
5 40 (9.83%) C#
6 39 (9.58%) TypeScript
7 14 (3.44%) C++
8 10 (2.46%) Bash
8 10 (2.46%) C
9 7 (1.72%) PL/SQL
9 7 (1.72%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.23%) Go
10 5 (1.23%) VBScript
11 3 (0.74%) Groovy
11 3 (0.74%) Ruby
11 3 (0.74%) Rust
11 3 (0.74%) VB
12 2 (0.49%) Ada
12 2 (0.49%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.49%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 126 (30.96%) Security Cleared
2 104 (25.55%) SC Cleared
3 35 (8.60%) ISTQB
4 33 (8.11%) Degree
5 13 (3.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 12 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (1.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 5 (1.23%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.23%) ISEB
10 4 (0.98%) CISSP
10 4 (0.98%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.74%) CEH
11 3 (0.74%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.74%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.74%) PMP
12 2 (0.49%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 1 (0.25%) CFA
13 1 (0.25%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (26.04%) QA
2 14 (3.44%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.70%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.72%) PMO
4 7 (1.72%) WCAG
5 4 (0.98%) NIST
5 4 (0.98%) SLA
6 3 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
7 1 (0.25%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.25%) GRC
7 1 (0.25%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.25%) MiFID
7 1 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 35 (8.60%) Docker
2 7 (1.72%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.72%) Firmware
3 6 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.74%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.25%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
6 1 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 49 (12.04%) Kubernetes
2 22 (5.41%) Terraform
3 11 (2.70%) Ansible
3 11 (2.70%) Grafana
3 11 (2.70%) HP ALM
4 10 (2.46%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.72%) Puppet
6 5 (1.23%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.98%) HP Quality Center
7 4 (0.98%) Salt
7 4 (0.98%) SCCM
8 2 (0.49%) Nessus
9 1 (0.25%) Kibana
9 1 (0.25%) Nmap
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle ZFS
9 1 (0.25%) Packer
9 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.25%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 44 (10.81%) Oracle
2 39 (9.58%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.70%) HP
3 11 (2.70%) ServiceNow
4 9 (2.21%) SAP
5 7 (1.72%) Citrix
5 7 (1.72%) Dell
5 7 (1.72%) IBM
5 7 (1.72%) VMware
6 6 (1.47%) Splunk
7 5 (1.23%) Ab Initio
7 5 (1.23%) Databricks
7 5 (1.23%) Google
7 5 (1.23%) OpenLink
7 5 (1.23%) Teradata
8 4 (0.98%) Atlassian
8 4 (0.98%) Fortinet
8 4 (0.98%) Remedy
8 4 (0.98%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.74%) Charles River