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 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 253 208
Rank change year-on-year +12 -45 -36
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 529 297 394
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.13% 1.06% 1.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.33% 1.16% 1.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 282 206 253
10th Percentile £270 £318 £313
25th Percentile £400 £359 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £446 £463
Median % change year-on-year +3.14% -3.57% -11.90%
75th Percentile £558 £538 £588
90th Percentile £656 £625 £639
UK median daily rate £450 £445 £465
% change year-on-year +1.14% -4.30% -8.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 24 19
10th Percentile £26.00 £26.25 £34.74
25th Percentile £53.90 £47.19 £46.09
Median hourly rate £60.17 £51.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.97% -18.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £69.77
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £51.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +17.65% -11.30% -11.54%

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 39,775 25,570 27,639
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.94% 90.90% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,015 16,235 16,841
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,044 1,594 1,106
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.41 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%
75th Percentile £67.47 £44.80 £66.90
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £74.22
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -20 189 £535 +20.22% 274
Midlands +18 92 £450 +4.65% 79
West Midlands +24 89 £450 -10.00% 49
South East -37 88 £400 -4.76% 127
North of England -56 62 £456 +4.89% 121
East of England 0 49 £74 -87.07% 73
South West -25 39 £410 -8.89% 63
North East -23 24 £500 +37.93% 15
North West -40 20 £464 +36.47% 73
Yorkshire -46 18 £450 -4.76% 33
East Midlands -18 3 - - 30
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 18 (3.40%) Confluence
2 10 (1.89%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.13%) SAS
5 5 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.57%) Apache
6 3 (0.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.19%) FactoryTalk
7 1 (0.19%) IIS
7 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.19%) WinCC
Applications
1 12 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.95%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.76%) Trello
5 2 (0.38%) Simulink
6 1 (0.19%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (1.13%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.57%) Primavera
3 2 (0.38%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.38%) Eikon
4 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Findur
4 1 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.19%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.19%) Misys Equation
4 1 (0.19%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 137 (25.90%) AWS
2 121 (22.87%) Azure
3 64 (12.10%) GitHub
4 60 (11.34%) Azure DevOps
5 30 (5.67%) GitHub Copilot
6 29 (5.48%) GCP
7 26 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (2.08%) Power Platform
8 11 (2.08%) SaaS
9 10 (1.89%) Serverless
10 9 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (1.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (1.32%) Amazon S3
12 7 (1.32%) Anthropic Claude
13 6 (1.13%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.13%) PaaS
14 5 (0.95%) Cloud Computing
14 5 (0.95%) Dynamics 365
15 4 (0.76%) AWS CloudFormation
15 4 (0.76%) BrowserStack
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.51%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.13%) DNS
3 5 (0.95%) DHCP
4 4 (0.76%) Internet
4 4 (0.76%) Network Security
5 3 (0.57%) Firewall
6 2 (0.38%) BGP
6 2 (0.38%) MPLS
6 2 (0.38%) Software-Defined Radio
6 2 (0.38%) SSL
6 2 (0.38%) Wireless
7 1 (0.19%) GSM
7 1 (0.19%) HTTP
7 1 (0.19%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.19%) IPv4
7 1 (0.19%) IPv6
7 1 (0.19%) SSH
7 1 (0.19%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.19%) UMTS
7 1 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.67%) Relational Database
2 27 (5.10%) MongoDB
3 19 (3.59%) SQL Server
4 13 (2.46%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.70%) Oracle Database
6 8 (1.51%) Power BI
7 7 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (1.13%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 6 (1.13%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 5 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (0.95%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.76%) Pinecone
10 4 (0.76%) Redis
10 4 (0.76%) ZAP BI
11 3 (0.57%) Chroma
11 3 (0.57%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (0.38%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 115 (21.74%) Selenium
2 107 (20.23%) Git
3 74 (13.99%) Cucumber
4 73 (13.80%) JIRA
5 68 (12.85%) GitLab
6 55 (10.40%) JUnit
7 45 (8.51%) Jenkins
8 44 (8.32%) Gatling
9 41 (7.75%) Postman
10 29 (5.48%) REST Assured
11 22 (4.16%) SonarQube
12 21 (3.97%) JMeter
13 17 (3.21%) Cypress.io
14 14 (2.65%) TestNG
15 13 (2.46%) Rational DOORS
15 13 (2.46%) Zephyr
16 12 (2.27%) TestRail
16 12 (2.27%) WebDriver
17 11 (2.08%) Appium
17 11 (2.08%) Visual Studio
General
1 196 (37.05%) Social Skills
2 94 (17.77%) Finance
3 83 (15.69%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (13.23%) Public Sector
5 58 (10.96%) Banking
6 31 (5.86%) Automotive
7 22 (4.16%) Aerospace
8 21 (3.97%) Manufacturing
9 13 (2.46%) Front Office
10 12 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (2.08%) Electronics
12 10 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
12 10 (1.89%) Retail
12 10 (1.89%) Telecoms
13 7 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
13 7 (1.32%) Law
14 6 (1.13%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.95%) Avionics
15 5 (0.95%) Legal
15 5 (0.95%) Military
Job Titles
1 78 (14.74%) Senior
2 77 (14.56%) Test Engineer
3 72 (13.61%) Developer
4 65 (12.29%) Software Engineer
5 38 (7.18%) Analyst
6 35 (6.62%) Quality Engineer
6 35 (6.62%) Tester
7 32 (6.05%) Lead
8 31 (5.86%) Test Manager
9 30 (5.67%) Software Developer
10 25 (4.73%) Architect
11 24 (4.54%) Test Automation Engineer
12 21 (3.97%) Java Developer
12 21 (3.97%) Software Test Engineer
13 20 (3.78%) QA Engineer
13 20 (3.78%) Test Analyst
14 19 (3.59%) Principal Engineer
15 18 (3.40%) Automation Engineer
16 17 (3.21%) Java Engineer
16 17 (3.21%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (14.18%) Playwright
2 53 (10.02%) Spring
3 47 (8.88%) .NET
4 44 (8.32%) REST
5 43 (8.13%) React
6 35 (6.62%) Kafka
7 26 (4.91%) RESTful
7 26 (4.91%) Terraform
8 24 (4.54%) Spring Boot
9 23 (4.35%) WireMock
10 22 (4.16%) Gherkin
10 22 (4.16%) Node.js
11 19 (3.59%) JSON
12 13 (2.46%) AngularJS
12 13 (2.46%) RabbitMQ
12 13 (2.46%) XML
13 11 (2.08%) SOAP
13 11 (2.08%) Web Services
14 10 (1.89%) HTML
15 9 (1.70%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 53 (10.02%) Product Ownership
2 37 (6.99%) Enterprise Software
3 36 (6.81%) Cloud Native
4 22 (4.16%) Distributed Systems
5 18 (3.40%) Embedded Systems
6 16 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
7 11 (2.08%) Onboarding
8 10 (1.89%) AI Agents
8 10 (1.89%) Data Structures
9 9 (1.70%) Distributed Architecture
9 9 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 8 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.32%) Algorithms
12 6 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
12 6 (1.13%) Public Cloud
13 5 (0.95%) Derivative
13 5 (0.95%) Equities
13 5 (0.95%) Equity Derivative
13 5 (0.95%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 37 (6.99%) Linux
2 27 (5.10%) Windows
3 8 (1.51%) Unix
3 8 (1.51%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.76%) Android
5 4 (0.76%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.76%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.38%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (0.38%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 280 (52.93%) Test Automation
2 278 (52.55%) Agile
3 258 (48.77%) CI/CD
4 158 (29.87%) Software Engineering
5 153 (28.92%) DevOps
6 135 (25.52%) Continuous Improvement
7 122 (23.06%) SDLC
8 121 (22.87%) Problem-Solving
9 120 (22.68%) Scrum
10 97 (18.34%) Validation
11 93 (17.58%) Test Strategy
12 92 (17.39%) Stakeholder Management
13 87 (16.45%) Microservices
14 83 (15.69%) Test Scripting
15 79 (14.93%) Defect Management
16 73 (13.80%) API Testing
16 73 (13.80%) Mentoring
17 72 (13.61%) End-to-End Testing
18 70 (13.23%) AI
18 70 (13.23%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 146 (27.60%) Java
2 109 (20.60%) Python
3 97 (18.34%) SQL
4 63 (11.91%) JavaScript
5 46 (8.70%) C#
6 39 (7.37%) TypeScript
7 26 (4.91%) C++
8 15 (2.84%) PowerShell
9 13 (2.46%) C
10 8 (1.51%) Kotlin
11 7 (1.32%) Bash
11 7 (1.32%) Go
12 5 (0.95%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.95%) Korn
12 5 (0.95%) PL/SQL
13 4 (0.76%) Ruby
13 4 (0.76%) Scala
14 3 (0.57%) RPG
14 3 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 3 (0.57%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 178 (33.65%) Security Cleared
2 140 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 74 (13.99%) Degree
4 60 (11.34%) ISTQB
5 35 (6.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 35 (6.62%) DV Cleared
6 22 (4.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 19 (3.59%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 18 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (2.27%) ISEB
10 4 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.76%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.57%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.57%) CCNA
11 3 (0.57%) PMP
12 2 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.38%) CBAP
12 2 (0.38%) IIBA
12 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 2 (0.38%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (26.28%) QA
2 62 (11.72%) Accessibility
3 37 (6.99%) WCAG
4 10 (1.89%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.13%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.95%) Software Quality Assurance
7 4 (0.76%) AUTOSAR
7 4 (0.76%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.57%) NIST
9 2 (0.38%) GRC
9 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.38%) MISRA
9 2 (0.38%) SLA
10 1 (0.19%) HL7
10 1 (0.19%) JTAG
10 1 (0.19%) MiFID
10 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
10 1 (0.19%) PMO
10 1 (0.19%) SEPA
System Software
1 90 (17.01%) Docker
2 9 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.57%) Firmware
5 3 (0.57%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.38%) NFS
6 2 (0.38%) Time Sharing Option
6 2 (0.38%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 95 (17.96%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.84%) Ansible
3 11 (2.08%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.70%) Grafana
5 7 (1.32%) HP ALM
6 6 (1.13%) Packer
7 5 (0.95%) Functional Safety
8 3 (0.57%) Argo
8 3 (0.57%) HP Fortify
8 3 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.38%) Kibana
9 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.38%) Puppet
9 2 (0.38%) SCCM
9 2 (0.38%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.19%) Control-M
10 1 (0.19%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.19%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 36 (6.81%) Microsoft
1 36 (6.81%) Oracle
2 24 (4.54%) IBM
3 18 (3.40%) Salesforce
4 11 (2.08%) Databricks
5 10 (1.89%) SAP
5 10 (1.89%) Splunk
6 8 (1.51%) VMware
7 7 (1.32%) Google
7 7 (1.32%) HP
8 6 (1.13%) Conga
8 6 (1.13%) GoCardless
9 4 (0.76%) Red Hat
10 3 (0.57%) Dynatrace
10 3 (0.57%) Siemens
10 3 (0.57%) UiPath
11 2 (0.38%) Broadcom
11 2 (0.38%) Brocade
11 2 (0.38%) OpenAI
11 2 (0.38%) OutSystems