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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 257 195 174
Rank change year-on-year -62 -21 +14
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 385 315 510
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.03% 1.30% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.19% 1.43% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 244 205 337
10th Percentile £331 £313 £250
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £469 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.12% +4.22% -12.20%
75th Percentile £538 £625 £593
90th Percentile £602 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £450 £449 £450
% change year-on-year +0.22% -0.22% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 22 71
10th Percentile £53.60 £28.73 £37.50
25th Percentile £64.38 £59.94 £54.38
Median hourly rate £66.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.40% -3.85% +30.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.31 -
90th Percentile £72.30 £80.75 -
UK median hourly rate £66.50 £62.50 £63.75
% change year-on-year +6.40% -1.96% +27.50%

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 32,391 22,052 32,754
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 86.35% 90.83% 86.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,759 14,493 21,652
10th Percentile £313 £312 £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 £614 £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 1,980 839 2,155
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.56 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.25 £32.81 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% -0.58% -12.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.70
90th Percentile £75.44 £77.25 £71.89
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year - - -9.72%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -43 168 £450 +2.86% 55
South East -40 58 £490 -18.33% 76
North of England -57 46 £405 -2.17% 48
Midlands -41 45 £500 +11.61% 43
South West -8 37 £409 +2.25% 36
West Midlands -31 36 £500 +11.36% 24
Yorkshire -42 27 £463 +14.20% 10
East of England -33 21 £613 +28.95% 30
North West -48 13 £405 -10.00% 31
East Midlands -27 9 £375 +226.09% 19
North East - 6 £350 - 8
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 19 (4.94%) Confluence
2 12 (3.12%) SAS
3 4 (1.04%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.78%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.52%) IIS
6 1 (0.26%) CMS
6 1 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.26%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (3.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.04%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.26%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (1.30%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.04%) Maximo
3 3 (0.78%) Findur
4 2 (0.52%) Dynamics NAV
4 2 (0.52%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.52%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.26%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.26%) CODA-Financials
5 1 (0.26%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 124 (32.21%) Azure
2 90 (23.38%) Azure DevOps
3 68 (17.66%) AWS
4 31 (8.05%) GitHub
5 30 (7.79%) GCP
6 22 (5.71%) AWS Lambda
6 22 (5.71%) Serverless
7 21 (5.45%) Amazon S3
8 16 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (3.12%) Amazon ECS
9 12 (3.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 8 (2.08%) Snowflake
11 7 (1.82%) Entra ID
12 5 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.30%) OpenShift
12 5 (1.30%) Power Platform
13 4 (1.04%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 3 (0.78%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 3 (0.78%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.08%) Ethernet
2 5 (1.30%) Firewall
3 3 (0.78%) DNS
3 3 (0.78%) FTP
3 3 (0.78%) Internet
3 3 (0.78%) Modbus
3 3 (0.78%) RS-232
3 3 (0.78%) RS-422
3 3 (0.78%) RS-485
3 3 (0.78%) SNMP
4 2 (0.52%) Cisco IOS
4 2 (0.52%) Intranet
4 2 (0.52%) IOS XR
4 2 (0.52%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.52%) SD-WAN
4 2 (0.52%) Spanning Tree
4 2 (0.52%) SSL
4 2 (0.52%) TACACS
4 2 (0.52%) Wireless
4 2 (0.52%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (7.27%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (4.42%) Relational Database
2 17 (4.42%) SQL Server
3 14 (3.64%) MySQL
4 12 (3.12%) NoSQL
4 12 (3.12%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 11 (2.86%) Oracle Database
6 10 (2.60%) BigQuery
6 10 (2.60%) MongoDB
7 7 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (1.56%) Big Data
9 5 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.04%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.78%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (0.78%) Couchbase
11 3 (0.78%) Power BI
11 3 (0.78%) Redis
12 2 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
12 2 (0.52%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 67 (17.40%) JIRA
2 50 (12.99%) Selenium
3 45 (11.69%) Git
4 38 (9.87%) Jenkins
5 30 (7.79%) Postman
6 28 (7.27%) Cucumber
7 27 (7.01%) Cypress.io
8 20 (5.19%) JUnit
8 20 (5.19%) REST Assured
9 18 (4.68%) GitLab
10 13 (3.38%) TestRail
11 9 (2.34%) Rational DOORS
12 8 (2.08%) WebDriver
12 8 (2.08%) Zephyr
13 6 (1.56%) HP UFT
13 6 (1.56%) JMeter
13 6 (1.56%) Rational Rhapsody
14 5 (1.30%) Gradle
14 5 (1.30%) Maven
14 5 (1.30%) SpecFlow
General
1 107 (27.79%) Social Skills
2 66 (17.14%) Finance
3 65 (16.88%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 18 (4.68%) Banking
6 10 (2.60%) Aerospace
6 10 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.34%) Back Office
7 9 (2.34%) Manufacturing
8 8 (2.08%) Electronics
8 8 (2.08%) Front Office
8 8 (2.08%) Military
9 6 (1.56%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.56%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.30%) Law
11 4 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.78%) Marketing
13 2 (0.52%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 63 (16.36%) Senior
2 52 (13.51%) Developer
3 44 (11.43%) Analyst
4 39 (10.13%) Test Engineer
5 38 (9.87%) Software Engineer
6 35 (9.09%) Lead
6 35 (9.09%) Test Analyst
7 30 (7.79%) Consultant
8 27 (7.01%) Tester
9 22 (5.71%) QA Engineer
10 18 (4.68%) Test Manager
11 17 (4.42%) Java Engineer
11 17 (4.42%) Senior Developer
12 16 (4.16%) Java Developer
12 16 (4.16%) Senior Analyst
12 16 (4.16%) Senior Test Analyst
13 13 (3.38%) Software Developer
13 13 (3.38%) Test Leader
14 12 (3.12%) Release Manager
14 12 (3.12%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (10.39%) Playwright
2 35 (9.09%) Spring
3 34 (8.83%) React
4 31 (8.05%) RESTful
5 29 (7.53%) REST
6 27 (7.01%) .NET
6 27 (7.01%) Spring Boot
7 25 (6.49%) Node.js
8 19 (4.94%) CSS
8 19 (4.94%) HTML
9 15 (3.90%) Kafka
10 11 (2.86%) Middleware
11 10 (2.60%) Gherkin
12 9 (2.34%) AngularJS
12 9 (2.34%) pytest
13 8 (2.08%) .NET Framework
13 8 (2.08%) Redux
14 7 (1.82%) .NET Core
14 7 (1.82%) HTML5
14 7 (1.82%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 29 (7.53%) Product Ownership
2 22 (5.71%) Cloud Native
3 15 (3.90%) Self-Motivation
4 11 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.34%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.82%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.56%) CUDA
8 6 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (1.56%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.30%) Embedded Systems
10 4 (1.04%) Fixed Income
10 4 (1.04%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.04%) PCIe
11 3 (0.78%) Algorithms
11 3 (0.78%) Data Structures
11 3 (0.78%) Equities
11 3 (0.78%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 34 (8.83%) Windows
2 21 (5.45%) Linux
3 7 (1.82%) Unix
4 5 (1.30%) Mac OS
5 4 (1.04%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (1.04%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.52%) Android
7 1 (0.26%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.26%) Solaris
7 1 (0.26%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (46.23%) Test Automation
2 149 (38.70%) Agile
3 137 (35.58%) DevOps
4 131 (34.03%) CI/CD
5 101 (26.23%) Problem-Solving
6 87 (22.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 81 (21.04%) Test Scripting
8 71 (18.44%) Software Engineering
9 59 (15.32%) Validation
10 57 (14.81%) Microservices
11 55 (14.29%) Test Strategy
12 52 (13.51%) Test Management
13 49 (12.73%) Regression Testing
14 45 (11.69%) API Testing
14 45 (11.69%) Defect Tracking
14 45 (11.69%) TDD
15 43 (11.17%) SDLC
16 42 (10.91%) Manual Testing
16 42 (10.91%) Scrum
17 39 (10.13%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 78 (20.26%) Java
2 76 (19.74%) Python
3 68 (17.66%) SQL
4 52 (13.51%) JavaScript
5 42 (10.91%) C#
5 42 (10.91%) TypeScript
6 17 (4.42%) C++
7 12 (3.12%) C
8 8 (2.08%) Bash
8 8 (2.08%) Go
8 8 (2.08%) PL/SQL
9 7 (1.82%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.30%) VBScript
11 4 (1.04%) Groovy
12 3 (0.78%) Embedded C
12 3 (0.78%) Ruby
12 3 (0.78%) VB
13 2 (0.52%) Ada
13 2 (0.52%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.52%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 118 (30.65%) Security Cleared
2 96 (24.94%) SC Cleared
3 35 (9.09%) ISTQB
4 34 (8.83%) Degree
5 16 (4.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (3.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 7 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.82%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 5 (1.30%) ISEB
9 4 (1.04%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.78%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.78%) PMP
11 2 (0.52%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 1 (0.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.26%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 1 (0.26%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (27.01%) QA
2 19 (4.94%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.60%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.08%) WCAG
5 7 (1.82%) PMO
6 4 (1.04%) SLA
7 3 (0.78%) EU AI Act
7 3 (0.78%) NIST
7 3 (0.78%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.26%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.26%) MiFID
8 1 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 36 (9.35%) Docker
2 6 (1.56%) Active Directory
2 6 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
2 6 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.04%) Firmware
4 1 (0.26%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
4 1 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.26%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 44 (11.43%) Kubernetes
2 15 (3.90%) Terraform
3 10 (2.60%) Grafana
3 10 (2.60%) HP ALM
4 9 (2.34%) Ansible
5 7 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (1.30%) Puppet
7 4 (1.04%) HP Quality Center
7 4 (1.04%) SCCM
8 2 (0.52%) Nessus
8 2 (0.52%) Salt
9 1 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (0.26%) Kibana
9 1 (0.26%) Nmap
9 1 (0.26%) Oracle ZFS
9 1 (0.26%) Packer
9 1 (0.26%) Tivoli
9 1 (0.26%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.26%) WSUS
Vendors
1 39 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 37 (9.61%) Oracle
3 10 (2.60%) HP
4 9 (2.34%) SAP
5 8 (2.08%) Splunk
5 8 (2.08%) VMware
6 7 (1.82%) Citrix
6 7 (1.82%) Dell
6 7 (1.82%) IBM
6 7 (1.82%) ServiceNow
7 6 (1.56%) Atlassian
8 5 (1.30%) Databricks
9 4 (1.04%) Cisco
9 4 (1.04%) Remedy
9 4 (1.04%) Salesforce
10 3 (0.78%) Ab Initio
10 3 (0.78%) Charles River
10 3 (0.78%) Google
10 3 (0.78%) OpenLink
10 3 (0.78%) Teradata