Software Testing Contracts in England

Software Testing
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Software Testing skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Testing over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 226 174 188
Rank change year-on-year -52 +14 +2
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 287 504 709
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 1.18% 1.36% 1.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.29% 1.57% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 337 471
10th Percentile £313 £258 £300
25th Percentile £363 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -10.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £605 £596 £629
90th Percentile £713 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £444 £455 £500
% change year-on-year -2.42% -9.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 64 64
10th Percentile £50.00 £38.05 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £56.25 £42.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - +19.05% +7.14%
75th Percentile £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.50 - £70.00
UK median hourly rate £61.50 £62.50 £52.74
% change year-on-year -1.60% +18.52% +7.62%

All Process and 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 22,202 32,193 45,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.16% 86.56% 90.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,534 21,105 31,969
10th Percentile £310 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £765
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 921 2,246 1,592
10th Percentile £14.42 £12.92 £10.87
25th Percentile £18.20 £16.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%
75th Percentile £63.75 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
% change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Software Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Testing in England.

Daily rate trend for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Testing in England.

Hourly rate trend for Software Testing in England

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Testing in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

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 1 May 2025. 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 -29 136 £438 -4.27% 215
South East +1 52 £550 +29.41% 193
South West +47 26 £400 -27.27% 71
North of England -17 23 £520 +20.52% 128
East of England +2 20 £475 +13.10% 74
Midlands -6 15 £448 -5.68% 109
North West +12 14 £508 +6.84% 73
West Midlands -1 12 £449 -5.47% 73
Yorkshire -25 8 £520 +20.87% 35
East Midlands -3 3 £115 -74.97% 30
North East - 1 - - 22
Software Testing
UK

Software Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 18 (6.27%) Confluence
2 6 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.39%) CMS
4 3 (1.05%) Headless CMS
5 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.70%) Appian
5 2 (0.70%) SAS
5 2 (0.70%) WordPress
6 1 (0.35%) Apache
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.35%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.35%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.35%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.35%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.35%) WinCC
Applications
1 9 (3.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.35%) Simulink
3 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.70%) Misys Midas
3 2 (0.70%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.70%) Unit4 Business World
4 1 (0.35%) Endur
4 1 (0.35%) iTrent
4 1 (0.35%) LabWindows
4 1 (0.35%) Murex MxG2000
4 1 (0.35%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 60 (20.91%) Azure
2 45 (15.68%) AWS
3 40 (13.94%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (3.14%) Serverless
5 8 (2.79%) GitHub
6 6 (2.09%) GCP
6 6 (2.09%) Power Automate
7 5 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (1.74%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.39%) Amazon S3
8 4 (1.39%) Azure Functions
8 4 (1.39%) Azure Machine Learning
8 4 (1.39%) SaaS
9 3 (1.05%) Azure Event Grid
9 3 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
10 2 (0.70%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (0.70%) Azure Pipelines
10 2 (0.70%) Dagster
10 2 (0.70%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.48%) Software-Defined Radio
2 9 (3.14%) SNMP
3 8 (2.79%) Firewall
4 7 (2.44%) 5G NR
5 3 (1.05%) 5G
5 3 (1.05%) Ethernet
5 3 (1.05%) HTTP
5 3 (1.05%) Wireshark
6 2 (0.70%) Diameter Protocol
6 2 (0.70%) DNS
6 2 (0.70%) SIGTRAN
6 2 (0.70%) SMS
6 2 (0.70%) SS7
6 2 (0.70%) SSL
6 2 (0.70%) VoLTE
6 2 (0.70%) VoWiFi
6 2 (0.70%) VPN
7 1 (0.35%) Cisco Firepower
7 1 (0.35%) Internet
7 1 (0.35%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.32%) Oracle Database
2 17 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 14 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.48%) MongoDB
4 10 (3.48%) Oracle Database 11g
5 6 (2.09%) MS Access
6 5 (1.74%) Big Data
6 5 (1.74%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.39%) InterSystems Cache
7 4 (1.39%) Redis
7 4 (1.39%) Relational Database
8 3 (1.05%) Power BI
8 3 (1.05%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.70%) MySQL
10 1 (0.35%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.35%) KDB
10 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.35%) QlikView
10 1 (0.35%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 47 (16.38%) JIRA
2 45 (15.68%) Git
3 40 (13.94%) Selenium
4 36 (12.54%) Jenkins
5 22 (7.67%) Cucumber
6 20 (6.97%) JMeter
7 12 (4.18%) Bitbucket
7 12 (4.18%) Cypress.io
8 11 (3.83%) Postman
9 10 (3.48%) JUnit
9 10 (3.48%) LoadRunner
9 10 (3.48%) QARun
9 10 (3.48%) Robot Framework
9 10 (3.48%) SoapUI
9 10 (3.48%) WinRunner
10 9 (3.14%) GitLab
10 9 (3.14%) GoogleTest
10 9 (3.14%) SpecFlow
11 8 (2.79%) Appium
11 8 (2.79%) HP UFT
General
1 98 (34.15%) Social Skills
2 58 (20.21%) Finance
3 52 (18.12%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (9.76%) Public Sector
5 18 (6.27%) Banking
6 9 (3.14%) Manufacturing
6 9 (3.14%) Telecoms
7 8 (2.79%) Marketing
7 8 (2.79%) Pharmaceutical
8 7 (2.44%) Aerospace
8 7 (2.44%) Electronics
9 6 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.39%) Military
10 4 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.39%) Retail
11 3 (1.05%) Billing
11 3 (1.05%) Investment Banking
11 3 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.05%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (14.63%) Analyst
2 39 (13.59%) Developer
3 36 (12.54%) Test Analyst
4 34 (11.85%) Tester
5 32 (11.15%) Software Engineer
6 31 (10.80%) Lead
7 23 (8.01%) Test Engineer
8 22 (7.67%) Senior
9 18 (6.27%) Test Leader
10 15 (5.23%) Software Developer
11 14 (4.88%) Software Test Engineer
12 13 (4.53%) Test Manager
13 11 (3.83%) Developer in Test
13 11 (3.83%) QA Engineer
14 10 (3.48%) Automation Tester
14 10 (3.48%) Senior Analyst
14 10 (3.48%) Software Tester
14 10 (3.48%) Systems Engineer
15 9 (3.14%) SC Cleared Test Analyst
15 9 (3.14%) Senior Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.06%) .NET
2 25 (8.71%) HTML
3 23 (8.01%) CSS
4 13 (4.53%) Kafka
4 13 (4.53%) Playwright
4 13 (4.53%) Web Services
5 10 (3.48%) React
5 10 (3.48%) SOAP
6 9 (3.14%) REST
7 8 (2.79%) Middleware
7 8 (2.79%) XML
8 7 (2.44%) .NET Framework
8 7 (2.44%) Node.js
9 6 (2.09%) AngularJS
10 5 (1.74%) ADO
10 5 (1.74%) Bootstrap
10 5 (1.74%) Gherkin
10 5 (1.74%) GraphQL
10 5 (1.74%) Jest
10 5 (1.74%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 14 (4.88%) Product Ownership
2 9 (3.14%) Self-Motivation
3 7 (2.44%) Data Structures
3 7 (2.44%) Operational Technology
3 7 (2.44%) Public Cloud
4 5 (1.74%) Mobile App
5 4 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (1.39%) FMCG
5 4 (1.39%) Management Information System
5 4 (1.39%) Virtual Team
6 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.05%) Cyberattack
6 3 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.05%) IoT
6 3 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
6 3 (1.05%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.05%) Online Banking
6 3 (1.05%) PCIe
7 2 (0.70%) EPoS
7 2 (0.70%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 39 (13.59%) Linux
2 30 (10.45%) Windows
3 13 (4.53%) Apple iOS
4 12 (4.18%) Unix
5 8 (2.79%) Android
6 3 (1.05%) FreeRTOS
6 3 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.70%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.35%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.35%) SUSE
8 1 (0.35%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (47.39%) Agile
2 130 (45.30%) Test Automation
3 95 (33.10%) DevOps
4 73 (25.44%) Problem-Solving
5 55 (19.16%) CI/CD
6 52 (18.12%) Software Engineering
7 48 (16.72%) Integration Testing
7 48 (16.72%) Validation
8 42 (14.63%) Test Strategy
9 33 (11.50%) SDLC
9 33 (11.50%) Test Scripting
10 32 (11.15%) User Acceptance Testing
11 31 (10.80%) Manual Testing
11 31 (10.80%) Performance Testing
12 30 (10.45%) Unit Testing
13 29 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
14 27 (9.41%) Continuous Improvement
14 27 (9.41%) Scrum
15 26 (9.06%) Migration
15 26 (9.06%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 60 (20.91%) SQL
2 54 (18.82%) Java
2 54 (18.82%) Python
3 52 (18.12%) JavaScript
4 41 (14.29%) C#
5 21 (7.32%) C++
6 14 (4.88%) TypeScript
7 10 (3.48%) PL/SQL
8 9 (3.14%) Bash
9 7 (2.44%) C
9 7 (2.44%) VB
10 6 (2.09%) Groovy
10 6 (2.09%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.74%) PHP
11 5 (1.74%) Ruby
11 5 (1.74%) Scala
12 4 (1.39%) MUMPS
13 3 (1.05%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.70%) Go
14 2 (0.70%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 97 (33.80%) Security Cleared
2 85 (29.62%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.10%) Degree
4 18 (6.27%) ISTQB
5 13 (4.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.83%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.05%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.05%) ISEB
9 3 (1.05%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 3 (1.05%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.70%) HND
11 1 (0.35%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.35%) CEH
11 1 (0.35%) HNC
11 1 (0.35%) PMP
11 1 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (25.09%) QA
2 8 (2.79%) Def Stans
3 7 (2.44%) GxP
4 5 (1.74%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.05%) ISO 9001
6 2 (0.70%) ISO 26262
6 2 (0.70%) MISRA
6 2 (0.70%) MISRA C
6 2 (0.70%) PMO
7 1 (0.35%) DO-178B
7 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.35%) SLA
7 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (3.48%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.79%) Docker
3 7 (2.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (2.09%) Firmware
5 2 (0.70%) HDFS
5 2 (0.70%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
6 1 (0.35%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
6 1 (0.35%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 12 (4.18%) Ansible
1 12 (4.18%) Terraform
2 11 (3.83%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.39%) HP ALM
3 4 (1.39%) Perfmon
3 4 (1.39%) SCCM
4 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (0.70%) Progress Chef
4 2 (0.70%) Puppet
5 1 (0.35%) Argo
5 1 (0.35%) Functional Safety
5 1 (0.35%) Grafana
5 1 (0.35%) Nessus
5 1 (0.35%) Nmap
5 1 (0.35%) Packer
5 1 (0.35%) QRadar
5 1 (0.35%) Rancher
5 1 (0.35%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 33 (11.50%) Microsoft
1 33 (11.50%) Oracle
2 12 (4.18%) SAP
3 11 (3.83%) Atlassian
4 10 (3.48%) VMware
5 9 (3.14%) Google
6 8 (2.79%) OpenAI
6 8 (2.79%) ServiceNow
7 7 (2.44%) Dynatrace
8 6 (2.09%) Citrix
8 6 (2.09%) HP
9 5 (1.74%) New Relic
9 5 (1.74%) Splunk
10 4 (1.39%) Bloomberg
10 4 (1.39%) Reuters
10 4 (1.39%) Talend
11 3 (1.05%) Denodo
11 3 (1.05%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.05%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.70%) AppDynamics