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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 242 207
Rank change year-on-year +13 -35 -44
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 522 299 400
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.13% 1.07% 1.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.33% 1.17% 1.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 279 206 257
10th Percentile £269 £318 £313
25th Percentile £400 £359 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £446 £455
Median % change year-on-year +3.14% -1.98% -13.33%
75th Percentile £558 £538 £585
90th Percentile £656 £625 £638
UK median daily rate £450 £445 £463
% change year-on-year +1.14% -3.78% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 24 20
10th Percentile £29.05 £26.25 £36.14
25th Percentile £54.18 £47.19 £50.36
Median hourly rate £60.17 £51.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.97% -18.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £69.94 £66.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £68.39
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £51.00 £59.47
% change year-on-year +17.65% -14.24% -8.52%

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 39,245 25,511 27,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.84% 90.89% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,668 16,179 17,039
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% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,000 1,593 1,140
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.51 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.79 £20.24
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%
75th Percentile £67.47 £44.81 £67.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £74.88
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -9.60%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -8 186 £535 +20.22% 329
Midlands +20 90 £450 +4.65% 142
South East -37 89 £400 -4.76% 148
West Midlands +20 87 £450 -10.00% 89
North of England -60 61 £456 +4.89% 142
East of England 0 47 £74 -87.07% 112
South West -19 39 £410 -8.89% 85
North East -21 24 £500 +37.93% 21
North West -40 19 £464 +36.47% 73
Yorkshire -41 18 £450 -4.76% 48
East Midlands -10 3 - - 52
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 (3.45%) Confluence
2 10 (1.92%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.15%) SAS
5 5 (0.96%) 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 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.96%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.77%) Trello
5 2 (0.38%) Simulink
6 1 (0.19%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 6 (1.15%) 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
1 135 (25.86%) AWS
2 120 (22.99%) Azure
3 63 (12.07%) GitHub
4 60 (11.49%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (5.56%) GCP
5 29 (5.56%) GitHub Copilot
6 26 (4.98%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (2.11%) Power Platform
7 11 (2.11%) SaaS
8 10 (1.92%) Serverless
9 9 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (1.34%) Amazon S3
11 7 (1.34%) Anthropic Claude
12 6 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.15%) PaaS
13 5 (0.96%) Cloud Computing
13 5 (0.96%) Dynamics 365
14 4 (0.77%) BrowserStack
14 4 (0.77%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.53%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.15%) DNS
3 5 (0.96%) DHCP
4 4 (0.77%) Internet
4 4 (0.77%) 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%) 5G
7 1 (0.19%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.19%) J1939
7 1 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.19%) RS-232
7 1 (0.19%) RS-422
7 1 (0.19%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.19%) VoLTE
7 1 (0.19%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.75%) Relational Database
2 27 (5.17%) MongoDB
3 19 (3.64%) SQL Server
4 12 (2.30%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.72%) Oracle Database
6 8 (1.53%) Power BI
7 7 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (1.15%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 6 (1.15%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 5 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (0.96%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.77%) Pinecone
10 4 (0.77%) Redis
10 4 (0.77%) 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%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 114 (21.84%) Selenium
2 105 (20.11%) Git
3 73 (13.98%) Cucumber
3 73 (13.98%) JIRA
4 67 (12.84%) GitLab
5 54 (10.34%) JUnit
6 45 (8.62%) Jenkins
7 43 (8.24%) Gatling
8 41 (7.85%) Postman
9 29 (5.56%) REST Assured
10 21 (4.02%) JMeter
10 21 (4.02%) SonarQube
11 17 (3.26%) Cypress.io
12 14 (2.68%) TestNG
13 13 (2.49%) Rational DOORS
13 13 (2.49%) Zephyr
14 12 (2.30%) TestRail
14 12 (2.30%) WebDriver
15 11 (2.11%) Appium
15 11 (2.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 189 (36.21%) Social Skills
2 94 (18.01%) Finance
3 82 (15.71%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (13.41%) Public Sector
5 58 (11.11%) Banking
6 31 (5.94%) Automotive
7 23 (4.41%) Aerospace
8 20 (3.83%) Manufacturing
9 13 (2.49%) Front Office
10 12 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 10 (1.92%) Electronics
11 10 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
11 10 (1.92%) Retail
11 10 (1.92%) Telecoms
12 7 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (1.34%) Law
13 6 (1.15%) Investment Banking
14 5 (0.96%) Avionics
14 5 (0.96%) Legal
14 5 (0.96%) Military
Job Titles
1 77 (14.75%) Test Engineer
2 76 (14.56%) Senior
3 69 (13.22%) Developer
4 65 (12.45%) Software Engineer
5 38 (7.28%) Analyst
6 34 (6.51%) Quality Engineer
6 34 (6.51%) Tester
7 33 (6.32%) Lead
8 31 (5.94%) Test Manager
9 27 (5.17%) Software Developer
10 25 (4.79%) Architect
11 24 (4.60%) Test Automation Engineer
12 21 (4.02%) Java Developer
12 21 (4.02%) Software Test Engineer
13 20 (3.83%) QA Engineer
13 20 (3.83%) Test Analyst
14 19 (3.64%) Principal Engineer
15 18 (3.45%) Automation Engineer
16 17 (3.26%) Senior Test Engineer
17 16 (3.07%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (14.18%) Playwright
2 52 (9.96%) Spring
3 44 (8.43%) .NET
4 43 (8.24%) REST
5 42 (8.05%) React
6 35 (6.70%) Kafka
7 26 (4.98%) RESTful
7 26 (4.98%) Terraform
8 24 (4.60%) Spring Boot
9 22 (4.21%) Node.js
9 22 (4.21%) WireMock
10 21 (4.02%) Gherkin
11 19 (3.64%) JSON
12 13 (2.49%) AngularJS
12 13 (2.49%) RabbitMQ
12 13 (2.49%) XML
13 11 (2.11%) SOAP
14 10 (1.92%) HTML
14 10 (1.92%) Web Services
15 9 (1.72%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 50 (9.58%) Product Ownership
2 36 (6.90%) Cloud Native
3 34 (6.51%) Enterprise Software
4 22 (4.21%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (3.64%) Embedded Systems
6 15 (2.87%) Self-Motivation
7 11 (2.11%) Onboarding
8 10 (1.92%) Data Structures
9 9 (1.72%) AI Agents
9 9 (1.72%) Distributed Architecture
9 9 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 8 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.34%) Algorithms
12 6 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
12 6 (1.15%) Public Cloud
13 5 (0.96%) Derivative
13 5 (0.96%) Equities
13 5 (0.96%) Equity Derivative
14 4 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 37 (7.09%) Linux
2 27 (5.17%) Windows
3 8 (1.53%) Unix
3 8 (1.53%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.77%) Android
5 4 (0.77%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.77%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.38%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (0.38%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 275 (52.68%) Test Automation
2 273 (52.30%) Agile
3 252 (48.28%) CI/CD
4 154 (29.50%) Software Engineering
5 150 (28.74%) DevOps
6 131 (25.10%) Continuous Improvement
7 119 (22.80%) SDLC
8 118 (22.61%) Problem-Solving
9 116 (22.22%) Scrum
10 96 (18.39%) Validation
11 91 (17.43%) Stakeholder Management
11 91 (17.43%) Test Strategy
12 86 (16.48%) Microservices
13 83 (15.90%) Test Scripting
14 78 (14.94%) Defect Management
15 73 (13.98%) API Testing
15 73 (13.98%) Mentoring
16 71 (13.60%) End-to-End Testing
17 69 (13.22%) AI
17 69 (13.22%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 144 (27.59%) Java
2 109 (20.88%) Python
3 96 (18.39%) SQL
4 62 (11.88%) JavaScript
5 43 (8.24%) C#
6 38 (7.28%) TypeScript
7 26 (4.98%) C++
8 15 (2.87%) PowerShell
9 13 (2.49%) C
10 8 (1.53%) Kotlin
11 7 (1.34%) Bash
11 7 (1.34%) Go
12 5 (0.96%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.96%) Korn
12 5 (0.96%) PL/SQL
13 4 (0.77%) Ruby
13 4 (0.77%) Scala
14 3 (0.57%) COBOL
14 3 (0.57%) RPG
14 3 (0.57%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 177 (33.91%) Security Cleared
2 139 (26.63%) SC Cleared
3 74 (14.18%) Degree
4 59 (11.30%) ISTQB
5 35 (6.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 35 (6.70%) DV Cleared
6 22 (4.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 19 (3.64%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 18 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (2.30%) ISEB
10 4 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.77%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.57%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.57%) CCNA
11 3 (0.57%) PMP
12 2 (0.38%) CEH
12 2 (0.38%) CISSP
12 2 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.38%) ISEB Practitioner
12 2 (0.38%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (26.25%) QA
2 60 (11.49%) Accessibility
3 36 (6.90%) WCAG
4 10 (1.92%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.15%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.96%) Software Quality Assurance
7 4 (0.77%) AUTOSAR
7 4 (0.77%) ISO 26262
7 4 (0.77%) NIST
8 2 (0.38%) GRC
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.38%) MISRA
8 2 (0.38%) SLA
9 1 (0.19%) HL7
9 1 (0.19%) IEC 61508
9 1 (0.19%) JTAG
9 1 (0.19%) MiFID
9 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.19%) PMO
System Software
1 88 (16.86%) Docker
2 9 (1.72%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.77%) Firmware
4 4 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
5 3 (0.57%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.38%) NFS
6 2 (0.38%) Time Sharing Option
6 2 (0.38%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 93 (17.82%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.87%) Ansible
3 11 (2.11%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.72%) Grafana
5 7 (1.34%) HP ALM
6 6 (1.15%) Packer
7 5 (0.96%) 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 (6.90%) Microsoft
1 36 (6.90%) Oracle
2 24 (4.60%) IBM
3 18 (3.45%) Salesforce
4 11 (2.11%) Databricks
5 10 (1.92%) SAP
5 10 (1.92%) Splunk
6 8 (1.53%) VMware
7 7 (1.34%) Google
7 7 (1.34%) HP
8 6 (1.15%) Conga
8 6 (1.15%) GoCardless
9 4 (0.77%) 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%) FXall
11 2 (0.38%) OpenAI
11 2 (0.38%) OutSystems