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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 224 198 175
Rank change year-on-year -26 -23 -4
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 364 394 570
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.18% 1.27% 1.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.32% 1.45% 1.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 249 243 369
10th Percentile £325 £313 £285
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.11% -14.29% +2.44%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £625
90th Percentile £607 £663 £675
UK median daily rate £435 £440 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -12.00% -0.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 19 85
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.70 £45.35
25th Percentile £50.00 £55.14 £49.88
Median hourly rate £63.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% -3.85% +27.19%
75th Percentile £67.00 £67.26 -
90th Percentile £68.15 £80.75 £69.00
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £59.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.63% -9.23% +30.00%

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 27,627 27,254 34,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.85% 87.54% 88.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,569 16,646 23,463
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.53% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,791 1,000 1,454
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £14.68
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.29 £19.15
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +19.85%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.88
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.24% +25.37%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 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 28 November 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 -29 124 £445 -6.71% 71
South East -21 63 £431 -15.85% 123
North of England -43 62 £405 +1.25% 40
Yorkshire -21 40 £443 +8.59% 13
South West +8 37 £450 -4.26% 33
Midlands -19 33 £515 +28.75% 28
East of England +4 27 £573 +63.57% 40
West Midlands -32 26 £515 +28.75% 20
North West -44 17 £405 +3.58% 26
East Midlands -11 7 £340 - 6
North East -3 5 £350 -4.76% 1
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 (4.67%) Confluence
2 13 (3.57%) SAS
3 7 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (1.65%) SharePoint
5 4 (1.10%) JBoss
6 3 (0.82%) CICS
6 3 (0.82%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.55%) Apache
7 2 (0.55%) CMS
7 2 (0.55%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.27%) EPiServer
8 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
Applications
1 12 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.47%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.55%) Dynamics NAV
1 2 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.27%) Algo Collateral
2 1 (0.27%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.27%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
2 1 (0.27%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 104 (28.57%) Azure
2 67 (18.41%) AWS
3 50 (13.74%) Azure DevOps
4 34 (9.34%) GCP
5 25 (6.87%) GitHub
6 18 (4.95%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (3.02%) Amazon S3
7 11 (3.02%) Power Platform
8 9 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (2.47%) npm
8 9 (2.47%) Serverless
9 7 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (1.65%) Entra ID
10 6 (1.65%) PaaS
10 6 (1.65%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.10%) Cloud Computing
11 4 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.10%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.75%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.65%) Wireshark
3 5 (1.37%) SD-WAN
4 4 (1.10%) DNS
4 4 (1.10%) Internet
5 3 (0.82%) Firewall
5 3 (0.82%) Skype
5 3 (0.82%) SNMP
6 2 (0.55%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.55%) FTP
6 2 (0.55%) Intranet
6 2 (0.55%) IOS XR
6 2 (0.55%) Network Security
6 2 (0.55%) Spanning Tree
6 2 (0.55%) SSH
6 2 (0.55%) SSL
6 2 (0.55%) TACACS
6 2 (0.55%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.55%) Wireless
7 1 (0.27%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (5.49%) SQL Server
2 18 (4.95%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (3.85%) NoSQL
3 14 (3.85%) Oracle Database
4 13 (3.57%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 10 (2.75%) MongoDB
6 9 (2.47%) BigQuery
7 8 (2.20%) Power BI
8 6 (1.65%) Apache Cassandra
8 6 (1.65%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 5 (1.37%) Couchbase
9 5 (1.37%) Redis
10 4 (1.10%) MySQL
10 4 (1.10%) Pinecone
11 3 (0.82%) DB2
11 3 (0.82%) Metadata
11 3 (0.82%) Relational Database
12 2 (0.55%) Big Data
12 2 (0.55%) DynamoDB
13 1 (0.27%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 80 (21.98%) JIRA
2 66 (18.13%) Selenium
3 50 (13.74%) Postman
4 43 (11.81%) Jenkins
5 42 (11.54%) Cucumber
6 41 (11.26%) Git
7 33 (9.07%) GitLab
8 28 (7.69%) Cypress.io
9 25 (6.87%) REST Assured
10 19 (5.22%) SoapUI
11 17 (4.67%) JUnit
12 13 (3.57%) JMeter
13 10 (2.75%) Visual Studio
14 9 (2.47%) Artifactory
15 8 (2.20%) Maven
15 8 (2.20%) WebDriver
16 7 (1.92%) SonarQube
16 7 (1.92%) Zephyr
17 6 (1.65%) TestRail
18 5 (1.37%) Gatling
General
1 132 (36.26%) Social Skills
2 63 (17.31%) Finance
3 41 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (10.44%) Public Sector
5 19 (5.22%) Banking
6 13 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.02%) Manufacturing
8 9 (2.47%) Aerospace
9 8 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (1.92%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.65%) Military
12 5 (1.37%) Automotive
12 5 (1.37%) Electronics
12 5 (1.37%) Front Office
12 5 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.37%) Investment Banking
13 4 (1.10%) Law
13 4 (1.10%) Multimedia
13 4 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.82%) Billing
Job Titles
1 54 (14.84%) Senior
2 46 (12.64%) Analyst
3 42 (11.54%) Software Engineer
4 40 (10.99%) Tester
5 39 (10.71%) Test Analyst
5 39 (10.71%) Test Engineer
6 38 (10.44%) Developer
7 30 (8.24%) Lead
8 25 (6.87%) Consultant
9 15 (4.12%) Software Developer
9 15 (4.12%) Test Leader
10 13 (3.57%) QA Leader
10 13 (3.57%) Release Manager
10 13 (3.57%) Test Manager
11 12 (3.30%) Senior Analyst
11 12 (3.30%) Senior Test Engineer
12 11 (3.02%) Automation Tester
12 11 (3.02%) Senior Test Analyst
12 11 (3.02%) Software Tester
13 10 (2.75%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (9.62%) .NET
2 32 (8.79%) Playwright
3 27 (7.42%) React
3 27 (7.42%) REST
4 26 (7.14%) HTML
5 24 (6.59%) CSS
5 24 (6.59%) Node.js
5 24 (6.59%) RESTful
6 22 (6.04%) Spring
6 22 (6.04%) Spring Boot
7 17 (4.67%) AngularJS
7 17 (4.67%) SOAP
8 16 (4.40%) Kafka
9 14 (3.85%) .NET Framework
10 10 (2.75%) Vue
11 9 (2.47%) Gherkin
11 9 (2.47%) Svelte
11 9 (2.47%) XML
12 8 (2.20%) JSON
12 8 (2.20%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.14%) Self-Motivation
2 20 (5.49%) Product Ownership
3 19 (5.22%) Distributed Systems
4 17 (4.67%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.30%) Data Structures
6 11 (3.02%) Algorithms
7 7 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.37%) CUDA
9 5 (1.37%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.10%) Derivative
10 4 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.10%) Mainframe
10 4 (1.10%) PCIe
11 3 (0.82%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.82%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (0.82%) Fixed Income
11 3 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.82%) PKI
11 3 (0.82%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 33 (9.07%) Windows
2 29 (7.97%) Linux
3 11 (3.02%) Unix
4 4 (1.10%) FreeRTOS
5 3 (0.82%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.27%) Android
6 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.27%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.27%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.27%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.27%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.27%) Solaris
6 1 (0.27%) VMS
6 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (43.96%) Agile
2 158 (43.41%) Test Automation
3 131 (35.99%) CI/CD
4 106 (29.12%) DevOps
5 102 (28.02%) Problem-Solving
6 72 (19.78%) Test Scripting
7 67 (18.41%) Software Engineering
7 67 (18.41%) Test Strategy
8 63 (17.31%) Scrum
9 60 (16.48%) Continuous Improvement
10 59 (16.21%) Validation
11 51 (14.01%) Microservices
12 50 (13.74%) Test Management
13 46 (12.64%) SDLC
14 43 (11.81%) API Testing
14 43 (11.81%) Containerisation
15 42 (11.54%) TDD
16 38 (10.44%) Computer Science
17 37 (10.16%) Integration Testing
18 36 (9.89%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 61 (16.76%) Python
2 60 (16.48%) Java
3 58 (15.93%) JavaScript
4 49 (13.46%) SQL
5 44 (12.09%) C#
6 28 (7.69%) TypeScript
7 22 (6.04%) C++
8 13 (3.57%) Bash
9 12 (3.30%) Shell Script
10 11 (3.02%) C
11 8 (2.20%) Go
12 7 (1.92%) Ada
12 7 (1.92%) VB
13 6 (1.65%) Scala
14 5 (1.37%) Groovy
15 4 (1.10%) PowerShell
15 4 (1.10%) VB.NET
16 3 (0.82%) COBOL
16 3 (0.82%) JCL
16 3 (0.82%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 94 (25.82%) Security Cleared
2 79 (21.70%) SC Cleared
3 42 (11.54%) Degree
4 33 (9.07%) ISTQB
5 24 (6.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (2.75%) CISSP
7 9 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (2.47%) CISM
7 9 (2.47%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.92%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 5 (1.37%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.37%) ISEB
10 4 (1.10%) HNC
10 4 (1.10%) HND
10 4 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 3 (0.82%) EMC Certification
11 3 (0.82%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.82%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.55%) ACCA
12 2 (0.55%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (26.92%) QA
2 26 (7.14%) Accessibility
3 13 (3.57%) NIST
4 10 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.75%) WCAG
5 7 (1.92%) PCI DSS
6 6 (1.65%) EU AI Act
6 6 (1.65%) GDPR
7 3 (0.82%) Def Stans
7 3 (0.82%) IEC 61508
7 3 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 15288
7 3 (0.82%) SLA
8 2 (0.55%) GRC
8 2 (0.55%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.27%) HL7
9 1 (0.27%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.27%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.27%) PMO
9 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 48 (13.19%) Docker
2 5 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.82%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
5 1 (0.27%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 41 (11.26%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.85%) Ansible
3 12 (3.30%) Terraform
4 7 (1.92%) Grafana
5 4 (1.10%) Functional Safety
5 4 (1.10%) HP ALM
5 4 (1.10%) Puppet
6 3 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (0.82%) vCenter Server
6 3 (0.82%) WSUS
7 2 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.55%) Nessus
7 2 (0.55%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.27%) Control-M
8 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.27%) Nmap
8 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.27%) Rsyslog
8 1 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 60 (16.48%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.24%) Oracle
3 11 (3.02%) Google
4 10 (2.75%) Cisco
4 10 (2.75%) CyberArk
4 10 (2.75%) Splunk
5 9 (2.47%) BeyondTrust
5 9 (2.47%) Thycotic
6 8 (2.20%) ServiceNow
7 7 (1.92%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.65%) HP
8 6 (1.65%) Meraki
8 6 (1.65%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.37%) Juniper
9 5 (1.37%) VMware
9 5 (1.37%) Workday
10 4 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
10 4 (1.10%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.10%) Nokia
10 4 (1.10%) SAP