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 5 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 257 253 203
Rank change year-on-year -4 -50 -36
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 475 276 395
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.04% 1.01% 1.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.22% 1.11% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 175 266
10th Percentile £270 £313 £324
25th Percentile £400 £356 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £435 £463
Median % change year-on-year +14.94% -5.95% -9.76%
75th Percentile £582 £525 £588
90th Percentile £688 £625 £663
UK median daily rate £480 £440 £463
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.86% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 29 23
10th Percentile £25.71 £42.25 £37.55
25th Percentile £55.66 £50.00 £55.14
Median hourly rate £64.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.36% -12.00% -0.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £64.38
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.50 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £64.00 £55.00 £61.43
% change year-on-year +16.36% -10.47% +0.12%

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 38,940 24,864 27,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.85% 90.76% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,004 15,800 17,728
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.05% -2.96% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,613 1,459 1,377
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.24 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.88
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.35% +3.33%

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 5 September 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 5 September 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 5 September 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 -30 170 £539 +27.42% 224
South East -47 82 £413 +3.31% 90
Midlands +1 73 £488 +15.38% 73
West Midlands +6 68 £475 -7.77% 48
North of England -47 61 £475 +9.20% 81
East of England +5 47 £74 -86.04% 68
South West -16 38 £410 -4.93% 70
North East -16 29 £500 +37.93% 9
North West -48 19 £470 +27.09% 52
Yorkshire -55 15 £450 -2.17% 20
East Midlands -17 5 £575 +69.12% 25
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 13 (2.74%) Confluence
2 11 (2.32%) Apache Airflow
3 10 (2.11%) SAS
4 7 (1.47%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.26%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.63%) IIS
6 3 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.21%) Apache
7 1 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.21%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 13 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.84%) Trello
4 3 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.42%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 6 (1.26%) Findur
1 6 (1.26%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.63%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.63%) Primavera
3 2 (0.42%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.42%) Eikon
4 1 (0.21%) Misys Equation
4 1 (0.21%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.21%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.21%) Shopify
4 1 (0.21%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 116 (24.42%) AWS
2 102 (21.47%) Azure
3 47 (9.89%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (9.26%) GitHub
5 25 (5.26%) GCP
6 20 (4.21%) GitHub Copilot
7 18 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
8 15 (3.16%) Serverless
9 13 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (2.32%) PaaS
11 9 (1.89%) Amazon S3
11 9 (1.89%) Power Platform
12 8 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (1.68%) SaaS
13 6 (1.26%) Anthropic Claude
13 6 (1.26%) Entra ID
13 6 (1.26%) OpenShift
14 5 (1.05%) Amazon EC2
14 5 (1.05%) Google Gemini
14 5 (1.05%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.68%) Ethernet
2 7 (1.47%) DNS
3 5 (1.05%) Software-Defined Radio
3 5 (1.05%) Wireless
4 4 (0.84%) DHCP
4 4 (0.84%) Firewall
4 4 (0.84%) Internet
4 4 (0.84%) Network Security
5 2 (0.42%) BGP
5 2 (0.42%) MPLS
5 2 (0.42%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.42%) SSL
5 2 (0.42%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.21%) GSM
6 1 (0.21%) HTTP
6 1 (0.21%) IPv4
6 1 (0.21%) IPv6
6 1 (0.21%) SSH
6 1 (0.21%) UMTS
6 1 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (6.11%) Relational Database
2 18 (3.79%) SQL Server
3 15 (3.16%) MongoDB
4 13 (2.74%) NoSQL
4 13 (2.74%) Oracle Database
5 10 (2.11%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 10 (2.11%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 9 (1.89%) MySQL
6 9 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
7 7 (1.47%) Big Data
7 7 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.47%) DynamoDB
7 7 (1.47%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (1.26%) Power BI
9 4 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (0.84%) Redis
10 3 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.63%) Parquet
10 3 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 78 (16.42%) Git
1 78 (16.42%) Selenium
2 72 (15.16%) JIRA
3 43 (9.05%) Cucumber
3 43 (9.05%) GitLab
4 38 (8.00%) Postman
5 34 (7.16%) JUnit
6 30 (6.32%) Jenkins
7 23 (4.84%) Gatling
8 22 (4.63%) REST Assured
9 14 (2.95%) Cypress.io
10 13 (2.74%) JMeter
10 13 (2.74%) SonarQube
11 12 (2.53%) Rational DOORS
11 12 (2.53%) WebDriver
12 10 (2.11%) Zephyr
13 9 (1.89%) Maven
13 9 (1.89%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 9 (1.89%) TestRail
14 8 (1.68%) Visual Studio
General
1 153 (32.21%) Social Skills
2 95 (20.00%) Finance
3 74 (15.58%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (12.42%) Public Sector
5 50 (10.53%) Banking
6 30 (6.32%) Automotive
7 24 (5.05%) Aerospace
8 14 (2.95%) Back Office
8 14 (2.95%) Front Office
9 11 (2.32%) Manufacturing
10 10 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.89%) Law
12 8 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
12 8 (1.68%) Retail
12 8 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 7 (1.47%) Electronics
14 6 (1.26%) Military
15 5 (1.05%) Avionics
15 5 (1.05%) Legal
Job Titles
1 71 (14.95%) Developer
1 71 (14.95%) Software Engineer
2 69 (14.53%) Senior
3 67 (14.11%) Test Engineer
4 40 (8.42%) Analyst
5 27 (5.68%) Tester
6 26 (5.47%) Software Test Engineer
6 26 (5.47%) Test Manager
7 24 (5.05%) Java Developer
7 24 (5.05%) Lead
8 23 (4.84%) Software Developer
9 19 (4.00%) Quality Engineer
10 18 (3.79%) Architect
10 18 (3.79%) QA Engineer
10 18 (3.79%) Test Analyst
10 18 (3.79%) Test Automation Engineer
11 17 (3.58%) Senior Developer
12 15 (3.16%) Principal Engineer
13 13 (2.74%) Java Engineer
13 13 (2.74%) Software Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (10.32%) Playwright
2 48 (10.11%) REST
3 45 (9.47%) Spring
4 43 (9.05%) React
5 39 (8.21%) .NET
6 32 (6.74%) Kafka
7 28 (5.89%) Terraform
8 27 (5.68%) RESTful
9 26 (5.47%) Spring Boot
10 19 (4.00%) Node.js
11 16 (3.37%) AngularJS
12 14 (2.95%) HTML
13 12 (2.53%) JSON
13 12 (2.53%) XML
14 11 (2.32%) SOAP
14 11 (2.32%) WireMock
15 10 (2.11%) CSS
15 10 (2.11%) Gherkin
15 10 (2.11%) Redux
16 9 (1.89%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 47 (9.89%) Product Ownership
2 39 (8.21%) Enterprise Software
3 34 (7.16%) Cloud Native
4 23 (4.84%) Embedded Systems
5 22 (4.63%) Self-Motivation
6 19 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (2.32%) Management Information System
8 10 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.68%) Data Structures
9 8 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.26%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.26%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.26%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.05%) Derivative
11 5 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (1.05%) Equity Derivative
11 5 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 5 (1.05%) FPGA
11 5 (1.05%) PCIe
12 4 (0.84%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 31 (6.53%) Linux
2 23 (4.84%) Windows
3 10 (2.11%) Unix
4 8 (1.68%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.26%) FreeRTOS
6 4 (0.84%) Android
6 4 (0.84%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.63%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.42%) zOS
9 1 (0.21%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (49.47%) Test Automation
2 232 (48.84%) Agile
3 200 (42.11%) CI/CD
4 145 (30.53%) Software Engineering
5 137 (28.84%) DevOps
6 120 (25.26%) Continuous Improvement
7 109 (22.95%) Problem-Solving
8 103 (21.68%) SDLC
9 100 (21.05%) Scrum
10 81 (17.05%) Validation
11 71 (14.95%) Defect Management
12 69 (14.53%) Test Strategy
13 68 (14.32%) Test Scripting
14 64 (13.47%) Regression Testing
15 62 (13.05%) Microservices
16 61 (12.84%) AI
16 61 (12.84%) Mentoring
17 59 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
17 59 (12.42%) User Acceptance Testing
18 58 (12.21%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 112 (23.58%) Java
2 86 (18.11%) Python
3 81 (17.05%) SQL
4 50 (10.53%) JavaScript
5 40 (8.42%) C#
6 31 (6.53%) TypeScript
7 23 (4.84%) C++
8 15 (3.16%) C
9 12 (2.53%) PowerShell
10 8 (1.68%) Kotlin
11 7 (1.47%) Bash
12 5 (1.05%) Apex Code
12 5 (1.05%) PL/SQL
13 4 (0.84%) Korn
13 4 (0.84%) Ruby
13 4 (0.84%) Scala
14 3 (0.63%) Ada
14 3 (0.63%) Rust
14 3 (0.63%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.42%) Go
Qualifications
1 161 (33.89%) Security Cleared
2 129 (27.16%) SC Cleared
3 63 (13.26%) Degree
4 47 (9.89%) ISTQB
5 25 (5.26%) DV Cleared
6 20 (4.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (4.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 14 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (2.95%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 12 (2.53%) ISEB
10 4 (0.84%) CEH
10 4 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.84%) CISSP
10 4 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.63%) CCNA
12 2 (0.42%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.42%) ISEB Practitioner
12 2 (0.42%) Network+ Certification
12 2 (0.42%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.42%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (23.16%) QA
2 34 (7.16%) Accessibility
3 22 (4.63%) WCAG
4 5 (1.05%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.05%) ISO 20022
4 5 (1.05%) NIST
4 5 (1.05%) Software Quality Assurance
5 3 (0.63%) GRC
6 2 (0.42%) ISO 15022
6 2 (0.42%) MISRA
7 1 (0.21%) AUTOSAR
7 1 (0.21%) HL7
7 1 (0.21%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.21%) JTAG
7 1 (0.21%) MiFID
7 1 (0.21%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.21%) PMO
7 1 (0.21%) SLA
System Software
1 57 (12.00%) Docker
2 11 (2.32%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.26%) Firmware
3 6 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.05%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.42%) NFS
7 2 (0.42%) Time Sharing Option
7 2 (0.42%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 65 (13.68%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.37%) Ansible
3 12 (2.53%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.89%) Grafana
5 7 (1.47%) HP ALM
6 6 (1.26%) Packer
7 4 (0.84%) Puppet
8 3 (0.63%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.42%) Argo
9 2 (0.42%) HP Fortify
9 2 (0.42%) Kibana
9 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.42%) Salt
9 2 (0.42%) SCCM
9 2 (0.42%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.21%) Control-M
10 1 (0.21%) Functional Safety
10 1 (0.21%) Oracle ZFS
10 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.21%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 37 (7.79%) Oracle
2 35 (7.37%) Microsoft
3 19 (4.00%) IBM
4 17 (3.58%) Salesforce
5 11 (2.32%) SAP
6 7 (1.47%) Google
6 7 (1.47%) HP
6 7 (1.47%) Splunk
6 7 (1.47%) VMware
7 6 (1.26%) Conga
7 6 (1.26%) GoCardless
7 6 (1.26%) OpenLink
8 5 (1.05%) ServiceNow
9 3 (0.63%) Checkmarx
9 3 (0.63%) Databricks
9 3 (0.63%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.63%) UiPath
10 2 (0.42%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.42%) Broadcom
10 2 (0.42%) FXall