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 2 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
2 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 227 198 174
Rank change year-on-year -29 -24 +4
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 365 384 562
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.19% 1.27% 1.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.33% 1.44% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 251 237 367
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 £613 £666 £668
UK median daily rate £435 £440 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -12.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 18 81
10th Percentile £26.25 £25.43 £45.00
25th Percentile £49.38 £54.88 £48.47
Median hourly rate £63.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.80% -3.85% +30.00%
75th Percentile £67.00 £67.38 -
90th Percentile £67.48 £80.75 £69.00
UK median hourly rate £63.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +9.57% -11.54% +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 27,450 26,620 34,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.50% 87.73% 88.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,481 16,323 23,332
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -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% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,780 955 1,444
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.24 £19.11
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.14%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.95 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.50
% change year-on-year -23.79% -24.14% +24.29%

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 2 December 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 2 December 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 2 December 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 -18 128 £445 -6.32% 72
North of England -48 64 £405 +1.25% 61
South East -26 60 £431 -25.00% 134
Yorkshire -14 42 £443 +8.52% 17
South West +5 36 £450 -4.26% 29
Midlands -24 32 £515 +28.75% 29
East of England +8 27 £573 +63.57% 42
West Midlands -24 25 £515 +28.75% 19
North West -45 17 £405 +1.25% 38
East Midlands -15 7 £340 - 7
North East -3 5 £350 -4.76% 6
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 (4.66%) Confluence
2 13 (3.56%) SAS
3 7 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (1.64%) 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 (3.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.47%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (2.19%) 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
1 106 (29.04%) Azure
2 68 (18.63%) AWS
3 51 (13.97%) Azure DevOps
4 35 (9.59%) GCP
5 25 (6.85%) GitHub
6 18 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (3.01%) Amazon S3
7 11 (3.01%) 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 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (1.64%) Entra ID
10 6 (1.64%) PaaS
10 6 (1.64%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.10%) Cloud Computing
11 4 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.10%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.74%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.64%) 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%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.21%) SQL Server
2 18 (4.93%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (4.11%) NoSQL
3 15 (4.11%) Oracle Database
4 13 (3.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 10 (2.74%) MongoDB
6 9 (2.47%) BigQuery
7 8 (2.19%) Power BI
8 6 (1.64%) Apache Cassandra
8 6 (1.64%) 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%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 79 (21.64%) JIRA
2 67 (18.36%) Selenium
3 51 (13.97%) Postman
4 44 (12.05%) Git
5 43 (11.78%) Cucumber
6 42 (11.51%) Jenkins
7 32 (8.77%) GitLab
8 28 (7.67%) Cypress.io
9 25 (6.85%) REST Assured
10 19 (5.21%) SoapUI
11 18 (4.93%) JUnit
12 13 (3.56%) JMeter
13 9 (2.47%) Artifactory
13 9 (2.47%) Visual Studio
13 9 (2.47%) WebDriver
14 8 (2.19%) Maven
15 7 (1.92%) SonarQube
15 7 (1.92%) Zephyr
16 6 (1.64%) Subversion
16 6 (1.64%) TestRail
General
1 132 (36.16%) Social Skills
2 63 (17.26%) Finance
3 41 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (10.41%) Public Sector
5 20 (5.48%) Banking
6 13 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.01%) Manufacturing
8 9 (2.47%) Aerospace
9 8 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (1.92%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.64%) Investment Banking
11 6 (1.64%) Military
12 5 (1.37%) Automotive
12 5 (1.37%) Electronics
12 5 (1.37%) Front Office
12 5 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (1.10%) Multimedia
13 4 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.82%) Billing
Job Titles
1 54 (14.79%) Senior
2 47 (12.88%) Analyst
3 43 (11.78%) Software Engineer
4 40 (10.96%) Test Analyst
5 39 (10.68%) Test Engineer
6 38 (10.41%) Developer
7 37 (10.14%) Tester
8 29 (7.95%) Lead
9 26 (7.12%) Consultant
10 14 (3.84%) Software Developer
11 13 (3.56%) QA Leader
11 13 (3.56%) Release Manager
11 13 (3.56%) Senior Analyst
11 13 (3.56%) Test Leader
11 13 (3.56%) Test Manager
12 12 (3.29%) QA Engineer
12 12 (3.29%) Senior Test Analyst
12 12 (3.29%) Senior Test Engineer
13 10 (2.74%) Automation Tester
13 10 (2.74%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (9.86%) .NET
2 32 (8.77%) Playwright
3 29 (7.95%) React
4 28 (7.67%) HTML
5 27 (7.40%) Node.js
5 27 (7.40%) REST
6 26 (7.12%) RESTful
7 25 (6.85%) CSS
8 23 (6.30%) Spring
9 22 (6.03%) Spring Boot
10 18 (4.93%) AngularJS
11 17 (4.66%) SOAP
12 16 (4.38%) Kafka
13 14 (3.84%) .NET Framework
14 10 (2.74%) Gherkin
14 10 (2.74%) Vue
15 9 (2.47%) Svelte
16 8 (2.19%) FastAPI
16 8 (2.19%) pytest
16 8 (2.19%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.85%) Self-Motivation
2 21 (5.75%) Product Ownership
3 19 (5.21%) Distributed Systems
4 17 (4.66%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.29%) Data Structures
6 11 (3.01%) Algorithms
7 7 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.64%) 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%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.82%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.82%) PKI
11 3 (0.82%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 33 (9.04%) Windows
2 28 (7.67%) Linux
3 11 (3.01%) 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
1 162 (44.38%) Agile
2 155 (42.47%) Test Automation
3 132 (36.16%) CI/CD
4 107 (29.32%) DevOps
5 103 (28.22%) Problem-Solving
6 72 (19.73%) Test Scripting
7 67 (18.36%) Software Engineering
8 65 (17.81%) Test Strategy
9 64 (17.53%) Scrum
10 62 (16.99%) Continuous Improvement
11 59 (16.16%) Validation
12 53 (14.52%) Microservices
13 51 (13.97%) Test Management
14 46 (12.60%) API Testing
15 45 (12.33%) SDLC
16 43 (11.78%) Containerisation
16 43 (11.78%) TDD
17 37 (10.14%) Computer Science
17 37 (10.14%) Integration Testing
18 35 (9.59%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 63 (17.26%) Java
2 62 (16.99%) Python
3 60 (16.44%) JavaScript
4 50 (13.70%) SQL
5 44 (12.05%) C#
6 29 (7.95%) TypeScript
7 22 (6.03%) C++
8 12 (3.29%) Bash
8 12 (3.29%) Shell Script
9 11 (3.01%) C
10 8 (2.19%) Go
11 7 (1.92%) Ada
12 6 (1.64%) Scala
12 6 (1.64%) VB
13 5 (1.37%) Groovy
13 5 (1.37%) PowerShell
14 4 (1.10%) Ruby
14 4 (1.10%) VB.NET
15 3 (0.82%) COBOL
15 3 (0.82%) JCL
Qualifications
1 93 (25.48%) Security Cleared
2 80 (21.92%) SC Cleared
3 43 (11.78%) Degree
4 34 (9.32%) ISTQB
5 23 (6.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.74%) CISSP
7 9 (2.47%) CISM
8 8 (2.19%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 7 (1.92%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.37%) Azure Certification
10 5 (1.37%) ISEB
11 4 (1.10%) HNC
11 4 (1.10%) HND
11 4 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 3 (0.82%) EMC Certification
12 3 (0.82%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.82%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
13 2 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (27.40%) QA
2 26 (7.12%) Accessibility
3 13 (3.56%) NIST
4 10 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.74%) WCAG
5 7 (1.92%) PCI DSS
6 6 (1.64%) EU AI Act
6 6 (1.64%) 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 49 (13.42%) 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 42 (11.51%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.84%) Ansible
3 13 (3.56%) 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%) Packer
8 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.27%) Rsyslog
8 1 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 58 (15.89%) Microsoft
2 31 (8.49%) Oracle
3 11 (3.01%) Google
4 10 (2.74%) Cisco
4 10 (2.74%) CyberArk
4 10 (2.74%) Splunk
5 9 (2.47%) BeyondTrust
5 9 (2.47%) Thycotic
6 8 (2.19%) ServiceNow
7 6 (1.64%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.64%) HP
7 6 (1.64%) Meraki
7 6 (1.64%) Salesforce
7 6 (1.64%) VMware
8 5 (1.37%) Juniper
8 5 (1.37%) Workday
9 4 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
9 4 (1.10%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.10%) Nokia
9 4 (1.10%) UiPath
316 Software Testing jobs in England