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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 261 228 175
Rank change year-on-year -33 -53 +17
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 375 285 505
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.93% 1.17% 1.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.09% 1.28% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 186 338
10th Percentile £339 £313 £271
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -10.04%
75th Percentile £575 £601 £596
90th Percentile £645 £713 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £440 £455
% change year-on-year +7.95% -3.30% -9.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 21 64
10th Percentile £15.25 £50.00 £38.05
25th Percentile £56.50 £52.50 £56.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% - +19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £87.50 -
UK median hourly rate £67.75 £61.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.16% -1.60% +19.05%

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 34,330 22,247 32,169
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 91.17% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,953 14,553 21,080
10th Percentile £318 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.05% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,133 913 2,254
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.67 £12.94
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -16.55% -4.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.97 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -2.53%

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 May 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 2 May 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 2 May 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 -38 168 £475 +8.57% 41
South East -46 61 £500 -9.09% 67
Midlands -38 46 £511 +14.12% 48
North of England -43 40 £500 -3.80% 47
West Midlands -38 35 £510 +13.59% 32
South West -27 30 £409 +2.25% 26
East of England -26 26 £600 +26.32% 48
Yorkshire -36 20 £500 -3.80% 13
North East -7 13 £448 - 12
East Midlands -27 11 £575 +400.00% 16
North West -43 9 £538 +5.91% 22
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 (3.47%) Confluence
2 9 (2.40%) SAS
3 7 (1.87%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (1.87%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.53%) IIS
4 2 (0.53%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.27%) Apache
5 1 (0.27%) CMS
5 1 (0.27%) IBM HTTP Server
5 1 (0.27%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 14 (3.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.07%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.53%) Simulink
6 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (1.33%) Aladdin
1 5 (1.33%) Findur
2 4 (1.07%) Maximo
3 3 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.53%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.27%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.27%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 119 (31.73%) Azure
2 83 (22.13%) Azure DevOps
3 82 (21.87%) AWS
4 30 (8.00%) GitHub
5 28 (7.47%) Serverless
6 27 (7.20%) Amazon S3
6 27 (7.20%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (5.87%) GCP
8 12 (3.20%) Amazon ECS
8 12 (3.20%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (2.67%) Snowflake
11 9 (2.40%) Entra ID
12 8 (2.13%) OpenShift
13 7 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (1.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 6 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (1.60%) PaaS
15 4 (1.07%) AWS Control Tower
15 4 (1.07%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.40%) Ethernet
2 5 (1.33%) Firewall
2 5 (1.33%) Software-Defined Radio
2 5 (1.33%) Wireless
3 4 (1.07%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (0.80%) DNS
4 3 (0.80%) FTP
4 3 (0.80%) Modbus
4 3 (0.80%) RS-232
4 3 (0.80%) RS-422
4 3 (0.80%) RS-485
5 2 (0.53%) 4G
5 2 (0.53%) 5G
5 2 (0.53%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.53%) Internet
5 2 (0.53%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.53%) SNMP
5 2 (0.53%) SSH
5 2 (0.53%) TACACS
5 2 (0.53%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.20%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.33%) Relational Database
3 17 (4.53%) MySQL
4 14 (3.73%) Oracle Database
4 14 (3.73%) SQL Server
5 12 (3.20%) Big Data
6 10 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 9 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (2.40%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 8 (2.13%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.13%) MongoDB
9 7 (1.87%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (1.33%) Amazon Athena
10 5 (1.33%) SAS Visual Analytics
11 4 (1.07%) Amazon QuickSight
12 3 (0.80%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.80%) Parquet
12 3 (0.80%) Redis
13 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.53%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 69 (18.40%) JIRA
2 43 (11.47%) Git
3 40 (10.67%) Selenium
4 32 (8.53%) Jenkins
5 26 (6.93%) Postman
6 23 (6.13%) JUnit
7 19 (5.07%) Cucumber
7 19 (5.07%) GitLab
8 18 (4.80%) Cypress.io
9 13 (3.47%) REST Assured
10 12 (3.20%) Rational DOORS
10 12 (3.20%) TestRail
11 9 (2.40%) WebDriver
12 8 (2.13%) SonarQube
12 8 (2.13%) Zephyr
13 6 (1.60%) HP UFT
13 6 (1.60%) JMeter
14 5 (1.33%) Gradle
14 5 (1.33%) Maven
14 5 (1.33%) TestNG
General
1 113 (30.13%) Social Skills
2 72 (19.20%) Finance
3 68 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (11.20%) Public Sector
5 23 (6.13%) Banking
6 19 (5.07%) Aerospace
7 12 (3.20%) Back Office
7 12 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.40%) Automotive
9 8 (2.13%) Military
9 8 (2.13%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.60%) Electronics
10 6 (1.60%) Front Office
10 6 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.60%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.60%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.33%) Law
12 4 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.80%) Police
Job Titles
1 58 (15.47%) Developer
2 56 (14.93%) Senior
3 44 (11.73%) Test Engineer
4 40 (10.67%) Software Engineer
5 35 (9.33%) Analyst
5 35 (9.33%) Lead
6 34 (9.07%) Tester
7 24 (6.40%) Test Analyst
8 22 (5.87%) Java Developer
9 19 (5.07%) Test Manager
10 18 (4.80%) Java Engineer
11 17 (4.53%) QA Engineer
11 17 (4.53%) Senior Developer
12 15 (4.00%) Software Developer
13 13 (3.47%) Software Test Engineer
14 10 (2.67%) Integration Analyst
14 10 (2.67%) Senior Integration Analyst
14 10 (2.67%) Senior Java Developer
14 10 (2.67%) Senior Test Analyst
14 10 (2.67%) Systems Integration Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (11.73%) Spring
2 35 (9.33%) Spring Boot
3 34 (9.07%) Playwright
4 33 (8.80%) React
5 31 (8.27%) REST
6 29 (7.73%) RESTful
7 24 (6.40%) .NET
8 20 (5.33%) Node.js
9 19 (5.07%) CSS
9 19 (5.07%) HTML
10 15 (4.00%) Kafka
11 12 (3.20%) Redux
12 10 (2.67%) HTML5
12 10 (2.67%) Spring MVC
13 9 (2.40%) AngularJS
13 9 (2.40%) CSS3
13 9 (2.40%) Jest
14 8 (2.13%) Gherkin
14 8 (2.13%) Middleware
15 7 (1.87%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 34 (9.07%) Product Ownership
2 28 (7.47%) Cloud Native
3 15 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (3.73%) Embedded Systems
4 14 (3.73%) Self-Motivation
5 13 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (3.20%) Management Information System
7 10 (2.67%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.60%) FPGA
8 6 (1.60%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.33%) PCIe
10 4 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.07%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.80%) CUDA
11 3 (0.80%) Data Structures
11 3 (0.80%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 3 (0.80%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 23 (6.13%) Windows
2 20 (5.33%) Linux
3 9 (2.40%) Unix
4 6 (1.60%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (1.07%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.53%) Android
6 2 (0.53%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.27%) Solaris
7 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (45.60%) Test Automation
2 144 (38.40%) Agile
3 143 (38.13%) DevOps
4 129 (34.40%) CI/CD
5 91 (24.27%) Continuous Improvement
5 91 (24.27%) Problem-Solving
6 77 (20.53%) Software Engineering
7 68 (18.13%) Test Scripting
8 60 (16.00%) Validation
9 57 (15.20%) Test Strategy
10 56 (14.93%) Test Management
11 55 (14.67%) Microservices
12 49 (13.07%) SDLC
13 48 (12.80%) Defect Tracking
13 48 (12.80%) Regression Testing
14 44 (11.73%) Scrum
15 42 (11.20%) Containerisation
16 40 (10.67%) API Testing
16 40 (10.67%) Defect Management
17 39 (10.40%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 82 (21.87%) Java
2 74 (19.73%) Python
3 71 (18.93%) SQL
4 43 (11.47%) JavaScript
5 37 (9.87%) C#
5 37 (9.87%) TypeScript
6 14 (3.73%) C++
7 12 (3.20%) C
8 10 (2.67%) Bash
9 7 (1.87%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.60%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.33%) VBScript
12 4 (1.07%) Go
13 3 (0.80%) Groovy
13 3 (0.80%) Rust
13 3 (0.80%) VB
14 2 (0.53%) Ada
14 2 (0.53%) MATLAB
14 2 (0.53%) Ruby
14 2 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 110 (29.33%) Security Cleared
2 89 (23.73%) SC Cleared
3 36 (9.60%) ISTQB
4 34 (9.07%) Degree
5 14 (3.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 12 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.87%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 6 (1.60%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.60%) ISEB
9 4 (1.07%) CEH
9 4 (1.07%) CISSP
9 4 (1.07%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (0.80%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.80%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.80%) PMP
11 2 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.53%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 1 (0.27%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.27%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (26.93%) QA
2 13 (3.47%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.93%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.87%) PMO
4 7 (1.87%) WCAG
5 4 (1.07%) NIST
5 4 (1.07%) SLA
6 3 (0.80%) Software Quality Assurance
7 2 (0.53%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.27%) GRC
8 1 (0.27%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.27%) MiFID
8 1 (0.27%) SEPA
System Software
1 34 (9.07%) Docker
2 8 (2.13%) Firmware
3 7 (1.87%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.07%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.27%) NFS
6 1 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.27%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
6 1 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 49 (13.07%) Kubernetes
2 23 (6.13%) Terraform
3 12 (3.20%) Ansible
4 11 (2.93%) HP ALM
5 10 (2.67%) Grafana
5 10 (2.67%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.87%) Puppet
7 5 (1.33%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.07%) HP Quality Center
8 4 (1.07%) Salt
8 4 (1.07%) SCCM
9 1 (0.27%) Kibana
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle ZFS
9 1 (0.27%) Packer
9 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.27%) Tivoli
9 1 (0.27%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 38 (10.13%) Oracle
2 36 (9.60%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.93%) HP
4 10 (2.67%) ServiceNow
5 9 (2.40%) SAP
6 8 (2.13%) Dell
6 8 (2.13%) IBM
7 7 (1.87%) Citrix
8 6 (1.60%) Splunk
8 6 (1.60%) VMware
9 5 (1.33%) Ab Initio
9 5 (1.33%) Google
9 5 (1.33%) OpenLink
9 5 (1.33%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.33%) Teradata
10 4 (1.07%) Databricks
10 4 (1.07%) Fortinet
10 4 (1.07%) Remedy
11 3 (0.80%) Checkmarx
11 3 (0.80%) Palo Alto