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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 248 176
Rank change year-on-year -19 -72 +10
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 380 247 489
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.90% 1.03% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.06% 1.13% 1.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 160 331
10th Percentile £334 £313 £310
25th Percentile £400 £363 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £443 £450
Median % change year-on-year +7.28% -1.61% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £525 £575
90th Percentile £645 £701 £680
UK median daily rate £475 £439 £457
% change year-on-year +8.26% -3.99% -8.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 20 60
10th Percentile £19.59 £47.60 £37.55
25th Percentile £55.69 £51.77 £56.25
Median hourly rate £67.75 £60.13 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.68% -3.80% +19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £87.50 -
UK median hourly rate £68.00 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.33% -4.00% +13.64%

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 35,705 21,941 31,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.00% 91.32% 85.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,665 14,273 20,637
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,224 953 2,305
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.84
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.00 £28.55 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.62% -23.21% -0.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -25 156 £475 +8.57% 54
South East -52 55 £490 +22.50% 56
North of England -49 49 £483 -7.12% 25
Midlands -28 45 £511 +21.73% 27
South West -20 41 £409 -18.20% 31
West Midlands -39 38 £510 +20.00% 16
East of England -18 33 £600 +26.32% 43
North East -6 20 £450 - 7
Yorkshire -52 18 £500 -3.80% 2
North West -46 13 £525 +10.53% 17
East Midlands -20 7 £575 +152.75% 11
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 (3.42%) Confluence
2 9 (2.37%) SAS
3 8 (2.11%) Apache Spark
4 7 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.79%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.53%) IIS
7 1 (0.26%) Apache
7 1 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.26%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.26%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (3.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.84%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.05%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.53%) Simulink
6 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.58%) Findur
1 6 (1.58%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.05%) Maximo
3 3 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.53%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.26%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 99 (26.05%) Azure
2 72 (18.95%) AWS
3 70 (18.42%) Azure DevOps
4 29 (7.63%) GitHub
5 23 (6.05%) Serverless
6 22 (5.79%) AWS Lambda
7 21 (5.53%) Amazon S3
8 19 (5.00%) GCP
9 9 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (2.37%) Snowflake
10 8 (2.11%) OpenShift
11 7 (1.84%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (1.84%) Entra ID
11 7 (1.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (1.58%) PaaS
13 5 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (1.32%) Power Platform
13 5 (1.32%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.11%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.58%) DNS
3 5 (1.32%) Firewall
3 5 (1.32%) Software-Defined Radio
3 5 (1.32%) Wireless
4 4 (1.05%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (0.79%) DHCP
5 3 (0.79%) Modbus
5 3 (0.79%) Network Security
5 3 (0.79%) RS-232
5 3 (0.79%) RS-422
5 3 (0.79%) RS-485
6 2 (0.53%) 4G
6 2 (0.53%) 5G
6 2 (0.53%) Internet
6 2 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.26%) BGP
7 1 (0.26%) FTP
7 1 (0.26%) LTE
7 1 (0.26%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.26%) Relational Database
3 16 (4.21%) MySQL
4 15 (3.95%) SQL Server
5 14 (3.68%) Oracle Database
6 11 (2.89%) Big Data
7 9 (2.37%) DynamoDB
7 9 (2.37%) NoSQL
7 9 (2.37%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 8 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.11%) MongoDB
9 7 (1.84%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (1.32%) Amazon Athena
10 5 (1.32%) SAS Visual Analytics
11 4 (1.05%) Amazon QuickSight
12 3 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.79%) Parquet
12 3 (0.79%) Power BI
12 3 (0.79%) Redis
13 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 66 (17.37%) JIRA
2 38 (10.00%) Git
2 38 (10.00%) Selenium
3 30 (7.89%) Jenkins
4 27 (7.11%) Postman
5 23 (6.05%) REST Assured
6 22 (5.79%) Cucumber
7 19 (5.00%) GitLab
7 19 (5.00%) JUnit
8 16 (4.21%) Cypress.io
9 12 (3.16%) Rational DOORS
10 11 (2.89%) TestRail
11 8 (2.11%) Zephyr
12 6 (1.58%) Gatling
12 6 (1.58%) HP UFT
12 6 (1.58%) JMeter
12 6 (1.58%) WebDriver
13 5 (1.32%) Appium
13 5 (1.32%) Maven
13 5 (1.32%) SonarQube
General
1 107 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 71 (18.68%) Finance
3 63 (16.58%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (10.53%) Public Sector
5 27 (7.11%) Banking
6 19 (5.00%) Aerospace
7 12 (3.16%) Automotive
7 12 (3.16%) Back Office
8 11 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.84%) Military
10 6 (1.58%) Front Office
10 6 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.58%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.32%) Electronics
11 5 (1.32%) Investment Banking
11 5 (1.32%) Law
11 5 (1.32%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.05%) Legal
13 3 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 63 (16.58%) Senior
2 57 (15.00%) Test Engineer
3 53 (13.95%) Developer
4 48 (12.63%) Software Engineer
5 33 (8.68%) Analyst
6 30 (7.89%) Tester
7 29 (7.63%) Lead
8 22 (5.79%) Java Developer
9 20 (5.26%) Test Analyst
10 18 (4.74%) Senior Developer
10 18 (4.74%) Software Test Engineer
11 16 (4.21%) QA Engineer
11 16 (4.21%) Test Manager
12 14 (3.68%) Architect
12 14 (3.68%) Java Engineer
13 11 (2.89%) Embedded Engineer
13 11 (2.89%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 11 (2.89%) Software Developer
14 10 (2.63%) Salesforce Engineer
14 10 (2.63%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (10.26%) Spring
2 37 (9.74%) Playwright
2 37 (9.74%) React
3 34 (8.95%) REST
4 31 (8.16%) Spring Boot
5 25 (6.58%) RESTful
6 23 (6.05%) .NET
7 17 (4.47%) Kafka
8 16 (4.21%) Node.js
9 15 (3.95%) CSS
9 15 (3.95%) HTML
10 12 (3.16%) Redux
11 10 (2.63%) AngularJS
11 10 (2.63%) HTML5
11 10 (2.63%) Spring MVC
12 9 (2.37%) CSS3
12 9 (2.37%) Jest
13 6 (1.58%) .NET Framework
13 6 (1.58%) GraphQL
13 6 (1.58%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 39 (10.26%) Product Ownership
2 22 (5.79%) Cloud Native
3 20 (5.26%) Enterprise Software
4 19 (5.00%) Embedded Systems
5 17 (4.47%) Distributed Systems
5 17 (4.47%) Self-Motivation
6 14 (3.68%) Management Information System
7 12 (3.16%) Legacy Systems
8 11 (2.89%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.58%) FPGA
9 6 (1.58%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
10 5 (1.32%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.32%) PCIe
11 4 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (0.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (0.79%) NHS
12 3 (0.79%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.79%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 26 (6.84%) Windows
2 21 (5.53%) Linux
3 9 (2.37%) Unix
4 6 (1.58%) FreeRTOS
4 6 (1.58%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.05%) Android
5 4 (1.05%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.53%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.53%) zOS
7 1 (0.26%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (47.63%) Test Automation
2 139 (36.58%) Agile
3 130 (34.21%) DevOps
4 127 (33.42%) CI/CD
5 90 (23.68%) Software Engineering
6 87 (22.89%) Continuous Improvement
7 85 (22.37%) Problem-Solving
8 67 (17.63%) Test Scripting
9 58 (15.26%) Validation
10 53 (13.95%) SDLC
10 53 (13.95%) Test Strategy
11 49 (12.89%) Scrum
12 48 (12.63%) Regression Testing
13 47 (12.37%) Test Management
14 45 (11.84%) Microservices
15 44 (11.58%) Defect Tracking
16 41 (10.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 40 (10.53%) Code Quality
18 39 (10.26%) API Testing
19 38 (10.00%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 81 (21.32%) Java
2 75 (19.74%) Python
3 63 (16.58%) SQL
4 40 (10.53%) JavaScript
5 34 (8.95%) C#
6 30 (7.89%) TypeScript
7 14 (3.68%) C++
8 12 (3.16%) C
9 7 (1.84%) Bash
9 7 (1.84%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.58%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.32%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.32%) VBScript
12 4 (1.05%) Go
13 3 (0.79%) Groovy
13 3 (0.79%) Rust
13 3 (0.79%) VB
14 2 (0.53%) Ada
14 2 (0.53%) REXX
14 2 (0.53%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 115 (30.26%) Security Cleared
2 92 (24.21%) SC Cleared
3 40 (10.53%) Degree
4 34 (8.95%) ISTQB
5 19 (5.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 10 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.84%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.58%) ISEB
9 4 (1.05%) CEH
9 4 (1.05%) CISSP
9 4 (1.05%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (0.79%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.53%) A+ Certification
11 2 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.53%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
11 2 (0.53%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.53%) PMP
11 2 (0.53%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (23.42%) QA
2 15 (3.95%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.89%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.11%) WCAG
5 7 (1.84%) PMO
6 4 (1.05%) NIST
6 4 (1.05%) SLA
6 4 (1.05%) Software Quality Assurance
7 3 (0.79%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.53%) MiFID
9 1 (0.26%) GRC
9 1 (0.26%) SEPA
System Software
1 38 (10.00%) Docker
2 11 (2.89%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.11%) Firmware
3 8 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.05%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (0.79%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.79%) VMware Workstation
7 2 (0.53%) NFS
7 2 (0.53%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.26%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 49 (12.89%) Kubernetes
2 22 (5.79%) Terraform
3 12 (3.16%) Ansible
4 10 (2.63%) HP ALM
4 10 (2.63%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.37%) Grafana
6 6 (1.58%) Puppet
7 5 (1.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.05%) HP Quality Center
8 4 (1.05%) Salt
8 4 (1.05%) SCCM
9 2 (0.53%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.26%) Kibana
10 1 (0.26%) Oracle ZFS
10 1 (0.26%) Packer
10 1 (0.26%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 37 (9.74%) Oracle
2 34 (8.95%) Microsoft
3 13 (3.42%) Salesforce
4 10 (2.63%) HP
5 9 (2.37%) Dell
5 9 (2.37%) VMware
6 8 (2.11%) IBM
7 7 (1.84%) Citrix
7 7 (1.84%) SAP
8 6 (1.58%) Conga
8 6 (1.58%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.58%) OpenLink
8 6 (1.58%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.32%) Ab Initio
9 5 (1.32%) Google
9 5 (1.32%) Splunk
9 5 (1.32%) Teradata
10 4 (1.05%) Fortinet
11 3 (0.79%) Atlassian
11 3 (0.79%) Remedy