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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 262 203
Rank change year-on-year -5 -59 -39
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 453 281 417
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.99% 1.01% 1.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 1.11% 1.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 179 277
10th Percentile £264 £313 £322
25th Percentile £400 £358 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £438 £455
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -3.85% -9.00%
75th Percentile £580 £525 £588
90th Percentile £688 £638 £666
UK median daily rate £480 £440 £463
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.86% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 32 29
10th Percentile £25.24 £26.06 £26.20
25th Percentile £55.08 £50.00 £37.55
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +3.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £76.75 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £61.97
% change year-on-year +18.18% -11.24% +3.28%

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 38,743 25,202 28,504
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 90.84% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,962 16,051 18,351
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £627 £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 2,572 1,476 1,524
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.25 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.17 £17.87 £18.08
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 -23 163 £550 +27.54% 57
South East -57 70 £413 +3.31% 71
Midlands +4 68 £500 +18.34% 49
West Midlands +2 62 £480 -6.80% 35
North of England -43 59 £488 +10.17% 55
East of England -3 44 £74 -84.74% 32
South West -24 41 £410 -3.65% 29
North East -12 29 £500 - 14
North West -38 17 £475 +28.38% 30
Yorkshire -46 15 £450 -4.26% 12
East Midlands -11 6 £575 +69.12% 14
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 16 (3.53%) Confluence
2 12 (2.65%) Apache Airflow
3 11 (2.43%) SAS
4 6 (1.32%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.32%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.44%) IIS
7 1 (0.22%) Apache
7 1 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
Applications
1 15 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.88%) Trello
5 2 (0.44%) Simulink
6 1 (0.22%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (1.32%) Findur
1 6 (1.32%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.88%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.66%) Primavera
4 2 (0.44%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.44%) Eikon
4 2 (0.44%) Maximo
5 1 (0.22%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.22%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.22%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) Shopify
5 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 104 (22.96%) Azure
2 101 (22.30%) AWS
3 48 (10.60%) Azure DevOps
4 45 (9.93%) GitHub
5 25 (5.52%) GCP
6 18 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (3.75%) GitHub Copilot
8 16 (3.53%) Serverless
9 14 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
10 12 (2.65%) PaaS
11 9 (1.99%) Amazon S3
11 9 (1.99%) Power Platform
12 8 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (1.77%) SaaS
13 7 (1.55%) OpenShift
14 6 (1.32%) Entra ID
14 6 (1.32%) Snowflake
15 5 (1.10%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (1.10%) Anthropic Claude
15 5 (1.10%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.55%) DNS
1 7 (1.55%) Ethernet
2 5 (1.10%) Firewall
2 5 (1.10%) Software-Defined Radio
2 5 (1.10%) Wireless
3 4 (0.88%) DHCP
3 4 (0.88%) Internet
3 4 (0.88%) Network Security
4 2 (0.44%) BGP
4 2 (0.44%) MPLS
4 2 (0.44%) Reverse Proxy
4 2 (0.44%) SSL
4 2 (0.44%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.22%) GSM
5 1 (0.22%) IPv4
5 1 (0.22%) IPv6
5 1 (0.22%) LTE
5 1 (0.22%) SSH
5 1 (0.22%) UMTS
5 1 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (4.19%) Relational Database
2 15 (3.31%) SQL Server
3 13 (2.87%) Oracle Database
4 11 (2.43%) MongoDB
4 11 (2.43%) SAS Enterprise Guide
4 11 (2.43%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 10 (2.21%) NoSQL
6 9 (1.99%) MySQL
6 9 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (1.77%) DynamoDB
8 7 (1.55%) Big Data
8 7 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.55%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.32%) Power BI
10 4 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (0.88%) Redis
11 3 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.66%) Parquet
11 3 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 71 (15.67%) JIRA
2 67 (14.79%) Git
3 66 (14.57%) Selenium
4 40 (8.83%) GitLab
5 37 (8.17%) Postman
6 36 (7.95%) Cucumber
7 30 (6.62%) Jenkins
7 30 (6.62%) JUnit
8 22 (4.86%) REST Assured
9 18 (3.97%) Gatling
10 13 (2.87%) Cypress.io
10 13 (2.87%) Rational DOORS
11 12 (2.65%) WebDriver
12 11 (2.43%) JMeter
12 11 (2.43%) SonarQube
12 11 (2.43%) Zephyr
13 9 (1.99%) TestRail
13 9 (1.99%) Visual Studio
14 8 (1.77%) Maven
14 8 (1.77%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 139 (30.68%) Social Skills
2 99 (21.85%) Finance
3 72 (15.89%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (12.36%) Public Sector
5 49 (10.82%) Banking
6 26 (5.74%) Aerospace
6 26 (5.74%) Automotive
7 15 (3.31%) Front Office
8 14 (3.09%) Back Office
9 10 (2.21%) Law
9 10 (2.21%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.77%) Retail
11 8 (1.77%) Telecoms
12 7 (1.55%) Electronics
13 6 (1.32%) Military
14 5 (1.10%) Avionics
14 5 (1.10%) Legal
Job Titles
1 68 (15.01%) Software Engineer
1 68 (15.01%) Test Engineer
2 65 (14.35%) Senior
3 64 (14.13%) Developer
4 36 (7.95%) Analyst
5 28 (6.18%) Lead
6 27 (5.96%) Tester
7 26 (5.74%) Software Test Engineer
8 25 (5.52%) Test Manager
9 22 (4.86%) Software Developer
10 20 (4.42%) QA Engineer
11 19 (4.19%) Java Developer
12 18 (3.97%) Test Automation Engineer
13 16 (3.53%) Quality Engineer
13 16 (3.53%) Test Analyst
14 15 (3.31%) Automation Engineer
14 15 (3.31%) Principal Engineer
14 15 (3.31%) Senior Developer
15 14 (3.09%) Architect
16 13 (2.87%) Software Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (10.38%) Playwright
2 44 (9.71%) REST
3 41 (9.05%) React
4 37 (8.17%) Spring
5 36 (7.95%) .NET
6 28 (6.18%) Kafka
6 28 (6.18%) Terraform
7 24 (5.30%) RESTful
8 20 (4.42%) Spring Boot
9 18 (3.97%) Node.js
10 14 (3.09%) AngularJS
11 13 (2.87%) HTML
12 11 (2.43%) SOAP
12 11 (2.43%) XML
13 10 (2.21%) JSON
13 10 (2.21%) Redux
14 9 (1.99%) CSS
14 9 (1.99%) Web Services
15 8 (1.77%) WireMock
16 7 (1.55%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 44 (9.71%) Product Ownership
2 38 (8.39%) Enterprise Software
3 31 (6.84%) Cloud Native
4 24 (5.30%) Embedded Systems
5 22 (4.86%) Self-Motivation
6 19 (4.19%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (3.09%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (1.77%) Data Centre
9 8 (1.77%) Data Structures
10 6 (1.32%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.32%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.10%) Derivative
11 5 (1.10%) Equities
11 5 (1.10%) Equity Derivative
11 5 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 5 (1.10%) FPGA
11 5 (1.10%) Onboarding
11 5 (1.10%) PCIe
Operating Systems
1 31 (6.84%) Linux
2 23 (5.08%) Windows
3 10 (2.21%) Unix
4 6 (1.32%) FreeRTOS
4 6 (1.32%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.66%) Android
5 3 (0.66%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.66%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.44%) zOS
7 1 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (47.90%) Test Automation
2 208 (45.92%) Agile
3 179 (39.51%) CI/CD
4 136 (30.02%) Software Engineering
5 133 (29.36%) DevOps
6 110 (24.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 104 (22.96%) Problem-Solving
8 84 (18.54%) Scrum
8 84 (18.54%) SDLC
9 69 (15.23%) Test Strategy
10 67 (14.79%) Validation
11 65 (14.35%) Test Scripting
12 61 (13.47%) AI
13 60 (13.25%) Defect Management
13 60 (13.25%) User Acceptance Testing
14 56 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
15 55 (12.14%) Microservices
16 54 (11.92%) Regression Testing
17 52 (11.48%) Mentoring
18 47 (10.38%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 97 (21.41%) Java
2 79 (17.44%) Python
3 69 (15.23%) SQL
4 50 (11.04%) JavaScript
5 37 (8.17%) C#
6 29 (6.40%) TypeScript
7 24 (5.30%) C++
8 16 (3.53%) C
9 13 (2.87%) PowerShell
10 8 (1.77%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.10%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.10%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.88%) Bash
12 4 (0.88%) Korn
12 4 (0.88%) Scala
13 3 (0.66%) Ada
13 3 (0.66%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.66%) Rust
13 3 (0.66%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.44%) Go
Qualifications
1 150 (33.11%) Security Cleared
2 125 (27.59%) SC Cleared
3 58 (12.80%) Degree
4 41 (9.05%) ISTQB
5 19 (4.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 17 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (2.65%) DV Cleared
8 12 (2.65%) ISEB
9 11 (2.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 4 (0.88%) CEH
10 4 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.88%) CISSP
10 4 (0.88%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (0.66%) CCNA
12 2 (0.44%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.44%) ISEB Practitioner
12 2 (0.44%) Network+ Certification
12 2 (0.44%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.44%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (23.40%) QA
2 28 (6.18%) Accessibility
3 18 (3.97%) WCAG
4 8 (1.77%) Data Quality
5 5 (1.10%) ISO 20022
5 5 (1.10%) NIST
5 5 (1.10%) PMO
5 5 (1.10%) Software Quality Assurance
6 3 (0.66%) GRC
7 2 (0.44%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.44%) MiFID
7 2 (0.44%) MISRA
8 1 (0.22%) HL7
8 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.22%) JTAG
8 1 (0.22%) MIL-STD-1553
8 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 52 (11.48%) Docker
2 10 (2.21%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.32%) Firmware
3 6 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.10%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.66%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.66%) VMware Workstation
7 2 (0.44%) NFS
7 2 (0.44%) Time Sharing Option
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 60 (13.25%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.75%) Ansible
3 12 (2.65%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.99%) Grafana
5 6 (1.32%) Packer
6 4 (0.88%) HP ALM
6 4 (0.88%) Puppet
7 2 (0.44%) Argo
7 2 (0.44%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.44%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.44%) Salt
7 2 (0.44%) SCCM
7 2 (0.44%) Tivoli Storage Manager
8 1 (0.22%) Control-M
8 1 (0.22%) Kibana
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle ZFS
8 1 (0.22%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.22%) PTC Integrity
Vendors
1 36 (7.95%) Oracle
2 33 (7.28%) Microsoft
3 19 (4.19%) IBM
4 17 (3.75%) Salesforce
5 12 (2.65%) SAP
6 8 (1.77%) VMware
7 7 (1.55%) Google
7 7 (1.55%) Splunk
8 6 (1.32%) Conga
8 6 (1.32%) Dell
8 6 (1.32%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.32%) OpenLink
9 5 (1.10%) ServiceNow
10 4 (0.88%) Citrix
10 4 (0.88%) Databricks
10 4 (0.88%) HP
11 3 (0.66%) Checkmarx
11 3 (0.66%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.66%) Palo Alto
11 3 (0.66%) UiPath