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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 196 170
Rank change year-on-year -41 -26 +11
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 351 352 526
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.12% 1.30% 1.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.27% 1.46% 1.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 204 346
10th Percentile £325 £313 £278
25th Percentile £378 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £460 £514
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -10.46% -1.20%
75th Percentile £538 £618 £625
90th Percentile £600 £675 £669
UK median daily rate £434 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -3.67% -10.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 17 83
10th Percentile £26.25 £43.28 £41.66
25th Percentile £47.50 £61.25 £49.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +30.00%
75th Percentile £67.25 £75.00 -
90th Percentile £68.75 £80.75 £68.20
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +30.00%

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 27,721 24,092 31,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.34% 88.95% 87.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,678 14,798 21,336
10th Percentile £304 £310 £306
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.43% -2.16%
75th Percentile £625 £648 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,740 781 1,437
10th Percentile £15.17 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -23.60% +27.14%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +22.16%

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 9 January 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 9 January 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 9 January 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 -17 137 £450 -5.66% 60
North of England -46 53 £405 +1.25% 108
South East -48 48 £446 -25.63% 170
South West +2 38 £450 +12.50% 93
Midlands -26 38 £515 +28.75% 77
Yorkshire -32 32 £435 +6.75% 53
West Midlands -22 31 £515 +28.75% 19
East of England -11 19 £598 +51.75% 83
North West -49 14 £405 +1.25% 44
East Midlands -21 7 £313 - 58
North East - 7 £350 - 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 18 (5.13%) Confluence
2 16 (4.56%) SAS
3 7 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (1.99%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.85%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.57%) Apache
6 2 (0.57%) CMS
6 2 (0.57%) JBoss
6 2 (0.57%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.28%) CICS
7 1 (0.28%) EPiServer
Applications
1 11 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.99%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.28%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.57%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.57%) Dynamics NAV
1 2 (0.57%) LabWindows
2 1 (0.28%) Algo Collateral
2 1 (0.28%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 107 (30.48%) Azure
2 63 (17.95%) AWS
3 59 (16.81%) Azure DevOps
4 31 (8.83%) GitHub
5 27 (7.69%) GCP
6 20 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (3.42%) Amazon S3
8 11 (3.13%) Power Platform
9 10 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (2.85%) Serverless
10 9 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
11 7 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 6 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (1.71%) Entra ID
12 6 (1.71%) PaaS
12 6 (1.71%) Snowflake
13 4 (1.14%) Amazon Bedrock
13 4 (1.14%) Cloud Computing
13 4 (1.14%) Microsoft 365
14 3 (0.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.56%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.71%) Wireshark
3 5 (1.42%) SD-WAN
4 4 (1.14%) DNS
4 4 (1.14%) Internet
5 3 (0.85%) Firewall
5 3 (0.85%) Skype
5 3 (0.85%) SNMP
6 2 (0.57%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.57%) FTP
6 2 (0.57%) Intranet
6 2 (0.57%) IOS XR
6 2 (0.57%) Spanning Tree
6 2 (0.57%) SSH
6 2 (0.57%) SSL
6 2 (0.57%) TACACS
6 2 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.57%) Wireless
7 1 (0.28%) HTTP
7 1 (0.28%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 17 (4.84%) NoSQL
4 16 (4.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 14 (3.99%) MongoDB
6 13 (3.70%) Oracle Database
7 11 (3.13%) BigQuery
8 7 (1.99%) MySQL
8 7 (1.99%) Power BI
9 6 (1.71%) Apache Cassandra
9 6 (1.71%) SAS Visual Analytics
10 5 (1.42%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.42%) Relational Database
11 4 (1.14%) Pinecone
12 3 (0.85%) Metadata
12 3 (0.85%) Redis
13 2 (0.57%) Big Data
13 2 (0.57%) DynamoDB
14 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
14 1 (0.28%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 57 (16.24%) Selenium
2 52 (14.81%) JIRA
3 39 (11.11%) Git
3 39 (11.11%) Postman
4 36 (10.26%) Cucumber
4 36 (10.26%) Jenkins
5 28 (7.98%) Cypress.io
6 23 (6.55%) REST Assured
7 21 (5.98%) GitLab
8 14 (3.99%) JUnit
9 10 (2.85%) JMeter
10 6 (1.71%) Rational DOORS
10 6 (1.71%) TestRail
11 5 (1.42%) Gatling
11 5 (1.42%) Rational Rhapsody
11 5 (1.42%) SoapUI
11 5 (1.42%) SonarQube
11 5 (1.42%) Subversion
11 5 (1.42%) WebDriver
12 4 (1.14%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (32.19%) Social Skills
2 52 (14.81%) Finance
3 47 (13.39%) Public Sector
4 45 (12.82%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (5.98%) Banking
6 11 (3.13%) Aerospace
7 10 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.56%) Manufacturing
9 8 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (1.99%) Investment Banking
10 7 (1.99%) Military
10 7 (1.99%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.71%) Automotive
11 6 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.42%) Electronics
12 5 (1.42%) Front Office
13 4 (1.14%) Multimedia
13 4 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.85%) Back Office
14 3 (0.85%) Billing
Job Titles
1 58 (16.52%) Senior
2 44 (12.54%) Software Engineer
3 39 (11.11%) Analyst
3 39 (11.11%) Developer
4 36 (10.26%) Test Engineer
5 32 (9.12%) Test Analyst
6 31 (8.83%) Lead
7 28 (7.98%) Tester
8 25 (7.12%) Consultant
9 16 (4.56%) Release Manager
10 15 (4.27%) Senior Analyst
11 14 (3.99%) QA Engineer
11 14 (3.99%) QA Leader
11 14 (3.99%) Senior Test Analyst
12 13 (3.70%) Test Manager
13 12 (3.42%) Java Engineer
13 12 (3.42%) Senior Test Engineer
14 11 (3.13%) Senior Developer
14 11 (3.13%) Test Automation Engineer
14 11 (3.13%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (10.26%) .NET
2 31 (8.83%) Playwright
3 26 (7.41%) React
4 25 (7.12%) RESTful
4 25 (7.12%) Spring Boot
5 24 (6.84%) Node.js
5 24 (6.84%) Spring
6 22 (6.27%) REST
7 18 (5.13%) HTML
8 15 (4.27%) CSS
9 13 (3.70%) Kafka
10 10 (2.85%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.56%) Middleware
12 8 (2.28%) FastAPI
12 8 (2.28%) Gherkin
12 8 (2.28%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (1.99%) .NET Framework
13 7 (1.99%) Apache NiFi
13 7 (1.99%) pytest
13 7 (1.99%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 20 (5.70%) Cloud Native
1 20 (5.70%) Product Ownership
2 18 (5.13%) Self-Motivation
3 10 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (1.42%) CUDA
5 5 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (1.14%) Algorithms
6 4 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.14%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.14%) NHS
6 4 (1.14%) PCIe
6 4 (1.14%) Virtual Reality
7 3 (0.85%) AI Agents
7 3 (0.85%) Derivative
7 3 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (0.85%) Fixed Income
7 3 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (0.85%) Mobile App
7 3 (0.85%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.83%) Windows
2 26 (7.41%) Linux
3 7 (1.99%) Unix
4 4 (1.14%) FreeRTOS
5 3 (0.85%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.85%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.57%) Android
7 1 (0.28%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.28%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.28%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.28%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.28%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (41.88%) Test Automation
2 139 (39.60%) Agile
3 122 (34.76%) CI/CD
4 104 (29.63%) DevOps
5 98 (27.92%) Problem-Solving
6 71 (20.23%) Test Scripting
7 70 (19.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 64 (18.23%) Software Engineering
9 58 (16.52%) Validation
10 55 (15.67%) Test Strategy
11 50 (14.25%) Microservices
12 46 (13.11%) Scrum
13 41 (11.68%) Containerisation
13 41 (11.68%) Test Management
14 40 (11.40%) API Testing
14 40 (11.40%) TDD
15 37 (10.54%) Integration Testing
16 36 (10.26%) AI
17 32 (9.12%) Manual Testing
18 31 (8.83%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 71 (20.23%) Python
2 66 (18.80%) Java
3 59 (16.81%) SQL
4 55 (15.67%) JavaScript
5 30 (8.55%) C#
6 26 (7.41%) TypeScript
7 17 (4.84%) C++
8 12 (3.42%) Bash
8 12 (3.42%) C
9 10 (2.85%) Shell Script
10 8 (2.28%) Go
11 6 (1.71%) Ada
11 6 (1.71%) PL/SQL
12 5 (1.42%) Scala
13 4 (1.14%) Groovy
13 4 (1.14%) PowerShell
14 3 (0.85%) Embedded C
14 3 (0.85%) Ruby
14 3 (0.85%) VB.NET
14 3 (0.85%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 99 (28.21%) Security Cleared
2 86 (24.50%) SC Cleared
3 38 (10.83%) Degree
4 24 (6.84%) ISTQB
5 20 (5.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (2.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 4 (1.14%) ISEB
8 4 (1.14%) PMI Certification
8 4 (1.14%) PMP
9 3 (0.85%) CISSP
9 3 (0.85%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (0.85%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.57%) ACCA
10 2 (0.57%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.57%) CIMA
10 2 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.57%) CISM
11 1 (0.28%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (27.07%) QA
2 27 (7.69%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.13%) WCAG
4 8 (2.28%) NIST
5 6 (1.71%) EU AI Act
6 4 (1.14%) Software Quality Assurance
7 3 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.57%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.57%) SLA
9 1 (0.28%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.28%) Def Stans
9 1 (0.28%) GDPR
9 1 (0.28%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.28%) IEC 61508
9 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 15288
9 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 50 (14.25%) Docker
2 5 (1.42%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.85%) Firmware
4 3 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.85%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 47 (13.39%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.42%) Terraform
3 9 (2.56%) Ansible
3 9 (2.56%) Grafana
4 4 (1.14%) HP ALM
4 4 (1.14%) Prometheus
4 4 (1.14%) Puppet
5 3 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.85%) vCenter Server
5 3 (0.85%) WSUS
6 2 (0.57%) Nessus
7 1 (0.28%) Control-M
7 1 (0.28%) Functional Safety
7 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) Nmap
7 1 (0.28%) Packer
7 1 (0.28%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.28%) Rsyslog
7 1 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 43 (12.25%) Microsoft
2 36 (10.26%) Oracle
3 10 (2.85%) Cisco
4 9 (2.56%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.28%) Atlassian
6 7 (1.99%) Splunk
7 6 (1.71%) Meraki
8 5 (1.42%) Juniper
8 5 (1.42%) VMware
8 5 (1.42%) Workday
9 4 (1.14%) Google
9 4 (1.14%) HP
9 4 (1.14%) Nokia
9 4 (1.14%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.14%) SAP
10 3 (0.85%) Databricks
10 3 (0.85%) Micro Focus
10 3 (0.85%) Remedy
10 3 (0.85%) SolarWinds
10 3 (0.85%) Veeam