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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 262 230 175
Rank change year-on-year -32 -55 +13
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 372 276 499
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.91% 1.14% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.08% 1.24% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 179 335
10th Percentile £338 £313 £303
25th Percentile £400 £363 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £455
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -1.10% -9.00%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £596
90th Percentile £650 £713 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £440 £463
% change year-on-year +7.95% -4.86% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 22 62
10th Percentile £15.45 £50.00 £37.82
25th Percentile £57.75 £52.13 £56.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £61.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.76% -1.60% +19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £86.83 -
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £60.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +11.57% -3.20% +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 34,571 22,170 31,878
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 91.23% 86.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,077 14,511 20,880
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,146 929 2,248
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.50 £12.91
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £46.65 £29.07 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.47% -20.36% -2.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.40 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%

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 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 9 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 9 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 -34 166 £475 +8.57% 42
South East -55 58 £495 +4.21% 61
Midlands -26 46 £511 +21.01% 44
North of England -43 43 £500 +0.53% 43
West Midlands -30 35 £510 +16.84% 28
South West -31 30 £409 -9.11% 27
East of England -32 26 £600 +26.32% 42
Yorkshire -40 20 £500 -3.80% 11
North East -4 15 £450 - 11
East Midlands -25 11 £575 +152.75% 16
North West -40 10 £538 +13.16% 21
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 14 (3.76%) Confluence
2 9 (2.42%) SAS
3 7 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (1.88%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.54%) IIS
4 2 (0.54%) 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 13 (3.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.34%) MS Visio
4 4 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.54%) Simulink
6 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (1.34%) Aladdin
1 5 (1.34%) Findur
2 4 (1.08%) Maximo
3 3 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.81%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.54%) LabWindows
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%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 111 (29.84%) Azure
2 81 (21.77%) Azure DevOps
3 78 (20.97%) AWS
4 28 (7.53%) GitHub
5 27 (7.26%) Serverless
6 26 (6.99%) Amazon S3
6 26 (6.99%) AWS Lambda
7 20 (5.38%) GCP
8 11 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
8 11 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
9 10 (2.69%) Snowflake
10 9 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (2.15%) OpenShift
12 7 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (1.88%) Entra ID
12 7 (1.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 6 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.61%) PaaS
14 4 (1.08%) Power Platform
14 4 (1.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.42%) Ethernet
2 5 (1.34%) Firewall
2 5 (1.34%) Software-Defined Radio
2 5 (1.34%) Wireless
3 4 (1.08%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (0.81%) DNS
4 3 (0.81%) FTP
4 3 (0.81%) Modbus
4 3 (0.81%) RS-232
4 3 (0.81%) RS-422
4 3 (0.81%) RS-485
5 2 (0.54%) 5G
5 2 (0.54%) Internet
5 2 (0.54%) IOS XR
5 2 (0.54%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.54%) SNMP
5 2 (0.54%) Spanning Tree
5 2 (0.54%) SSH
5 2 (0.54%) TACACS
5 2 (0.54%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (6.72%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (5.65%) Relational Database
3 15 (4.03%) MySQL
4 14 (3.76%) Oracle Database
4 14 (3.76%) SQL Server
5 12 (3.23%) Big Data
6 10 (2.69%) NoSQL
7 9 (2.42%) MongoDB
7 9 (2.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 8 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.15%) DynamoDB
9 7 (1.88%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (1.34%) Amazon Athena
10 5 (1.34%) SAS Visual Analytics
11 4 (1.08%) Amazon QuickSight
12 3 (0.81%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.81%) Parquet
12 3 (0.81%) Redis
13 2 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 69 (18.55%) JIRA
2 42 (11.29%) Git
3 39 (10.48%) Selenium
4 30 (8.06%) Jenkins
5 23 (6.18%) Postman
6 20 (5.38%) GitLab
6 20 (5.38%) JUnit
7 18 (4.84%) Cucumber
8 17 (4.57%) Cypress.io
9 15 (4.03%) REST Assured
10 12 (3.23%) Rational DOORS
11 11 (2.96%) TestRail
12 8 (2.15%) WebDriver
12 8 (2.15%) Zephyr
13 7 (1.88%) SonarQube
14 6 (1.61%) HP UFT
14 6 (1.61%) JMeter
15 5 (1.34%) Maven
16 4 (1.08%) Artifactory
16 4 (1.08%) Gradle
General
1 109 (29.30%) Social Skills
2 70 (18.82%) Finance
3 68 (18.28%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (11.02%) Public Sector
5 23 (6.18%) Banking
6 19 (5.11%) Aerospace
7 11 (2.96%) Back Office
7 11 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (2.69%) Automotive
9 8 (2.15%) Military
10 6 (1.61%) Front Office
10 6 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.61%) Telecoms
11 5 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 5 (1.34%) Law
11 5 (1.34%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.08%) Electronics
13 3 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.81%) Police
Job Titles
1 56 (15.05%) Developer
2 55 (14.78%) Senior
3 44 (11.83%) Test Engineer
4 43 (11.56%) Software Engineer
5 35 (9.41%) Analyst
5 35 (9.41%) Tester
6 32 (8.60%) Lead
7 24 (6.45%) Test Analyst
8 22 (5.91%) Java Developer
9 17 (4.57%) Java Engineer
9 17 (4.57%) QA Engineer
9 17 (4.57%) Senior Developer
9 17 (4.57%) Test Manager
10 15 (4.03%) Software Developer
11 13 (3.49%) Software Test Engineer
12 11 (2.96%) Architect
13 10 (2.69%) Embedded Software Engineer
13 10 (2.69%) Senior Java Developer
13 10 (2.69%) Senior Test Analyst
13 10 (2.69%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (11.02%) Spring
2 34 (9.14%) Playwright
3 33 (8.87%) React
3 33 (8.87%) Spring Boot
4 31 (8.33%) REST
5 26 (6.99%) RESTful
6 23 (6.18%) .NET
7 21 (5.65%) Node.js
8 17 (4.57%) CSS
8 17 (4.57%) HTML
9 16 (4.30%) Kafka
10 12 (3.23%) Redux
11 10 (2.69%) HTML5
11 10 (2.69%) Spring MVC
12 9 (2.42%) AngularJS
12 9 (2.42%) CSS3
12 9 (2.42%) Jest
13 8 (2.15%) Middleware
14 7 (1.88%) Gherkin
14 7 (1.88%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 35 (9.41%) Product Ownership
2 27 (7.26%) Cloud Native
3 14 (3.76%) Embedded Systems
3 14 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
4 13 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (3.49%) Enterprise Software
5 12 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (3.23%) Management Information System
6 10 (2.69%) Data Centre
7 6 (1.61%) FPGA
7 6 (1.61%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.34%) PCIe
9 4 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.08%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.81%) CUDA
10 3 (0.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.81%) NHS
10 3 (0.81%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 24 (6.45%) Windows
2 20 (5.38%) Linux
3 9 (2.42%) Unix
4 6 (1.61%) FreeRTOS
5 4 (1.08%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.54%) Android
6 2 (0.54%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.27%) Solaris
7 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (45.70%) Test Automation
2 139 (37.37%) Agile
3 137 (36.83%) DevOps
4 126 (33.87%) CI/CD
5 90 (24.19%) Continuous Improvement
5 90 (24.19%) Problem-Solving
6 79 (21.24%) Software Engineering
7 68 (18.28%) Test Scripting
8 57 (15.32%) Validation
9 54 (14.52%) Test Management
9 54 (14.52%) Test Strategy
10 53 (14.25%) Microservices
11 51 (13.71%) SDLC
12 50 (13.44%) Defect Tracking
13 49 (13.17%) Regression Testing
14 43 (11.56%) Scrum
15 41 (11.02%) Containerisation
16 40 (10.75%) Defect Management
17 39 (10.48%) API Testing
18 38 (10.22%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 79 (21.24%) Java
2 74 (19.89%) Python
3 68 (18.28%) SQL
4 42 (11.29%) JavaScript
5 36 (9.68%) C#
5 36 (9.68%) TypeScript
6 14 (3.76%) C++
7 12 (3.23%) C
8 10 (2.69%) Bash
9 7 (1.88%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.61%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.34%) VBScript
12 4 (1.08%) Go
13 3 (0.81%) Groovy
13 3 (0.81%) Rust
13 3 (0.81%) VB
14 2 (0.54%) Ada
14 2 (0.54%) MATLAB
14 2 (0.54%) Ruby
14 2 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 109 (29.30%) Security Cleared
2 88 (23.66%) SC Cleared
3 35 (9.41%) ISTQB
4 33 (8.87%) Degree
5 15 (4.03%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 11 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.15%) ISEB
8 7 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.34%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.08%) CEH
10 4 (1.08%) CISSP
10 4 (1.08%) CompTIA Security+
10 4 (1.08%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.81%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.54%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.54%) Network+ Certification
12 2 (0.54%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.54%) PMP
12 2 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (26.34%) QA
2 15 (4.03%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.96%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.15%) WCAG
5 7 (1.88%) PMO
6 4 (1.08%) NIST
6 4 (1.08%) SLA
7 3 (0.81%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.81%) Software Quality Assurance
8 2 (0.54%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.54%) MiFID
9 1 (0.27%) GRC
9 1 (0.27%) SEPA
System Software
1 36 (9.68%) Docker
2 8 (2.15%) Firmware
3 7 (1.88%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.61%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.08%) Embedded Firmware
5 4 (1.08%) 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 (13.17%) Kubernetes
2 23 (6.18%) Terraform
3 12 (3.23%) Ansible
4 11 (2.96%) Grafana
4 11 (2.96%) HP ALM
4 11 (2.96%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.88%) Puppet
6 5 (1.34%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (1.08%) HP Quality Center
7 4 (1.08%) Salt
7 4 (1.08%) SCCM
8 1 (0.27%) Kibana
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle ZFS
8 1 (0.27%) Packer
8 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.27%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.27%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 39 (10.48%) Oracle
2 35 (9.41%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.96%) HP
4 8 (2.15%) Dell
4 8 (2.15%) IBM
4 8 (2.15%) ServiceNow
5 7 (1.88%) Citrix
5 7 (1.88%) SAP
5 7 (1.88%) Splunk
6 6 (1.61%) VMware
7 5 (1.34%) Ab Initio
7 5 (1.34%) Google
7 5 (1.34%) OpenLink
7 5 (1.34%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.34%) Teradata
8 4 (1.08%) Databricks
8 4 (1.08%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.81%) Atlassian
9 3 (0.81%) Checkmarx
9 3 (0.81%) Palo Alto