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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 258 257 196
Rank change year-on-year -1 -61 -21
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 408 251 462
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.94% 1.00% 1.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.10% 1.10% 1.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 167 319
10th Percentile £330 £313 £305
25th Percentile £400 £359 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £438 £450
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% -2.78% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £522 £588
90th Percentile £653 £663 £676
UK median daily rate £475 £438 £463
% change year-on-year +8.57% -5.41% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 20 56
10th Percentile £17.50 £44.23 £37.55
25th Percentile £53.95 £50.00 £56.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -10.00% +19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £87.50 -
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +17.39% -8.00% +14.68%

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 37,051 22,887 31,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.28% 91.38% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,430 14,787 20,644
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,322 1,108 2,367
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £26.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.36% -30.26% +8.14%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -36 146 £475 +8.57% 46
South East -46 63 £490 +22.50% 69
Midlands -16 53 £513 +44.07% 25
North of England -49 53 £475 - 39
South West -10 47 £409 -13.89% 24
West Midlands -19 47 £513 +21.30% 13
East of England -5 42 £538 +13.16% 50
North East -12 25 £450 - 17
Yorkshire -43 16 £500 -3.80% 7
North West -48 14 £500 +17.65% 16
East Midlands -17 6 £575 +69.12% 12
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 (3.43%) Confluence
2 12 (2.94%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (2.94%) SAS
3 9 (2.21%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.74%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.49%) IIS
6 1 (0.25%) Apache
6 1 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.25%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.25%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 6 (1.47%) Findur
1 6 (1.47%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.98%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.98%) Maximo
3 3 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.49%) LabWindows
4 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.25%) Misys Equation
5 1 (0.25%) Misys Midas
5 1 (0.25%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 100 (24.51%) Azure
2 79 (19.36%) AWS
3 60 (14.71%) Azure DevOps
4 25 (6.13%) GitHub
4 25 (6.13%) Serverless
5 23 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
6 22 (5.39%) Amazon S3
7 19 (4.66%) GCP
8 11 (2.70%) PaaS
9 9 (2.21%) Entra ID
9 9 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (2.21%) OpenShift
9 9 (2.21%) Snowflake
10 8 (1.96%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (1.72%) Power Platform
11 7 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (1.47%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (1.47%) SaaS
13 5 (1.23%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.21%) Ethernet
2 6 (1.47%) DNS
3 5 (1.23%) Firewall
3 5 (1.23%) Software-Defined Radio
3 5 (1.23%) Wireless
4 4 (0.98%) Reverse Proxy
4 4 (0.98%) RS-232
4 4 (0.98%) RS-422
5 3 (0.74%) DHCP
5 3 (0.74%) Modbus
5 3 (0.74%) Network Security
5 3 (0.74%) RS-485
6 2 (0.49%) 4G
6 2 (0.49%) 5G
6 2 (0.49%) Internet
6 2 (0.49%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.25%) BGP
7 1 (0.25%) FTP
7 1 (0.25%) LTE
7 1 (0.25%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.90%) Relational Database
2 19 (4.66%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (4.41%) Oracle Database
4 14 (3.43%) MySQL
5 13 (3.19%) SQL Server
6 12 (2.94%) SAS Enterprise Guide
7 11 (2.70%) Big Data
8 10 (2.45%) DynamoDB
8 10 (2.45%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 8 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (1.96%) NoSQL
10 7 (1.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 6 (1.47%) MongoDB
12 5 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
12 5 (1.23%) Power BI
13 4 (0.98%) Amazon QuickSight
14 3 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 3 (0.74%) Parquet
14 3 (0.74%) Redis
15 2 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 70 (17.16%) JIRA
2 44 (10.78%) Selenium
3 41 (10.05%) Git
4 31 (7.60%) Postman
5 30 (7.35%) Jenkins
6 27 (6.62%) Cucumber
6 27 (6.62%) GitLab
7 25 (6.13%) REST Assured
8 23 (5.64%) JUnit
9 16 (3.92%) Cypress.io
10 13 (3.19%) TestRail
11 12 (2.94%) Rational DOORS
12 11 (2.70%) WebDriver
13 9 (2.21%) Zephyr
14 8 (1.96%) JMeter
15 7 (1.72%) Gatling
16 6 (1.47%) Visual Studio
17 5 (1.23%) HP UFT
17 5 (1.23%) SonarQube
18 4 (0.98%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 116 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 75 (18.38%) Finance
3 68 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (11.52%) Public Sector
5 28 (6.86%) Banking
6 19 (4.66%) Aerospace
7 16 (3.92%) Automotive
8 13 (3.19%) Back Office
9 11 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.96%) Law
10 8 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.72%) Front Office
11 7 (1.72%) Military
12 6 (1.47%) Electronics
12 6 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (1.23%) Legal
13 5 (1.23%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.98%) Avionics
15 3 (0.74%) Investment Banking
15 3 (0.74%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 63 (15.44%) Software Engineer
2 62 (15.20%) Test Engineer
3 61 (14.95%) Senior
4 50 (12.25%) Developer
5 34 (8.33%) Analyst
6 30 (7.35%) Tester
7 27 (6.62%) Lead
8 20 (4.90%) Architect
8 20 (4.90%) Java Developer
8 20 (4.90%) Software Test Engineer
8 20 (4.90%) Test Analyst
9 16 (3.92%) Test Manager
10 15 (3.68%) QA Engineer
10 15 (3.68%) Software Developer
11 14 (3.43%) Salesforce Engineer
12 13 (3.19%) Senior Developer
12 13 (3.19%) Software Architect
13 12 (2.94%) Release Manager
14 11 (2.70%) Principal Software Engineer
14 11 (2.70%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (9.31%) React
2 37 (9.07%) Playwright
3 34 (8.33%) Spring
4 33 (8.09%) REST
5 26 (6.37%) Spring Boot
6 23 (5.64%) RESTful
7 22 (5.39%) .NET
8 19 (4.66%) Kafka
9 14 (3.43%) CSS
9 14 (3.43%) HTML
10 12 (2.94%) Node.js
10 12 (2.94%) Redux
11 9 (2.21%) AngularJS
11 9 (2.21%) CSS3
11 9 (2.21%) HTML5
11 9 (2.21%) Jest
11 9 (2.21%) Spring MVC
12 7 (1.72%) Software Packaging
13 6 (1.47%) .NET Core
13 6 (1.47%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.78%) Product Ownership
2 26 (6.37%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (5.64%) Cloud Native
3 23 (5.64%) Embedded Systems
4 22 (5.39%) Self-Motivation
5 19 (4.66%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (3.68%) Management Information System
7 11 (2.70%) Data Centre
7 11 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.47%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.23%) FPGA
10 5 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
10 5 (1.23%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.23%) PCIe
11 4 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.98%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.74%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (0.74%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 30 (7.35%) Windows
2 21 (5.15%) Linux
3 8 (1.96%) Unix
4 6 (1.47%) FreeRTOS
4 6 (1.47%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 3 (0.74%) Android
7 2 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.49%) zOS
8 1 (0.25%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (44.85%) Test Automation
2 162 (39.71%) Agile
3 136 (33.33%) CI/CD
4 134 (32.84%) DevOps
5 113 (27.70%) Software Engineering
6 87 (21.32%) Continuous Improvement
7 81 (19.85%) Problem-Solving
8 68 (16.67%) Test Scripting
9 65 (15.93%) Validation
10 63 (15.44%) Scrum
11 61 (14.95%) SDLC
11 61 (14.95%) Test Strategy
12 52 (12.75%) User Acceptance Testing
13 50 (12.25%) Regression Testing
14 47 (11.52%) Mentoring
15 45 (11.03%) Test Management
16 44 (10.78%) Code Quality
17 43 (10.54%) Defect Management
18 42 (10.29%) Microservices
19 41 (10.05%) Defect Tracking
Programming Languages
1 72 (17.65%) Java
2 68 (16.67%) Python
3 55 (13.48%) SQL
4 39 (9.56%) JavaScript
5 38 (9.31%) C#
6 29 (7.11%) TypeScript
7 17 (4.17%) C++
8 13 (3.19%) C
9 10 (2.45%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.72%) Bash
11 5 (1.23%) Apex Code
11 5 (1.23%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.23%) VBScript
12 4 (0.98%) Go
13 3 (0.74%) Rust
13 3 (0.74%) VB
14 2 (0.49%) Ada
14 2 (0.49%) COBOL
14 2 (0.49%) RPG
14 2 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 131 (32.11%) Security Cleared
2 107 (26.23%) SC Cleared
3 45 (11.03%) Degree
4 35 (8.58%) ISTQB
5 21 (5.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 13 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.96%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (1.72%) ISEB
9 4 (0.98%) CEH
9 4 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.98%) CISSP
9 4 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (0.74%) CCNA
10 3 (0.74%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.74%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.74%) PMP
10 3 (0.74%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.49%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (22.06%) QA
2 15 (3.68%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.70%) Data Quality
4 8 (1.96%) PMO
4 8 (1.96%) WCAG
5 4 (0.98%) NIST
5 4 (0.98%) SLA
5 4 (0.98%) Software Quality Assurance
6 3 (0.74%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.49%) GRC
7 2 (0.49%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.49%) MiFID
8 1 (0.25%) MIL-STD-1553
8 1 (0.25%) SEPA
System Software
1 34 (8.33%) Docker
2 13 (3.19%) Active Directory
3 10 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.96%) Firmware
5 6 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.98%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (0.74%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.74%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.49%) NFS
8 2 (0.49%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.25%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 43 (10.54%) Kubernetes
2 23 (5.64%) Terraform
3 14 (3.43%) Ansible
4 10 (2.45%) HP ALM
4 10 (2.45%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.21%) Grafana
6 7 (1.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 5 (1.23%) Puppet
8 4 (0.98%) HP Quality Center
8 4 (0.98%) Salt
8 4 (0.98%) SCCM
9 3 (0.74%) Packer
10 2 (0.49%) Kibana
10 2 (0.49%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 1 (0.25%) Oracle ZFS
11 1 (0.25%) PTC Integrity
11 1 (0.25%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 36 (8.82%) Oracle
2 35 (8.58%) Microsoft
3 18 (4.41%) Salesforce
4 15 (3.68%) IBM
5 11 (2.70%) VMware
6 10 (2.45%) HP
7 9 (2.21%) Dell
8 8 (1.96%) SAP
9 7 (1.72%) Citrix
10 6 (1.47%) Conga
10 6 (1.47%) GoCardless
10 6 (1.47%) OpenLink
10 6 (1.47%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.23%) Ab Initio
11 5 (1.23%) Google
11 5 (1.23%) Splunk
11 5 (1.23%) Teradata
12 4 (0.98%) Fortinet
13 3 (0.74%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.74%) Palo Alto