Test Strategy Contracts in England

Test Strategy
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Test Strategy skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Strategy over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 194 199 225
Rank change year-on-year +5 +26 -6
Contract jobs citing Test Strategy 340 432 598
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 1.40% 1.16% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.53% 1.34% 1.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 223 270 427
10th Percentile £357 £358 £400
25th Percentile £406 £414 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - +1.35%
75th Percentile £575 £622 £600
90th Percentile £700 £756 £731
UK median daily rate £472 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -10.10% - +1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 12
10th Percentile £28.18 £56.25 -
25th Percentile £35.51 £58.13 £39.68
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £58.94
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +6.04% +93.24%
75th Percentile £71.88 £68.13 £62.55
90th Percentile £80.13 £70.75 £80.51
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £70.00 £58.94
% change year-on-year -14.29% +18.77% +126.68%

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

Test Strategy 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 22,202 32,193 45,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.16% 86.56% 90.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,534 21,105 31,969
10th Percentile £310 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £765
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 921 2,246 1,592
10th Percentile £14.42 £12.92 £10.87
25th Percentile £18.20 £16.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%
75th Percentile £63.75 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
% change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%

Test Strategy
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Test Strategy as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Test Strategy in England

Test Strategy
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Strategy in England.

Daily rate trend for Test Strategy in England

Test Strategy
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Strategy in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Strategy in England

Test Strategy
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Strategy in England.

Hourly rate trend for Test Strategy in England

Test Strategy
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Strategy in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Strategy in England

Test Strategy
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 Test Strategy within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 -38 142 £475 -13.64% 157
South East +67 67 £450 -5.26% 75
Midlands +33 54 £500 +28.21% 27
North of England +39 53 £450 - 68
West Midlands +26 45 £507 +41.36% 18
North West +33 31 £447 -0.67% 43
Yorkshire +9 17 £463 -4.34% 18
South West +35 13 £620 +10.23% 20
East Midlands +10 9 £386 -8.42% 8
East of England -1 9 £750 +41.18% 29
North East +3 5 £520 +27.61% 9
Test Strategy
UK

Test Strategy
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 20 (5.88%) Confluence
2 3 (0.88%) CICS
2 3 (0.88%) CMS
2 3 (0.88%) Headless CMS
3 2 (0.59%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.59%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.59%) WordPress
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.29%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.18%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (2.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.18%) Endur
3 3 (0.88%) NetSuite
3 3 (0.88%) Unit4 Business World
4 2 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.59%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.59%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.29%) Cerner Millennium
5 1 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.29%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.29%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.29%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 73 (21.47%) Azure
2 44 (12.94%) AWS
3 35 (10.29%) Azure DevOps
4 22 (6.47%) Power Platform
5 18 (5.29%) PowerApps
6 12 (3.53%) GCP
6 12 (3.53%) GitHub
7 10 (2.94%) SaaS
8 8 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (1.47%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (1.47%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (1.47%) Power Automate
10 4 (1.18%) Azure Pipelines
10 4 (1.18%) Tricentis Tosca
11 3 (0.88%) SuccessFactors
12 2 (0.59%) BrowserStack
12 2 (0.59%) OCI
12 2 (0.59%) Twilio
13 1 (0.29%) Oracle Service Cloud
13 1 (0.29%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 21 (6.18%) MPLS
2 17 (5.00%) LAN
2 17 (5.00%) WAN
3 16 (4.71%) ATM
3 16 (4.71%) Ethernet
3 16 (4.71%) Frame Relay
3 16 (4.71%) GPRS
3 16 (4.71%) GSM
3 16 (4.71%) LTE
3 16 (4.71%) SAN
3 16 (4.71%) SDH
3 16 (4.71%) UMTS
3 16 (4.71%) VPN
3 16 (4.71%) Wireshark
4 5 (1.47%) BGP
4 5 (1.47%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.47%) VLAN
5 2 (0.59%) Firewall
5 2 (0.59%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.29%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (2.06%) NoSQL
3 6 (1.76%) MySQL
4 5 (1.47%) Power BI
5 4 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (1.18%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.88%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.88%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.59%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.59%) DB2
7 2 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (0.59%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.59%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.59%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.29%) Big Data
8 1 (0.29%) IDMS
Development Applications
1 89 (26.18%) JIRA
2 56 (16.47%) Selenium
3 36 (10.59%) Jenkins
4 29 (8.53%) Git
4 29 (8.53%) JMeter
5 26 (7.65%) Postman
6 24 (7.06%) Cypress.io
7 21 (6.18%) REST Assured
8 18 (5.29%) Cucumber
9 14 (4.12%) JUnit
9 14 (4.12%) LoadRunner
10 8 (2.35%) SoapUI
11 7 (2.06%) Bitbucket
11 7 (2.06%) Gatling
11 7 (2.06%) TestRail
12 6 (1.76%) Appium
13 5 (1.47%) GitLab
13 5 (1.47%) Maven
13 5 (1.47%) Robot Framework
14 4 (1.18%) NUnit
General
1 158 (46.47%) Social Skills
2 60 (17.65%) Finance
3 59 (17.35%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (8.24%) Telecoms
5 26 (7.65%) Banking
6 21 (6.18%) Public Sector
7 10 (2.94%) Front Office
8 8 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.35%) Retail
9 7 (2.06%) Pharmaceutical
9 7 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.47%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.47%) Military
11 4 (1.18%) Automotive
11 4 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.18%) Law
11 4 (1.18%) Marketing
12 3 (0.88%) Corporate Banking
12 3 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.88%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 66 (19.41%) Test Manager
2 56 (16.47%) Lead
3 51 (15.00%) Senior
4 44 (12.94%) Analyst
5 41 (12.06%) Test Engineer
6 39 (11.47%) Tester
7 38 (11.18%) Test Leader
8 24 (7.06%) QA Engineer
9 22 (6.47%) Developer
10 19 (5.59%) Business Analyst
11 18 (5.29%) Test Analyst
12 16 (4.71%) Senior Test Engineer
13 15 (4.41%) IP Engineer
14 13 (3.82%) Senior Analyst
15 10 (2.94%) Consultant
15 10 (2.94%) Test Automation Engineer
16 9 (2.65%) Programme Test Manager
16 9 (2.65%) Test Programme Manager
17 8 (2.35%) Automation Tester
17 8 (2.35%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.41%) REST
2 12 (3.53%) Node.js
2 12 (3.53%) Playwright
3 10 (2.94%) React
4 7 (2.06%) .NET
4 7 (2.06%) Jest
4 7 (2.06%) pytest
4 7 (2.06%) XML
5 6 (1.76%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.47%) Middleware
6 5 (1.47%) RESTful
7 4 (1.18%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.88%) FIX Protocol
8 3 (0.88%) Gherkin
8 3 (0.88%) JSON
8 3 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.88%) Unity (Game Engine)
9 2 (0.59%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.59%) CSS
9 2 (0.59%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.06%) Product Ownership
2 23 (6.76%) Self-Motivation
3 15 (4.41%) Data Centre
4 13 (3.82%) SCADA
5 9 (2.65%) CMDB
6 7 (2.06%) Cloud Native
7 6 (1.76%) FMCG
7 6 (1.76%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.47%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 4 (1.18%) Mainframe
9 4 (1.18%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.88%) Low-Code
10 3 (0.88%) NHS
10 3 (0.88%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.88%) State Machine
11 2 (0.59%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 27 (7.94%) Linux
2 23 (6.76%) Unix
3 15 (4.41%) Windows
4 1 (0.29%) Android
4 1 (0.29%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (42.06%) Test Automation
2 131 (38.53%) Agile
3 114 (33.53%) Problem-Solving
4 87 (25.59%) DevOps
5 80 (23.53%) CI/CD
6 69 (20.29%) User Acceptance Testing
7 60 (17.65%) Test Management
8 58 (17.06%) Stakeholder Management
9 51 (15.00%) Test Scripting
10 47 (13.82%) Validation
11 45 (13.24%) Performance Testing
12 43 (12.65%) System Integration Testing
13 42 (12.35%) Software Testing
14 41 (12.06%) API Testing
14 41 (12.06%) Regression Testing
15 38 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
15 38 (11.18%) End-to-End Testing
16 37 (10.88%) Defect Management
16 37 (10.88%) Scrum
17 36 (10.59%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 56 (16.47%) Java
2 52 (15.29%) SQL
3 43 (12.65%) Python
4 26 (7.65%) JavaScript
5 22 (6.47%) TypeScript
6 10 (2.94%) C#
7 5 (1.47%) Go
7 5 (1.47%) Perl
7 5 (1.47%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.18%) VBA
9 3 (0.88%) COBOL
9 3 (0.88%) JCL
10 2 (0.59%) MATLAB
10 2 (0.59%) REXX
10 2 (0.59%) RPG
11 1 (0.29%) ABAP
11 1 (0.29%) PHP
11 1 (0.29%) Ruby
11 1 (0.29%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 53 (15.59%) Security Cleared
2 45 (13.24%) SC Cleared
3 42 (12.35%) ISTQB
4 26 (7.65%) Degree
5 25 (7.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 21 (6.18%) ISEB
7 16 (4.71%) CCNP
7 16 (4.71%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.76%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.88%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.88%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.88%) PMP
11 2 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (0.59%) CBAP
11 2 (0.59%) CISA
11 2 (0.59%) CRISC
11 2 (0.59%) HND
11 2 (0.59%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (33.82%) QA
2 12 (3.53%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.35%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (1.18%) GDPR
6 3 (0.88%) Software Quality Assurance
7 2 (0.59%) COSHH
7 2 (0.59%) GRC
7 2 (0.59%) GxP
7 2 (0.59%) ISO 14001
7 2 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.59%) ITGC
7 2 (0.59%) SOX 404
8 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.29%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.29%) SEPA
8 1 (0.29%) SLA
8 1 (0.29%) Solvency II
8 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (5.29%) Docker
2 1 (0.29%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.29%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 16 (4.71%) HP ALM
2 12 (3.53%) Kubernetes
3 11 (3.24%) Ansible
4 8 (2.35%) Terraform
5 3 (0.88%) Packer
6 2 (0.59%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.59%) Grafana
7 1 (0.29%) CA Endevor
7 1 (0.29%) OPNET
7 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 34 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 33 (9.71%) Oracle
3 26 (7.65%) SAP
4 20 (5.88%) Cisco
5 16 (4.71%) HP
5 16 (4.71%) Juniper
6 10 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 9 (2.65%) Workday
8 8 (2.35%) Informatica
9 7 (2.06%) Databricks
10 6 (1.76%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.47%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.47%) Talend
12 4 (1.18%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.18%) ION Trading
12 4 (1.18%) Murex
13 3 (0.88%) CheckPoint
13 3 (0.88%) Google
13 3 (0.88%) Solace
14 2 (0.59%) Parasoft