Test Leader Contract Job Trends in London

Test Lead
England > London

The median Test Lead daily rate in London is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 337 304 336
Rank change year-on-year -33 +32 +68
Contract jobs requiring a Test Leader 42 66 63
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.29% 0.45% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.48% 0.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 37 50
10th Percentile £390 £385 £399
25th Percentile £411 £409 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £506
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -3.21% +4.65%
75th Percentile £594 £550 £609
90th Percentile £638 £658 £712
England median daily rate £500 £445 £500
% change year-on-year +12.36% -11.00% +6.27%

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in London with a recognized job title 13,304 13,779 17,008
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.40% 93.48% 93.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,818 8,902 12,272
10th Percentile £350 £335 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £555
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -0.90% -3.90%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £756 £799 £788
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 224 151 217
10th Percentile £17.50 £19.95 £17.00
25th Percentile £22.88 £23.80 £21.50
Median hourly rate £31.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.44% - +2.94%
75th Percentile £58.81 £54.38 £58.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.75 £72.20
England median hourly rate £27.21 £35.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.26% -23.71% +39.03%

Test Leader
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Test Leader' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Test Leader job vacancy trend in London

Test Leader
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Test Leader job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Test Leader job vacancies in London

Test Leader
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Leader in London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Leader in London

Test Leader
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Test Leader job vacancies in London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Test Leader job vacancies in London

Test Leader
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Leader within the London region over the 6 months to 31 December 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
Central London -2 4 £600 +9.09% 4
East London - 1 £475 -
Test Leader
England

Test Leader Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 31 December 2025, Test Leader contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the London region featuring Test Leader in the job title.

1 19 (45.24%) Test Automation
1 19 (45.24%) Test Strategy
2 18 (42.86%) Agile
3 17 (40.48%) Problem-Solving
4 13 (30.95%) Test Scripting
5 12 (28.57%) QA
5 12 (28.57%) Stakeholder Management
5 12 (28.57%) User Acceptance Testing
6 11 (26.19%) Defect Management
6 11 (26.19%) Migration
7 10 (23.81%) End-to-End Testing
7 10 (23.81%) Integration Testing
7 10 (23.81%) SQL
8 9 (21.43%) ISTQB
8 9 (21.43%) JIRA
9 8 (19.05%) ETL
10 7 (16.67%) Asset Management
10 7 (16.67%) Data Migration
10 7 (16.67%) Regression Testing
10 7 (16.67%) Security Cleared
10 7 (16.67%) Test Management
10 7 (16.67%) Validation
11 6 (14.29%) Azure
11 6 (14.29%) Data Quality
11 6 (14.29%) HP
11 6 (14.29%) HP ALM
11 6 (14.29%) SC Cleared
12 5 (11.90%) Data Validation
12 5 (11.90%) DevOps
12 5 (11.90%) Selenium

Test Leader Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 3 (7.14%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (4.76%) Aladdin
1 2 (4.76%) Eagle PACE
1 2 (4.76%) Markit EDM
1 2 (4.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (2.38%) BambooHR
2 1 (2.38%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (2.38%) PORTIA
2 1 (2.38%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 6 (14.29%) Azure
2 3 (7.14%) AWS
3 2 (4.76%) Azure Cosmos DB
3 2 (4.76%) Azure Data Factory
3 2 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 2 (4.76%) Snowflake
3 2 (4.76%) Tricentis Tosca
4 1 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (2.38%) GCP
4 1 (2.38%) PaaS
4 1 (2.38%) SaaS
4 1 (2.38%) SuccessFactors
4 1 (2.38%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.38%) DSL
1 1 (2.38%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (7.14%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.38%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.38%) Big Data
2 1 (2.38%) BigQuery
2 1 (2.38%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
2 1 (2.38%) Data Lake
2 1 (2.38%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.38%) MongoDB
2 1 (2.38%) Oracle Database
2 1 (2.38%) Relational Database
2 1 (2.38%) SAP BW
2 1 (2.38%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 1 (2.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (21.43%) JIRA
2 5 (11.90%) Selenium
2 5 (11.90%) TestRail
3 2 (4.76%) Git
3 2 (4.76%) GitLab
3 2 (4.76%) Jenkins
3 2 (4.76%) Postman
4 1 (2.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (2.38%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.38%) Cucumber
4 1 (2.38%) Cypress.io
4 1 (2.38%) HP UFT
4 1 (2.38%) Pa11y
4 1 (2.38%) REST Assured
4 1 (2.38%) TestComplete
General
1 25 (59.52%) Social Skills
2 13 (30.95%) Finance
3 7 (16.67%) Public Sector
4 5 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (9.52%) Banking
6 2 (4.76%) Aerospace
6 2 (4.76%) Front Office
7 1 (2.38%) Back Office
7 1 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (2.38%) Legal
7 1 (2.38%) Manufacturing
7 1 (2.38%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Publishing
7 1 (2.38%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (7.14%) Playwright
2 2 (4.76%) .NET
3 1 (2.38%) ADO
3 1 (2.38%) HTML
3 1 (2.38%) Node.js
3 1 (2.38%) PySpark
3 1 (2.38%) pytest
3 1 (2.38%) RESTful
3 1 (2.38%) SAP Fiori
3 1 (2.38%) Spring Boot
3 1 (2.38%) Swagger
3 1 (2.38%) Web Services
3 1 (2.38%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (7.14%) Data Structures
2 2 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (2.38%) Equities
3 1 (2.38%) FMCG
3 1 (2.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (2.38%) Management Information System
3 1 (2.38%) Product Ownership
3 1 (2.38%) Reinsurance
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (45.24%) Test Automation
1 19 (45.24%) Test Strategy
2 18 (42.86%) Agile
3 17 (40.48%) Problem-Solving
4 13 (30.95%) Test Scripting
5 12 (28.57%) Stakeholder Management
5 12 (28.57%) User Acceptance Testing
6 11 (26.19%) Defect Management
6 11 (26.19%) Migration
7 10 (23.81%) End-to-End Testing
7 10 (23.81%) Integration Testing
8 8 (19.05%) ETL
9 7 (16.67%) Asset Management
9 7 (16.67%) Data Migration
9 7 (16.67%) Regression Testing
9 7 (16.67%) Test Management
9 7 (16.67%) Validation
10 5 (11.90%) Data Validation
10 5 (11.90%) Software Testing
10 5 (11.90%) Wealth Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (23.81%) SQL
2 4 (9.52%) Java
3 2 (4.76%) Python
4 1 (2.38%) C#
4 1 (2.38%) PL/SQL
4 1 (2.38%) VB
Qualifications
1 9 (21.43%) ISTQB
2 7 (16.67%) Security Cleared
3 6 (14.29%) SC Cleared
4 3 (7.14%) Degree
4 3 (7.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 1 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (2.38%) ISEB
5 1 (2.38%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (28.57%) QA
2 6 (14.29%) Data Quality
3 2 (4.76%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.38%) GDPR
4 1 (2.38%) MiFID
4 1 (2.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (2.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (14.29%) HP ALM
2 1 (2.38%) HP Quality Center
2 1 (2.38%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (14.29%) HP
2 3 (7.14%) SAP
3 2 (4.76%) Avaloq
3 2 (4.76%) GoldenSource
4 1 (2.38%) Apple
4 1 (2.38%) Charles River
4 1 (2.38%) Databricks
4 1 (2.38%) Duck Creek
4 1 (2.38%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.38%) Murex
4 1 (2.38%) Oracle
4 1 (2.38%) ServiceNow
4 1 (2.38%) SimCorp
4 1 (2.38%) Workday