SDET Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring SDET skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 110 - 90
Rank change year-on-year - - +19
Contract jobs citing SDET 2 0 4
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 0.12% - 0.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.14% - 0.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £610 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 - £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +29.03%
75th Percentile £630 - -
90th Percentile - - -
North West median daily rate £620 - £500
% change year-on-year - - +29.03%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Manchester

SDET 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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,439 795 1,243
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 84.05% 89.33% 86.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 900 556 849
10th Percentile £306 £303 £325
25th Percentile £392 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £467 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.18% -6.70% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £598
90th Percentile £650 £675 £694
North West median daily rate £467 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.79% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 28 76
10th Percentile £21.00 £15.64 £12.45
25th Percentile £40.00 £24.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £54.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.50% +109.62% -25.71%
75th Percentile £77.50 £72.81 £60.31
90th Percentile £90.00 £80.48 £73.50
North West median hourly rate £55.00 £31.88 £24.10
% change year-on-year +72.52% +32.28% -33.06%

SDET
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SDET relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

SDET job vacancy trend in Manchester

SDET
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing SDET.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing SDET

SDET
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (100.00%) AWS
1 2 (100.00%) GitHub
2 1 (50.00%) BrowserStack
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (100.00%) MongoDB
1 2 (100.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 2 (100.00%) Gatling
1 2 (100.00%) GitLab
1 2 (100.00%) Jenkins
1 2 (100.00%) REST Assured
1 2 (100.00%) Selenium
1 2 (100.00%) Serenity BDD
General
1 1 (50.00%) Military
1 1 (50.00%) Public Sector
1 1 (50.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (100.00%) Lead
2 1 (50.00%) Development Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Lead Software Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Lead Test Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Principal Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Principal Test Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Software Development Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Software Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Test Development Engineer
2 1 (50.00%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (100.00%) Kafka
1 2 (100.00%) Playwright
1 2 (100.00%) Spring
1 2 (100.00%) Spring Boot
1 2 (100.00%) Spring Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 2 (100.00%) DevOps
1 2 (100.00%) Microservices
1 2 (100.00%) Observability
1 2 (100.00%) Performance Testing
1 2 (100.00%) Test Automation
1 2 (100.00%) Test Strategy
2 1 (50.00%) API Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 1 (50.00%) BDD
2 1 (50.00%) Build Automation
2 1 (50.00%) Coaching
2 1 (50.00%) Component Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 1 (50.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Integration Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Non-Functional Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (50.00%) Software Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 2 (100.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 2 (100.00%) SC Cleared
1 2 (100.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (100.00%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (100.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (100.00%) Grafana
1 2 (100.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 2 (100.00%) Splunk