SDET Contract Job Trends in the North East

Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)
England > North East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North East requiring SDET skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 40 -
Rank change year-on-year -19 - -
Contract jobs citing SDET 3 1 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 0.49% 0.31% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.61% 0.39% -
Number of daily rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £313 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £325 - -
75th Percentile £338 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median daily rate £525 £431 £500
% change year-on-year +21.74% -13.75% -13.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North East

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 the North East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 492 258 257
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 80.92% 80.12% 80.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 175 119
10th Percentile £325 £225 £260
25th Percentile £400 £353 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £465 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -7.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £572 £573 £597
90th Percentile £638 £633 £680
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 13 47
10th Percentile £17.00 - £11.44
25th Percentile £35.94 £11.60 £11.81
Median hourly rate £66.25 £16.50 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +301.52% -5.71% -57.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £46.18 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £51.35 £50.00
England median hourly rate £45.78 £29.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +57.86% -20.55% +0.29%

SDET
Job Vacancy Trend in the North East

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

SDET job vacancy trend in the North East

SDET
Daily Rate Trend in the North East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing SDET.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing SDET

SDET
Contract Job Locations in the North East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDET within the North East region over the 6 months to 19 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
Tyne and Wear - 3 £325 - 1
SDET
England

SDET
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North East 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 (66.67%) AWS
1 2 (66.67%) GitHub
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (66.67%) MongoDB
2 1 (33.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 2 (66.67%) GitLab
1 2 (66.67%) Jenkins
1 2 (66.67%) REST Assured
1 2 (66.67%) Selenium
1 2 (66.67%) Serenity BDD
2 1 (33.33%) Gatling
General
1 2 (66.67%) Social Skills
2 1 (33.33%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (100.00%) Test Engineer
2 2 (66.67%) Lead
2 2 (66.67%) Lead Test Engineer
3 1 (33.33%) Principal Engineer
3 1 (33.33%) Principal Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (66.67%) Kafka
1 2 (66.67%) Playwright
2 1 (33.33%) Spring
2 1 (33.33%) Spring Boot
2 1 (33.33%) Spring Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 2 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 2 (66.67%) Continuous Improvement
2 2 (66.67%) DevOps
2 2 (66.67%) Digital Transformation Programme
2 2 (66.67%) End-to-End Testing
2 2 (66.67%) Microservices
2 2 (66.67%) Non-Functional Testing
2 2 (66.67%) Technical Leadership
2 2 (66.67%) Test Strategy
3 1 (33.33%) API Testing
3 1 (33.33%) Architectural Patterns
3 1 (33.33%) BDD
3 1 (33.33%) Coaching
3 1 (33.33%) Integration Testing
3 1 (33.33%) Mentoring
3 1 (33.33%) Observability
3 1 (33.33%) Performance Testing
3 1 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
3 1 (33.33%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 3 (100.00%) Java
2 1 (33.33%) Bash
2 1 (33.33%) Python
2 1 (33.33%) SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (66.67%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (33.33%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (66.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (33.33%) Grafana
1 1 (33.33%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1 (33.33%) Splunk