Software Testing Contract Job Trends in the North East

Software Testing
England > North East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North East requiring Software Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 39 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 +28
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 5 2 1
As % of all contract jobs in the North East 1.62% 0.69% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.92% 0.75% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 1
10th Percentile - £334 -
25th Percentile £300 £346 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £363 £368 £400
Median % change year-on-year -1.36% -8.13% -34.69%
75th Percentile £431 £389 -
90th Percentile £441 £402 -
England median daily rate £445 £463 £525
% change year-on-year -3.78% -11.90% +4.74%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North East

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 the North East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 260 266 196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North East 84.14% 91.41% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 97 151
10th Percentile £181 £320 £350
25th Percentile £367 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +4.56% - -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £638 £693 £626
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 35 11
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.75 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.00 £15.50 £17.50
Median hourly rate £19.25 £29.77 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.34% +48.85% +19.90%
75th Percentile £20.63 £46.18 £39.97
90th Percentile £32.93 £70.00 £46.18
England median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -40.82% -5.56% +36.36%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the North East

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

Software Testing job vacancy trend in the North East

Software Testing
Daily Rate Trend in the North East

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

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

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in the North East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Software Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North East citing Software Testing

Software Testing
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 Software Testing within the North East region over the 6 months to 15 October 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
Tyne and Wear -6 4 £363 -1.36% 10
Durham - 1 - - 2
Software Testing
England

Software Testing
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:

Application Platforms
1 1 (20.00%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) GitHub
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon S3
2 1 (20.00%) AWS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 4 (80.00%) JIRA
2 3 (60.00%) Postman
3 2 (40.00%) GitLab
3 2 (40.00%) Selenium
4 1 (20.00%) Appium
4 1 (20.00%) Cucumber
4 1 (20.00%) REST Assured
General
1 1 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
1 1 (20.00%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (60.00%) Tester
2 2 (40.00%) Manual Tester
2 2 (40.00%) Software Tester
3 1 (20.00%) Automation Tester
3 1 (20.00%) Developer
3 1 (20.00%) Developer in Test
3 1 (20.00%) Software Developer
3 1 (20.00%) Test Automation Engineer
3 1 (20.00%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) Playwright
2 1 (20.00%) REST
2 1 (20.00%) Spring Boot
2 1 (20.00%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Self-Motivation
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) CI/CD
2 4 (80.00%) Functional Testing
3 3 (60.00%) Test Automation
4 2 (40.00%) Case Management
4 2 (40.00%) Microservices
4 2 (40.00%) Non-Functional Testing
4 2 (40.00%) Regression Testing
4 2 (40.00%) Test Scripting
5 1 (20.00%) Agile
5 1 (20.00%) Containerisation
5 1 (20.00%) DevOps
5 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1 (20.00%) Integration Testing
5 1 (20.00%) Performance Testing
5 1 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
5 1 (20.00%) Secrets Management
5 1 (20.00%) Security Testing
5 1 (20.00%) TDD
5 1 (20.00%) Unit Testing
5 1 (20.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 2 (40.00%) Java
2 1 (20.00%) Bash
2 1 (20.00%) Go
2 1 (20.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (20.00%) SC Cleared
1 1 (20.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (60.00%) Accessibility
2 1 (20.00%) QA
2 1 (20.00%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (40.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Grafana
1 1 (20.00%) Kubernetes
1 1 (20.00%) Prometheus
1 1 (20.00%) Terraform