Operational Acceptance Testing Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Operational Acceptance Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 204 - 174
Rank change year-on-year - - +61
Contract jobs citing Operational Acceptance Testing 6 0 8
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.13% - 0.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.14% - 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £401 - £516
25th Percentile £444 - £522
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 - £538
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.27%
75th Percentile £544 - £547
90th Percentile £578 - £549
England median daily rate £425 £380 £450
% change year-on-year +11.84% -15.56% -16.67%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North of England

Operational Acceptance 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 of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 4,195 3,105 4,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.54% 86.78% 88.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,787 1,767 2,728
10th Percentile £215 £263 £293
25th Percentile £363 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £665 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 155 189
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £15.74
25th Percentile £19.32 £17.25 £17.75
Median hourly rate £28.96 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.29% -8.33% +33.33%
75th Percentile £51.75 £46.18 £46.18
90th Percentile £68.90 £66.80 £62.35
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +23.61%

Operational Acceptance Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Operational Acceptance Testing job vacancy trend in the North of England

Operational Acceptance Testing
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Operational Acceptance Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Operational Acceptance Testing

Operational Acceptance Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Operational Acceptance Testing in the North of England over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Operational Acceptance Testing in the North of England

Operational Acceptance Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Operational Acceptance Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Operational Acceptance Testing

Operational Acceptance Testing
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Operational Acceptance Testing within the North of England region over the 6 months to 20 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
Yorkshire - 5 £468 - 4
North West - 1 £600 -
Operational Acceptance Testing
England

Operational Acceptance Testing
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 5 (83.33%) AWS
1 5 (83.33%) Azure
1 5 (83.33%) GCP
1 5 (83.33%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (83.33%) MySQL
1 5 (83.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (83.33%) Cucumber
1 5 (83.33%) GitLab
1 5 (83.33%) Jenkins
1 5 (83.33%) JIRA
1 5 (83.33%) Postman
1 5 (83.33%) REST Assured
1 5 (83.33%) Selenium
1 5 (83.33%) TestRail
General
1 1 (16.67%) Banking
1 1 (16.67%) Public Sector
1 1 (16.67%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 4 (66.67%) Test Automation Engineer
1 4 (66.67%) Test Engineer
2 3 (50.00%) Lead
3 2 (33.33%) Automation Test Lead
3 2 (33.33%) Lead Test Engineer
4 1 (16.67%) Programme Manager
4 1 (16.67%) Programme Test Manager
4 1 (16.67%) Test Leader
4 1 (16.67%) Test Manager
4 1 (16.67%) Test Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (83.33%) .NET
1 5 (83.33%) LDAP
1 5 (83.33%) OpenID
1 5 (83.33%) REST
1 5 (83.33%) SailPoint
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (100.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
1 6 (100.00%) System Integration Testing
1 6 (100.00%) Test Automation
1 6 (100.00%) User Acceptance Testing
2 5 (83.33%) API Testing
2 5 (83.33%) BDD
2 5 (83.33%) CI/CD
2 5 (83.33%) Data Ingestion
2 5 (83.33%) DevOps
2 5 (83.33%) ETL
2 5 (83.33%) GitOps
2 5 (83.33%) Identity Access Management
2 5 (83.33%) Manual Testing
2 5 (83.33%) Scenario Testing
2 5 (83.33%) TDD
2 5 (83.33%) Test Scripting
3 3 (50.00%) Agile
3 3 (50.00%) Test Strategy
3 3 (50.00%) Waterfall
4 2 (33.33%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 5 (83.33%) Java
1 5 (83.33%) JavaScript
1 5 (83.33%) PHP
1 5 (83.33%) Python
1 5 (83.33%) SQL
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (100.00%) QA
Vendors
1 5 (83.33%) ServiceNow