SDET Contract Job Trends in the North of England

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

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England 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 227 167 176
Rank change year-on-year -60 +9 +39
Contract jobs citing SDET 8 1 9
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.13% 0.030% 0.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.15% 0.034% 0.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 0 9
10th Percentile £410 - £443
25th Percentile £556 - £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 - £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +29.03%
75th Percentile £640 - -
90th Percentile - - £585
England median daily rate £525 £431 £500
% change year-on-year +21.74% -13.75% -13.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North of England

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 of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,357 2,969 3,963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 84.30% 89.64% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,345 1,908 2,421
10th Percentile £313 £263 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £557 £588
90th Percentile £658 £650 £675
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 156 367
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £22.68 £18.51 £12.50
Median hourly rate £54.50 £26.28 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.40% +45.99% -35.34%
75th Percentile £71.50 £57.76 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.28 £81.08 £58.50
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 of England

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

SDET job vacancy trend in the North of England

SDET
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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

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

SDET
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDET in the North of England over the 6 months to 19 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SDET in the North of England

SDET
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 SDET within the North of England 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
Yorkshire - 4 £601 - 3
North East -19 3 £325 - 1
North West - 3 £630 - 3
SDET
England

SDET
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 6 (75.00%) AWS
2 5 (62.50%) GitHub
3 2 (25.00%) BrowserStack
4 1 (12.50%) Sauce Labs
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (62.50%) MongoDB
2 4 (50.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (75.00%) GitLab
2 5 (62.50%) Jenkins
2 5 (62.50%) REST Assured
2 5 (62.50%) Selenium
2 5 (62.50%) Serenity BDD
3 4 (50.00%) Gatling
4 1 (12.50%) Appium
4 1 (12.50%) JIRA
4 1 (12.50%) Zephyr
General
1 4 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (25.00%) Public Sector
3 1 (12.50%) Military
Job Titles
1 6 (75.00%) Lead
1 6 (75.00%) Test Engineer
2 5 (62.50%) Lead Test Engineer
3 3 (37.50%) Principal Engineer
3 3 (37.50%) Principal Test Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Automation Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Development Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Lead Software Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) QA Automation Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) QA Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Software Development Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Software Engineer
4 1 (12.50%) Test Development Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (75.00%) Kafka
2 5 (62.50%) Playwright
3 4 (50.00%) Spring
3 4 (50.00%) Spring Boot
3 4 (50.00%) Spring Cloud
4 1 (12.50%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 1 (12.50%) Cloud Native
1 1 (12.50%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1 (12.50%) Android
1 1 (12.50%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 7 (87.50%) Test Strategy
3 6 (75.00%) CI/CD
3 6 (75.00%) Microservices
4 5 (62.50%) DevOps
5 4 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 4 (50.00%) End-to-End Testing
5 4 (50.00%) Non-Functional Testing
5 4 (50.00%) Observability
5 4 (50.00%) Performance Testing
5 4 (50.00%) Technical Leadership
6 3 (37.50%) API Testing
6 3 (37.50%) Architectural Patterns
6 3 (37.50%) Coaching
6 3 (37.50%) Digital Transformation Programme
6 3 (37.50%) Integration Testing
6 3 (37.50%) Problem-Solving
7 2 (25.00%) BDD
8 1 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
8 1 (12.50%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 7 (87.50%) Java
2 1 (12.50%) Bash
2 1 (12.50%) JavaScript
2 1 (12.50%) Python
2 1 (12.50%) Scala
2 1 (12.50%) SQL
2 1 (12.50%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 5 (62.50%) Security Cleared
2 3 (37.50%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (50.00%) Accessibility
2 1 (12.50%) QA
System Software
1 6 (75.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (50.00%) Grafana
1 4 (50.00%) Prometheus
2 1 (12.50%) Kubernetes
2 1 (12.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (62.50%) Splunk
2 1 (12.50%) New Relic