Test Engineer Contracts in the North of England

Test Engineer
England > North of England

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the North of England is £420, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 26 June 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 143 146 163
Rank change year-on-year +3 +17 +46
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 28 40 46
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 0.79% 0.82% 0.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 0.89% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 26 33
10th Percentile £303 £385 £313
25th Percentile £358 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -10.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £478 £563 £565
90th Percentile £489 £575 £625
England median daily rate £425 £450 £514
% change year-on-year -5.56% -12.41% +8.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 1
10th Percentile £37.78 - -
25th Percentile £42.31 £35.75 £18.25
Median hourly rate £50.25 £36.50 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.67% +78.05% -50.74%
75th Percentile £57.81 £53.13 £22.75
90th Percentile £62.13 £69.17 -
England median hourly rate £52.44 £41.88 £52.50
% change year-on-year +25.20% -20.22% -3.23%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
North of England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North of England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the North of England with a recognized job title 3,289 4,499 5,214
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.30% 92.76% 95.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,166 2,736 3,621
10th Percentile £263 £263 £263
25th Percentile £375 £388 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.13% -2.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £638 £650 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 437 169
10th Percentile £12.73 £11.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £14.14 £13.25 £17.50
Median hourly rate £22.14 £24.10 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.13% -7.31% +30.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £47.50 £43.48
90th Percentile £75.83 £68.75 £56.38
England median hourly rate £28.17 £39.78 £43.32
% change year-on-year -29.19% -8.17% +73.26%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings that featured Test Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for Test Engineer in the North of England

Test Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Engineer in the North of England.

Daily rate trend for Test Engineer in the North of England

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer in the North of England over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Engineer in the North of England

Test Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Engineer in the North of England.

Hourly rate trend for Test Engineer in the North of England

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Engineer in the North of England over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in the North of England

Test Engineer
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 Test Engineer within the North of England region over the 6 months to 26 June 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 +2 13 £423 -23.18% 18
North West -4 10 £445 -1.11% 39
North East +4 6 £400 - 6
Test Engineer
England

Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 26 June 2025, Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North of England region featuring Test Engineer in the job title.

1 25 (89.29%) Test Automation
2 16 (57.14%) Agile
3 14 (50.00%) Java
3 14 (50.00%) API Testing
3 14 (50.00%) CI/CD
4 13 (46.43%) Playwright
5 11 (39.29%) Selenium
6 10 (35.71%) Cucumber
7 9 (32.14%) SC Cleared
7 9 (32.14%) Security Cleared
7 9 (32.14%) GitLab
7 9 (32.14%) REST Assured
7 9 (32.14%) Social Skills
8 8 (28.57%) Postman
8 8 (28.57%) JavaScript
9 7 (25.00%) AWS
9 7 (25.00%) Jenkins
9 7 (25.00%) Accessibility
10 6 (21.43%) Docker
10 6 (21.43%) Public Sector
10 6 (21.43%) TestNG
10 6 (21.43%) Cypress.io
10 6 (21.43%) Test Scripting
10 6 (21.43%) WCAG
10 6 (21.43%) QA
10 6 (21.43%) TDD
10 6 (21.43%) JMeter
11 5 (17.86%) Maven
11 5 (17.86%) Continuous Integration
11 5 (17.86%) BDD

Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (3.57%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 7 (25.00%) AWS
2 4 (14.29%) AWS Lambda
2 4 (14.29%) Serverless
3 2 (7.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 2 (7.14%) Azure
3 2 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (3.57%) Amazon S3
4 1 (3.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.57%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (7.14%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (3.57%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (3.57%) Delta Lake
2 1 (3.57%) DynamoDB
2 1 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 11 (39.29%) Selenium
2 10 (35.71%) Cucumber
3 9 (32.14%) GitLab
3 9 (32.14%) REST Assured
4 8 (28.57%) Postman
5 7 (25.00%) Jenkins
6 6 (21.43%) Cypress.io
6 6 (21.43%) JMeter
6 6 (21.43%) TestNG
7 5 (17.86%) Maven
8 4 (14.29%) JIRA
8 4 (14.29%) JUnit
9 3 (10.71%) Git
10 2 (7.14%) WebDriver
11 1 (3.57%) Appium
11 1 (3.57%) Gatling
11 1 (3.57%) SpecFlow
11 1 (3.57%) TestRail
11 1 (3.57%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (3.57%) Zephyr
General
1 9 (32.14%) Social Skills
2 6 (21.43%) Public Sector
3 4 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Electronics
4 2 (7.14%) Health Technology
4 2 (7.14%) Influencing Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Manufacturing
5 1 (3.57%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (46.43%) Playwright
2 1 (3.57%) boto
2 1 (3.57%) Chai
2 1 (3.57%) JSON
2 1 (3.57%) Kafka
2 1 (3.57%) Node.js
2 1 (3.57%) RabbitMQ
2 1 (3.57%) RAML
2 1 (3.57%) REST
2 1 (3.57%) RESTful
2 1 (3.57%) SOAP
2 1 (3.57%) Web Services
2 1 (3.57%) WireMock
2 1 (3.57%) XML
2 1 (3.57%) XSD
Miscellaneous
1 3 (10.71%) Onboarding
2 2 (7.14%) Analogue Electronics
2 2 (7.14%) Mainframe
2 2 (7.14%) NHS
2 2 (7.14%) Product Ownership
3 1 (3.57%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (3.57%) IBM Mainframe
3 1 (3.57%) Infotainment
3 1 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (3.57%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (89.29%) Test Automation
2 16 (57.14%) Agile
3 14 (50.00%) API Testing
3 14 (50.00%) CI/CD
4 6 (21.43%) TDD
4 6 (21.43%) Test Scripting
5 5 (17.86%) BDD
5 5 (17.86%) Continuous Integration
5 5 (17.86%) Non-Functional Testing
5 5 (17.86%) Test Planning
6 4 (14.29%) Manual Testing
6 4 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
7 3 (10.71%) Defect Management
7 3 (10.71%) DevOps
7 3 (10.71%) Performance Testing
7 3 (10.71%) Technical Leadership
7 3 (10.71%) Test Strategy
7 3 (10.71%) Validation
8 2 (7.14%) Full-Stack Development
8 2 (7.14%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 14 (50.00%) Java
2 8 (28.57%) JavaScript
3 3 (10.71%) Python
3 3 (10.71%) SQL
4 1 (3.57%) JCL
4 1 (3.57%) REXX
4 1 (3.57%) Scala
4 1 (3.57%) TypeScript
4 1 (3.57%) XPath
Qualifications
1 9 (32.14%) SC Cleared
1 9 (32.14%) Security Cleared
2 2 (7.14%) Degree
3 1 (3.57%) DBS Check
3 1 (3.57%) HNC
3 1 (3.57%) HND
3 1 (3.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (25.00%) Accessibility
2 6 (21.43%) QA
2 6 (21.43%) WCAG
3 1 (3.57%) Data Quality
System Software
1 6 (21.43%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (10.71%) Grafana
2 1 (3.57%) Ansible
2 1 (3.57%) Control-M
2 1 (3.57%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (7.14%) Brio
1 2 (7.14%) Virgin Media
2 1 (3.57%) Atlassian
2 1 (3.57%) IBM
2 1 (3.57%) MuleSoft
2 1 (3.57%) Oracle
2 1 (3.57%) Salesforce