Test Planning Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Test Planning
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Test Planning 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 173 145 182
Rank change year-on-year -28 +37 +58
Contract jobs citing Test Planning 20 28 21
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.48% 0.68% 0.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.54% 0.80% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 25 20
10th Percentile £356 £333 £467
25th Percentile £392 £400 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £473 £513
Median % change year-on-year -7.94% -7.85% +17.20%
75th Percentile £456 £517 £550
90th Percentile £513 £600 £625
England median daily rate £447 £455 £517
% change year-on-year -1.76% -11.99% -6.00%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North of England

Test Planning 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 3,723 3,497 4,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 89.00% 84.41% 88.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,448 1,920 2,977
10th Percentile £239 £299 £285
25th Percentile £369 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.59% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £563 £575 £600
90th Percentile £671 £650 £688
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 210 181 213
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.75 £15.75
25th Percentile £17.48 £18.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £23.45 £35.00 £28.30
Median % change year-on-year -33.01% +23.67% +33.18%
75th Percentile £39.19 £51.91 £46.18
90th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £62.80
England median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -40.82% -5.56% +36.36%

Test Planning
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Test Planning job vacancy trend in the North of England

Test Planning
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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

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

Test Planning
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Planning in the North of England over the 6 months to 15 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Planning in the North of England

Test Planning
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Test Planning.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Test Planning

Test Planning
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 Planning within the North of England 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
Yorkshire -9 11 £435 -15.91% 3
North West -29 9 £447 +11.75% 5
Test Planning
England

Test Planning
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:

Application Platforms
1 2 (10.00%) CICS
1 2 (10.00%) WebSphere
2 1 (5.00%) CMS
Applications
1 1 (5.00%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (10.00%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 2 (10.00%) SuccessFactors
2 1 (5.00%) Amazon SQS
2 1 (5.00%) AWS
2 1 (5.00%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (5.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3 (15.00%) Ethernet
1 3 (15.00%) SD-WAN
1 3 (15.00%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (10.00%) DB2
1 2 (10.00%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 6 (30.00%) Jenkins
1 6 (30.00%) Selenium
2 4 (20.00%) Cucumber
3 3 (15.00%) Cypress.io
3 3 (15.00%) GitLab
3 3 (15.00%) JMeter
3 3 (15.00%) JUnit
3 3 (15.00%) Maven
3 3 (15.00%) Postman
3 3 (15.00%) REST Assured
3 3 (15.00%) TestNG
4 2 (10.00%) JIRA
4 2 (10.00%) SOAtest
5 1 (5.00%) Appium
5 1 (5.00%) Git
5 1 (5.00%) HP UFT
General
1 8 (40.00%) Public Sector
2 3 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (10.00%) Banking
3 2 (10.00%) Finance
3 2 (10.00%) General Ledger
3 2 (10.00%) Law
3 2 (10.00%) Legal
3 2 (10.00%) Retail Banking
3 2 (10.00%) Social Skills
4 1 (5.00%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (45.00%) Test Engineer
2 5 (25.00%) Senior
2 5 (25.00%) Senior Test Engineer
3 4 (20.00%) Test Manager
4 3 (15.00%) Lead
4 3 (15.00%) Network Engineer
4 3 (15.00%) Senior Network Engineer
4 3 (15.00%) Test Leader
5 2 (10.00%) Architect
5 2 (10.00%) SAP Manager
5 2 (10.00%) SAP Test Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Test Architect
6 1 (5.00%) Analyst
6 1 (5.00%) Mainframe Architect
6 1 (5.00%) Non-Functional Tester
6 1 (5.00%) Performance Tester
6 1 (5.00%) Programme Manager
6 1 (5.00%) Programme Test Manager
6 1 (5.00%) Test Analyst
6 1 (5.00%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (15.00%) Playwright
2 2 (10.00%) J2EE
2 2 (10.00%) JSON
2 2 (10.00%) Web Services
2 2 (10.00%) XML
3 1 (5.00%) Kafka
3 1 (5.00%) Node.js
3 1 (5.00%) React
3 1 (5.00%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 2 (10.00%) Legacy Systems
1 2 (10.00%) Mainframe
1 2 (10.00%) Mobile Payment
1 2 (10.00%) NHS
1 2 (10.00%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 2 (10.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 12 (60.00%) Agile
3 10 (50.00%) Test Strategy
4 8 (40.00%) Test Scripting
5 6 (30.00%) User Acceptance Testing
6 5 (25.00%) API Testing
6 5 (25.00%) DevOps
7 4 (20.00%) CI/CD
7 4 (20.00%) Defect Management
7 4 (20.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
7 4 (20.00%) Functional Testing
7 4 (20.00%) Regression Testing
7 4 (20.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 3 (15.00%) End-to-End Testing
8 3 (15.00%) ETL
8 3 (15.00%) Non-Functional Testing
8 3 (15.00%) Project Delivery
8 3 (15.00%) Software Testing
8 3 (15.00%) TDD
8 3 (15.00%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 6 (30.00%) Java
2 3 (15.00%) Bash
2 3 (15.00%) JavaScript
2 3 (15.00%) Python
3 2 (10.00%) COBOL
3 2 (10.00%) JCL
3 2 (10.00%) REXX
3 2 (10.00%) TypeScript
4 1 (5.00%) C#
Qualifications
1 4 (20.00%) SC Cleared
1 4 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 3 (15.00%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (35.00%) QA
2 5 (25.00%) Accessibility
2 5 (25.00%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (15.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (15.00%) Ansible
2 2 (10.00%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3 (15.00%) Cisco
1 3 (15.00%) Juniper
1 3 (15.00%) Meraki
1 3 (15.00%) Microsoft
1 3 (15.00%) Nokia
2 2 (10.00%) Ab Initio
2 2 (10.00%) HP
2 2 (10.00%) Informatica
2 2 (10.00%) Oracle
2 2 (10.00%) Parasoft
2 2 (10.00%) SAP