Tester Contracts in the North of England

Tester
England > North of England

The median Tester daily rate in the North of England is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 121 145 133
Rank change year-on-year +24 -12 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Tester 45 40 88
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 1.37% 0.84% 1.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.46% 0.90% 1.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 27 61
10th Percentile £273 £345 £285
25th Percentile £350 £400 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £413
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +9.09% +6.45%
75th Percentile £515 £559 £500
90th Percentile £562 £620 £573
England median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £52.00
Median hourly rate £12.76 - £54.00
75th Percentile - - £56.00
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £32.63 £30.15 £72.00
% change year-on-year +8.23% -58.13% +289.19%

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 3,078 4,441 5,553
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.41% 93.14% 95.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,038 2,789 3,920
10th Percentile £230 £263 £285
25th Percentile £364 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.29% -4.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £580 £600
90th Percentile £646 £673 £680
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 394 162
10th Percentile £12.86 £11.02 £13.96
25th Percentile £16.16 £12.53 £18.82
Median hourly rate £24.50 £19.34 £30.54
Median % change year-on-year +26.68% -36.67% +65.08%
75th Percentile £49.38 £45.97 £49.40
90th Percentile £80.22 £60.00 £65.68
England median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
% change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%

Tester
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Job vacancy trend for Tester in the North of England

Tester
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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

Daily rate trend for Tester in the North of England

Tester
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Tester in the North of England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Tester in the North of England

Tester
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

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

Hourly rate trend for Tester in the North of England

Tester
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 Tester within the North of England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
North West +26 22 £425 +6.25% 9
Yorkshire +4 19 £500 +8.11% 7
North East +1 4 £390 -35.00% 2
Tester
England

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

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Tester 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 Tester in the job title.

1 35 (77.78%) Test Automation
2 21 (46.67%) QA
2 21 (46.67%) Selenium
3 20 (44.44%) JIRA
4 19 (42.22%) Agile
5 14 (31.11%) Test Scripting
6 13 (28.89%) Manual Testing
6 13 (28.89%) API Testing
6 13 (28.89%) Postman
6 13 (28.89%) Social Skills
7 11 (24.44%) Test Strategy
8 10 (22.22%) DevOps
8 10 (22.22%) User Acceptance Testing
8 10 (22.22%) Java
9 9 (20.00%) CI/CD
9 9 (20.00%) Public Sector
10 8 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (17.78%) System Testing
10 8 (17.78%) Software Testing
10 8 (17.78%) System Integration Testing
10 8 (17.78%) AWS
10 8 (17.78%) Git
10 8 (17.78%) Cucumber
11 7 (15.56%) Cypress.io
11 7 (15.56%) Performance Testing
11 7 (15.56%) Maven
11 7 (15.56%) JMeter
12 6 (13.33%) SQL
12 6 (13.33%) IntelliJ
12 6 (13.33%) Microsoft

Tester 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 3 (6.67%) Confluence
2 1 (2.22%) CICS
2 1 (2.22%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (2.22%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 8 (17.78%) AWS
2 6 (13.33%) Azure
3 4 (8.89%) Azure DevOps
4 2 (4.44%) GCP
4 2 (4.44%) GitHub
5 1 (2.22%) Bloomreach
5 1 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (2.22%) OpenShift
5 1 (2.22%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.22%) DB2
Development Applications
1 21 (46.67%) Selenium
2 20 (44.44%) JIRA
3 13 (28.89%) Postman
4 8 (17.78%) Cucumber
4 8 (17.78%) Git
5 7 (15.56%) Cypress.io
5 7 (15.56%) JMeter
5 7 (15.56%) Maven
6 6 (13.33%) IntelliJ
6 6 (13.33%) LoadRunner
7 4 (8.89%) SoapUI
8 3 (6.67%) Jenkins
8 3 (6.67%) JUnit
9 2 (4.44%) REST Assured
10 1 (2.22%) Charles Proxy
10 1 (2.22%) GitLab
10 1 (2.22%) Gradle
10 1 (2.22%) HP UFT
10 1 (2.22%) Vagrant
10 1 (2.22%) Visual Studio
General
1 13 (28.89%) Social Skills
2 9 (20.00%) Public Sector
3 6 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (11.11%) Finance
5 2 (4.44%) Banking
6 1 (2.22%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.22%) Games
6 1 (2.22%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.22%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (2.22%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (6.67%) Playwright
2 2 (4.44%) Gherkin
2 2 (4.44%) REST
2 2 (4.44%) WireMock
3 1 (2.22%) Nightwatchjs
3 1 (2.22%) Node.js
3 1 (2.22%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 6 (13.33%) Onboarding
2 2 (4.44%) Mainframe
2 2 (4.44%) Virtual Team
3 1 (2.22%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.22%) Mobile App
3 1 (2.22%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (77.78%) Test Automation
2 19 (42.22%) Agile
3 14 (31.11%) Test Scripting
4 13 (28.89%) API Testing
4 13 (28.89%) Manual Testing
5 11 (24.44%) Test Strategy
6 10 (22.22%) DevOps
6 10 (22.22%) User Acceptance Testing
7 9 (20.00%) CI/CD
8 8 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (17.78%) Software Testing
8 8 (17.78%) System Integration Testing
8 8 (17.78%) System Testing
9 7 (15.56%) Performance Testing
10 6 (13.33%) End-to-End Testing
10 6 (13.33%) Non-Functional Testing
11 5 (11.11%) BDD
11 5 (11.11%) Black-Box Testing
11 5 (11.11%) Process Improvement
11 5 (11.11%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 10 (22.22%) Java
2 6 (13.33%) SQL
3 3 (6.67%) TypeScript
4 2 (4.44%) JavaScript
4 2 (4.44%) JCL
4 2 (4.44%) REXX
5 1 (2.22%) COBOL
5 1 (2.22%) PowerShell
5 1 (2.22%) Python
5 1 (2.22%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 5 (11.11%) Security Cleared
2 4 (8.89%) ISTQB
2 4 (8.89%) SC Cleared
3 1 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (46.67%) QA
2 6 (13.33%) Accessibility
System Software
1 2 (4.44%) Docker
2 1 (2.22%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 1 (2.22%) Ansible
1 1 (2.22%) HP ALM
1 1 (2.22%) Puppet
Vendors
1 6 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 5 (11.11%) ServiceNow
3 3 (6.67%) Virgin Media
4 1 (2.22%) HP
4 1 (2.22%) Salesforce
4 1 (2.22%) Splunk