Test Planning Contracts in the North West

Test Planning
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring Test Planning skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Planning over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 103 127 146
Rank change year-on-year +24 +19 +18
Contract jobs citing Test Planning 17 10 11
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.86% 0.36% 0.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.96% 0.42% 0.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 6 9
10th Percentile - £331 £465
25th Percentile £348 £394 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £358 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -37.74% -4.17% +50.00%
75th Percentile £440 £600 £625
90th Percentile £479 - -
England median daily rate £410 £515 £500
% change year-on-year -20.40% +2.95% +1.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £81.75 £58.75 -
Median hourly rate £83.50 £60.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% - -
75th Percentile £85.25 £61.25 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £81.25 £87.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -7.14% +25.00% +169.23%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,776 2,377 2,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 90.24% 86.28% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,147 1,519 2,058
10th Percentile £300 £306 £313
25th Percentile £393 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £593 £588
90th Percentile £661 £688 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 244 144
10th Percentile £15.97 £10.95 £16.85
25th Percentile £22.66 £13.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £31.88 £21.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.81% -40.00% +70.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.22 £48.91
90th Percentile £83.96 £57.50 £65.00
England median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%

Test Planning
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Test Planning as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Test Planning in the North West

Test Planning
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Planning in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Test Planning in the North West

Test Planning
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Planning in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Planning in the North West

Test Planning
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Planning in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for Test Planning in the North West

Test Planning
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 West 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
Manchester +22 13 £350 -39.13% 8
Cheshire +2 3 £447 +37.54% 4
Lancashire - 1 £425 - 7
Test Planning
England

Test Planning
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West 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 2 (11.76%) CICS
1 2 (11.76%) WebSphere
2 1 (5.88%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 6 (35.29%) Kondor
2 3 (17.65%) Finacle
3 1 (5.88%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1 (5.88%) AWS
1 1 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
1 1 (5.88%) Azure
1 1 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
1 1 (5.88%) Power Automate
1 1 (5.88%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (11.76%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (11.76%) DB2
1 2 (11.76%) Hadoop
2 1 (5.88%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (17.65%) JIRA
1 3 (17.65%) Selenium
2 2 (11.76%) Jenkins
2 2 (11.76%) SOAtest
3 1 (5.88%) Appium
3 1 (5.88%) Postman
3 1 (5.88%) Visual Studio Code
3 1 (5.88%) WebDriver
3 1 (5.88%) Zephyr
General
1 8 (47.06%) Banking
1 8 (47.06%) Finance
2 4 (23.53%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (11.76%) General Ledger
3 2 (11.76%) Retail Banking
4 1 (5.88%) Aviation
4 1 (5.88%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (41.18%) Test Manager
2 6 (35.29%) Lead
2 6 (35.29%) Test Leader
3 3 (17.65%) Migration Manager
4 2 (11.76%) Architect
4 2 (11.76%) Test Architect
5 1 (5.88%) Mainframe Architect
5 1 (5.88%) Manual Tester
5 1 (5.88%) Migration Engineer
5 1 (5.88%) Programme Manager
5 1 (5.88%) Programme Test Manager
5 1 (5.88%) Test Automation Engineer
5 1 (5.88%) Test Engineer
5 1 (5.88%) Test Programme Manager
5 1 (5.88%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.76%) J2EE
1 2 (11.76%) JSON
1 2 (11.76%) Web Services
1 2 (11.76%) XML
2 1 (5.88%) Chai
2 1 (5.88%) Kafka
2 1 (5.88%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 5 (29.41%) Data Centre
2 2 (11.76%) Mainframe
2 2 (11.76%) Mobile Payment
2 2 (11.76%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 2 (11.76%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (47.06%) Migration
1 8 (47.06%) Test Strategy
2 6 (35.29%) Planning and Forecasting
2 6 (35.29%) Risk Management
3 4 (23.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 4 (23.53%) Test Automation
4 3 (17.65%) Agile
4 3 (17.65%) API Testing
4 3 (17.65%) Mentoring
4 3 (17.65%) Scenario Testing
5 2 (11.76%) Contingency Planning
5 2 (11.76%) ETL
5 2 (11.76%) Impact Analysis
5 2 (11.76%) Performance Management
5 2 (11.76%) Risk Assessment
5 2 (11.76%) SDLC
5 2 (11.76%) User Acceptance Testing
5 2 (11.76%) User Stories
6 1 (5.88%) Performance Testing
6 1 (5.88%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 2 (11.76%) COBOL
1 2 (11.76%) Java
1 2 (11.76%) JCL
1 2 (11.76%) REXX
Qualifications
1 2 (11.76%) ISTQB
1 2 (11.76%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
2 1 (5.88%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (47.06%) QA
Systems Management
1 1 (5.88%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 6 (35.29%) Microsoft
2 3 (17.65%) FIS
2 3 (17.65%) Murex
3 2 (11.76%) Ab Initio
3 2 (11.76%) Informatica
3 2 (11.76%) Oracle
3 2 (11.76%) Parasoft
4 1 (5.88%) Atlassian
4 1 (5.88%) HP
4 1 (5.88%) MuleSoft