Test Strategy Contracts in the South East

Test Strategy
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring Test Strategy skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Strategy over the 6 months leading up to 2 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 84 152 148
Rank change year-on-year +68 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Strategy 68 46 70
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 2.26% 0.83% 1.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.47% 0.98% 1.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 37 48
10th Percentile £363 £412 £400
25th Percentile £419 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £494 £563 £520
90th Percentile £500 £665 £591
England median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - +1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £57.50 - -
Median hourly rate £60.00 - £62.55
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile £72.50 - -
England median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £58.94
% change year-on-year -4.00% +6.04% +93.24%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South East

Test Strategy 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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,758 4,707 5,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 91.54% 84.81% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,757 2,740 3,571
10th Percentile £256 £243 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% +2.00%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £619
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 435 221
10th Percentile £13.85 £13.00 £18.25
25th Percentile £16.05 £18.26 £23.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £47.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.05% -5.00% +122.22%
75th Percentile £62.50 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.86 £74.79
England median hourly rate £29.15 £35.96 £37.50
% change year-on-year -18.93% -4.12% +53.06%

Test Strategy
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing Test Strategy as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for Test Strategy in the South East

Test Strategy
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Strategy in the South East.

Daily rate trend for Test Strategy in the South East

Test Strategy
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Strategy in the South East over the 6 months to 2 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Strategy in the South East

Test Strategy
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Strategy in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for Test Strategy in the South East

Test Strategy
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Strategy in the South East over the 6 months to 2 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Strategy in the South East

Test Strategy
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Strategy within the South East region over the 6 months to 2 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
Thames Valley +71 45 £450 -12.20% 18
Berkshire +50 32 £456 -7.59% 6
Hampshire +35 12 £413 -5.71% 18
Buckinghamshire +27 11 £425 -27.35% 6
Surrey +3 9 - - 5
West Sussex +5 2 £443 +7.52% 1
Oxfordshire - 2 £525 - 7
Test Strategy
England

Test Strategy
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East 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 6 (8.82%) Confluence
2 1 (1.47%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 16 (23.53%) Azure
2 8 (11.76%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (8.82%) AWS
3 6 (8.82%) GCP
4 1 (1.47%) npm
4 1 (1.47%) Oracle Service Cloud
4 1 (1.47%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (30.88%) MPLS
2 16 (23.53%) ATM
2 16 (23.53%) Ethernet
2 16 (23.53%) Frame Relay
2 16 (23.53%) GPRS
2 16 (23.53%) GSM
2 16 (23.53%) LAN
2 16 (23.53%) LTE
2 16 (23.53%) SAN
2 16 (23.53%) SDH
2 16 (23.53%) UMTS
2 16 (23.53%) VPN
2 16 (23.53%) WAN
2 16 (23.53%) Wireshark
3 5 (7.35%) BGP
3 5 (7.35%) TCP/IP
3 5 (7.35%) VLAN
4 2 (2.94%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.94%) BigQuery
1 2 (2.94%) Oracle Reports
2 1 (1.47%) MySQL
2 1 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.47%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 19 (27.94%) JIRA
2 7 (10.29%) Selenium
3 5 (7.35%) JUnit
3 5 (7.35%) Robot Framework
4 4 (5.88%) Appium
4 4 (5.88%) JMeter
4 4 (5.88%) TestRail
5 2 (2.94%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.94%) Jenkins
5 2 (2.94%) SoapUI
6 1 (1.47%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.47%) Git
6 1 (1.47%) Mocha
6 1 (1.47%) SpecFlow
6 1 (1.47%) Toad
General
1 33 (48.53%) Social Skills
2 24 (35.29%) Telecoms
3 16 (23.53%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (5.88%) Finance
5 3 (4.41%) Aerospace
5 3 (4.41%) Billing
5 3 (4.41%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (4.41%) Manufacturing
6 2 (2.94%) Automotive
6 2 (2.94%) Avionics
6 2 (2.94%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.47%) Law
7 1 (1.47%) Marketing
7 1 (1.47%) Retail
Job Titles
1 16 (23.53%) Test Engineer
2 15 (22.06%) IP Engineer
3 13 (19.12%) Tester
4 8 (11.76%) Lead
4 8 (11.76%) Senior
5 7 (10.29%) Test Leader
6 5 (7.35%) Automation Tester
6 5 (7.35%) Consultant
6 5 (7.35%) IP Network Engineer
6 5 (7.35%) Network Engineer
6 5 (7.35%) QA Engineer
6 5 (7.35%) Strategy Manager
6 5 (7.35%) Telecoms Tester
6 5 (7.35%) Test Manager
6 5 (7.35%) Test Strategy Manager
7 4 (5.88%) Product Manager
7 4 (5.88%) QA Manager
7 4 (5.88%) QA Test Manager
7 4 (5.88%) Senior QA Engineer
8 3 (4.41%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (4.41%) XML
2 2 (2.94%) SOAP
3 1 (1.47%) .NET
3 1 (1.47%) CSS
3 1 (1.47%) FastAPI
3 1 (1.47%) HTML
3 1 (1.47%) Material-UI
3 1 (1.47%) Next.js
3 1 (1.47%) Node.js
3 1 (1.47%) OpenAPI
3 1 (1.47%) Playwright
3 1 (1.47%) React
3 1 (1.47%) REST
3 1 (1.47%) Spring
3 1 (1.47%) Spring Boot
3 1 (1.47%) Swagger
3 1 (1.47%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 23 (33.82%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (7.35%) Cloud Native
2 5 (7.35%) Product Ownership
3 4 (5.88%) SCADA
4 1 (1.47%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (1.47%) EPoS
4 1 (1.47%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.47%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 21 (30.88%) Linux
2 17 (25.00%) Unix
3 5 (7.35%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (48.53%) Problem-Solving
2 22 (32.35%) Test Automation
3 21 (30.88%) Project Management
4 18 (26.47%) Regression Testing
4 18 (26.47%) Test Management
5 16 (23.53%) Agile
5 16 (23.53%) Fault Management
6 10 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 10 (14.71%) Test Scripting
7 9 (13.24%) DevOps
7 9 (13.24%) Validation
8 8 (11.76%) CI/CD
8 8 (11.76%) Manual Testing
8 8 (11.76%) User Acceptance Testing
9 7 (10.29%) Containerisation
9 7 (10.29%) Defect Management
9 7 (10.29%) End-to-End Testing
9 7 (10.29%) Performance Testing
9 7 (10.29%) Test Assurance
9 7 (10.29%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 19 (27.94%) Java
2 9 (13.24%) SQL
3 6 (8.82%) Python
4 4 (5.88%) JavaScript
4 4 (5.88%) Perl
4 4 (5.88%) PL/SQL
4 4 (5.88%) TypeScript
5 3 (4.41%) C#
6 1 (1.47%) Rust
Qualifications
1 22 (32.35%) ISTQB
2 19 (27.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 18 (26.47%) ISEB
4 16 (23.53%) CCNP
4 16 (23.53%) Cisco Certification
5 8 (11.76%) Security Cleared
6 3 (4.41%) DV Cleared
6 3 (4.41%) SC Cleared
7 2 (2.94%) Degree
7 2 (2.94%) HND
7 2 (2.94%) PMI Certification
7 2 (2.94%) PMP
8 1 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (29.41%) QA
2 3 (4.41%) Software Quality Assurance
3 1 (1.47%) SLA
System Software
1 7 (10.29%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (8.82%) Kubernetes
2 5 (7.35%) Ansible
3 2 (2.94%) Amdocs OSS
Vendors
1 17 (25.00%) Cisco
1 17 (25.00%) Microsoft
2 16 (23.53%) Juniper
3 4 (5.88%) Oracle
3 4 (5.88%) SAP
4 2 (2.94%) CheckPoint
4 2 (2.94%) Cramer
4 2 (2.94%) Infoblox
4 2 (2.94%) Remedy
5 1 (1.47%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.47%) Snow
5 1 (1.47%) webMethods