Tester Contract Job Trends in the South East

Tester
England > South East

The median Tester daily rate in the South East is £410, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 August 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 181 118 159
Rank change year-on-year -63 +41 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Tester 50 47 23
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.75% 1.32% 0.49%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.82% 1.47% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 28 12
10th Percentile £238 £347 £213
25th Percentile £297 £375 £244
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £410 £418 £425
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% -1.76% +2.41%
75th Percentile £501 £500 £495
90th Percentile £600 £525 £594
England median daily rate £425 £425 £450
% change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 0
10th Percentile - £34.56 -
25th Percentile £66.25 £37.35 -
Median hourly rate £67.50 £42.61 -
Median % change year-on-year +58.43% - -
75th Percentile £68.75 £48.49 -
90th Percentile - £51.65 -
England median hourly rate £25.38 £32.71 £50.00
% change year-on-year -22.41% -34.58% -6.54%

All Contract IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 South East with a recognized job title 6,095 3,203 4,363
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.76% 90.20% 92.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,558 2,060 2,629
10th Percentile £303 £205 £250
25th Percentile £425 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £625
90th Percentile £717 £664 £688
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 754 285 350
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.75 £16.23
25th Percentile £23.88 £15.50 £30.00
Median hourly rate £52.43 £25.15 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +108.45% -56.15% +14.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £75.00
90th Percentile £86.43 £71.50 £80.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.60%

Tester
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Tester' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Tester job vacancy trend in the South East

Tester
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the South East

Tester
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Tester in the South East over the 6 months to 29 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Tester in the South East

Tester
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the South East

Tester
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 Tester within the South East region over the 6 months to 29 August 2026. 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
Hampshire -35 22 £425 -10.53% 8
Thames Valley -43 11 £425 +3.66% 8
West Sussex - 11 £250 - 2
Berkshire -24 9 £425 - 5
Surrey -18 5 £375 - 3
Buckinghamshire -39 2 £369 +18.30% 1
East Sussex +1 1 - - 1
Tester
England

Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 29 August 2026, Tester contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring Tester in the job title.

1 26 (52.00%) Security Cleared
2 23 (46.00%) Test Automation
3 21 (42.00%) Agile
4 18 (36.00%) QA
5 15 (30.00%) DV Cleared
6 13 (26.00%) Test Strategy
7 12 (24.00%) CI/CD
7 12 (24.00%) Validation
8 10 (20.00%) End-to-End Testing
8 10 (20.00%) SC Cleared
8 10 (20.00%) Scenario Testing
8 10 (20.00%) SQL
9 9 (18.00%) Continuous Improvement
9 9 (18.00%) Defect Management
9 9 (18.00%) Performance Testing
10 8 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (16.00%) Test Scripting
11 7 (14.00%) AWS
11 7 (14.00%) Azure
11 7 (14.00%) Data Validation
11 7 (14.00%) JIRA
11 7 (14.00%) User Acceptance Testing
11 7 (14.00%) Windows
12 6 (12.00%) DevOps
12 6 (12.00%) ISTQB
12 6 (12.00%) Linux
12 6 (12.00%) Manual Testing
12 6 (12.00%) Project Delivery
12 6 (12.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 6 (12.00%) System Integration Testing

Tester Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 (4.00%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 7 (14.00%) AWS
1 7 (14.00%) Azure
2 2 (4.00%) Azure Monitor
2 2 (4.00%) GCP
3 1 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (2.00%) BrowserStack
3 1 (2.00%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 2 (4.00%) GPRS
1 2 (4.00%) GSM
1 2 (4.00%) LAN
1 2 (4.00%) LTE
1 2 (4.00%) MPLS
1 2 (4.00%) NGN
1 2 (4.00%) UMTS
1 2 (4.00%) VPN
1 2 (4.00%) WAN
1 2 (4.00%) Wireshark
2 1 (2.00%) Firewall
2 1 (2.00%) HTTP
2 1 (2.00%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.00%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (4.00%) Big Data
2 2 (4.00%) Oracle Reports
2 2 (4.00%) Spark SQL
3 1 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (2.00%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 7 (14.00%) JIRA
2 4 (8.00%) JMeter
3 3 (6.00%) LoadRunner
4 2 (4.00%) Burp Suite
4 2 (4.00%) GitLab
4 2 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 2 (4.00%) NeoLoad
4 2 (4.00%) SpecFlow
4 2 (4.00%) Zephyr
5 1 (2.00%) Gatling
5 1 (2.00%) Metasploit
5 1 (2.00%) Postman
5 1 (2.00%) Selenium
General
1 15 (30.00%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (26.00%) Social Skills
3 7 (14.00%) Finance
4 4 (8.00%) Electronics
5 3 (6.00%) Public Sector
6 2 (4.00%) Banking
6 2 (4.00%) Billing
6 2 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (4.00%) Telecoms
7 1 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.00%) Kafka
1 2 (4.00%) Playwright
1 2 (4.00%) PySpark
1 2 (4.00%) Swagger
2 1 (2.00%) Laravel
2 1 (2.00%) REST
2 1 (2.00%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 5 (10.00%) Data Protection Act
2 3 (6.00%) PKI
2 3 (6.00%) Product Ownership
3 2 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 2 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (2.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 7 (14.00%) Windows
2 6 (12.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (46.00%) Test Automation
2 21 (42.00%) Agile
3 13 (26.00%) Test Strategy
4 12 (24.00%) CI/CD
4 12 (24.00%) Validation
5 10 (20.00%) End-to-End Testing
5 10 (20.00%) Scenario Testing
6 9 (18.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 9 (18.00%) Defect Management
6 9 (18.00%) Performance Testing
7 8 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
7 8 (16.00%) Test Scripting
8 7 (14.00%) Data Validation
8 7 (14.00%) User Acceptance Testing
9 6 (12.00%) DevOps
9 6 (12.00%) Manual Testing
9 6 (12.00%) Project Delivery
9 6 (12.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 6 (12.00%) System Integration Testing
9 6 (12.00%) System Testing
Programming Languages
1 10 (20.00%) SQL
2 3 (6.00%) C#
2 3 (6.00%) Java
2 3 (6.00%) Python
3 2 (4.00%) Kotlin
3 2 (4.00%) TypeScript
4 1 (2.00%) JavaScript
4 1 (2.00%) PHP
Qualifications
1 26 (52.00%) Security Cleared
2 15 (30.00%) DV Cleared
3 10 (20.00%) SC Cleared
4 6 (12.00%) ISTQB
5 3 (6.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (4.00%) CCNP
6 2 (4.00%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (4.00%) CREST Certified
7 1 (2.00%) CHECK Team Member
7 1 (2.00%) Cyber Scheme
7 1 (2.00%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (2.00%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (36.00%) QA
2 3 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.00%) GDPR
3 1 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.00%) ITGC
3 1 (2.00%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 2 (4.00%) Docker
2 1 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 2 (4.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.00%) Grafana
2 1 (2.00%) Kibana
2 1 (2.00%) Nmap
Vendors
1 5 (10.00%) Tagetik
2 3 (6.00%) AppDynamics
2 3 (6.00%) Cisco
2 3 (6.00%) Dynatrace
3 2 (4.00%) Arista
3 2 (4.00%) Databricks
3 2 (4.00%) F5
3 2 (4.00%) Fortinet
3 2 (4.00%) Juniper
3 2 (4.00%) Microsoft
3 2 (4.00%) Oracle
4 1 (2.00%) CheckPoint
4 1 (2.00%) SAP
4 1 (2.00%) VMware