Software Testing Contracts in the South West

Software Testing
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South West requiring Software Testing skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Software Testing over the 6 months leading up to 5 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 91 130 117
Rank change year-on-year +39 -13 -34
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 26 24 44
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 1.50% 0.74% 1.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.65% 0.90% 1.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 15 22
10th Percentile £313 £324 £390
25th Percentile £341 £375 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £700
90th Percentile £638 £600 £724
England median daily rate £438 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -2.78% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 9
10th Percentile - - £51.45
25th Percentile - - £52.38
Median hourly rate £70.00 £75.00 £73.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +2.74% +21.67%
75th Percentile - - £78.00
90th Percentile - - £78.90
England median hourly rate £57.63 £62.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -7.80% +19.05% +5.03%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South West

Software Testing 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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,574 2,675 3,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 90.98% 82.18% 89.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 954 1,690 2,181
10th Percentile £218 £225 £313
25th Percentile £375 £403 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £700 £725
England median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 361 314
10th Percentile £18.13 £13.86 £9.80
25th Percentile £18.87 £29.75 £15.29
Median hourly rate £33.00 £55.00 £59.90
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% -8.18% +23.56%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £83.07
England median hourly rate £28.08 £37.50 £36.77
% change year-on-year -25.13% +1.99% +47.08%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings citing Software Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for Software Testing in the South West

Software Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Software Testing in the South West.

Daily rate trend for Software Testing in the South West

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing in the South West over the 6 months to 5 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in the South West

Software Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Software Testing in the South West.

Hourly rate trend for Software Testing in the South West

Software Testing
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Software Testing within the South West region over the 6 months to 5 June 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
Gloucestershire +22 9 £625 +13.64% 43
Bristol +16 6 £513 +34.87% 49
Wiltshire +37 5 £350 -24.93% 19
Devon +8 4 £488 -15.22% 31
Somerset +1 1 £825 - 30
Software Testing
England

Software Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South 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 1 (3.85%) Appian
Business Applications
1 2 (7.69%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 9 (34.62%) Azure
2 8 (30.77%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (7.69%) Azure Event Grid
3 2 (7.69%) Azure Functions
3 2 (7.69%) Azure Pipelines
3 2 (7.69%) Dynamics 365
3 2 (7.69%) SaaS
3 2 (7.69%) Serverless
4 1 (3.85%) AWS
4 1 (3.85%) GCP
4 1 (3.85%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.85%) Firewall
1 1 (3.85%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (19.23%) MongoDB
2 2 (7.69%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 6 (23.08%) Jenkins
2 4 (15.38%) Cucumber
2 4 (15.38%) Cypress.io
3 2 (7.69%) GitLab
3 2 (7.69%) Visual Studio
4 1 (3.85%) JIRA
4 1 (3.85%) Selenium
4 1 (3.85%) TestRail
General
1 7 (26.92%) Public Sector
2 5 (19.23%) Social Skills
3 4 (15.38%) Finance
4 2 (7.69%) Military
5 1 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (3.85%) Banking
5 1 (3.85%) Electronics
5 1 (3.85%) Manufacturing
5 1 (3.85%) Marketing
5 1 (3.85%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 10 (38.46%) Lead
2 4 (15.38%) Test Leader
2 4 (15.38%) Tester
3 3 (11.54%) Analyst
3 3 (11.54%) Project Engineer
3 3 (11.54%) Project Leader
3 3 (11.54%) Software Engineer
3 3 (11.54%) Systems Engineer
3 3 (11.54%) Test Analyst
4 2 (7.69%) Automation Tester
4 2 (7.69%) Chief Systems Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Lead Software Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Manual Tester
4 2 (7.69%) QA Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Software Tester
4 2 (7.69%) Test Manager
5 1 (3.85%) Appian Developer
5 1 (3.85%) QA Manual Tester
5 1 (3.85%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (19.23%) Kafka
2 2 (7.69%) .NET
2 2 (7.69%) .NET Framework
2 2 (7.69%) AngularJS
2 2 (7.69%) OpenAPI
2 2 (7.69%) Swagger
3 1 (3.85%) Middleware
3 1 (3.85%) PySpark
3 1 (3.85%) Qt
3 1 (3.85%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 2 (7.69%) EPoS
2 1 (3.85%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (3.85%) Legacy Applications
2 1 (3.85%) Mobile App
2 1 (3.85%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 8 (30.77%) Linux
2 1 (3.85%) Android
2 1 (3.85%) Apple iOS
2 1 (3.85%) Unix
2 1 (3.85%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (53.85%) DevOps
2 12 (46.15%) Agile
2 12 (46.15%) Test Automation
3 8 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 8 (30.77%) Integration Testing
4 6 (23.08%) Continuous Integration
4 6 (23.08%) Cybersecurity
5 5 (19.23%) Analytics
5 5 (19.23%) Data Analytics
5 5 (19.23%) Software Engineering
5 5 (19.23%) Systems Engineering
5 5 (19.23%) Validation
6 4 (15.38%) Containerisation
6 4 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 4 (15.38%) Mentoring
6 4 (15.38%) User Acceptance Testing
7 3 (11.54%) Manual Testing
7 3 (11.54%) Non-Functional Testing
7 3 (11.54%) SDLC
7 3 (11.54%) System Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 6 (23.08%) JavaScript
2 4 (15.38%) Java
3 3 (11.54%) Bash
4 2 (7.69%) C#
4 2 (7.69%) Python
5 1 (3.85%) Ada
5 1 (3.85%) C++
5 1 (3.85%) PowerShell
5 1 (3.85%) SQL
Qualifications
1 18 (69.23%) Security Cleared
2 12 (46.15%) SC Cleared
3 7 (26.92%) DV Cleared
4 5 (19.23%) ISTQB
5 4 (15.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (15.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (7.69%) ISEB
7 1 (3.85%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (30.77%) QA
2 6 (23.08%) Def Stans
3 1 (3.85%) IEC 61508
3 1 (3.85%) ISO 9001
3 1 (3.85%) MISRA
3 1 (3.85%) MISRA C
System Software
1 4 (15.38%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 3 (11.54%) Ansible
2 2 (7.69%) Terraform
3 1 (3.85%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (23.08%) VMware
2 2 (7.69%) IBM
3 1 (3.85%) ESRI
3 1 (3.85%) Microsoft
3 1 (3.85%) Rapid7
3 1 (3.85%) Red Hat
3 1 (3.85%) SAP