Test Manager Contracts in the UK excluding London

Test Manager
UK > UK excluding London

The median Test Manager daily rate in the UK excluding London is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 August 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
5 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 288 279 297
Rank change year-on-year -9 +18 -8
Contract jobs requiring a Test Manager 80 99 129
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.53% 0.54% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.58% 0.58% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 66 68
10th Percentile £350 £413 £425
25th Percentile £403 £457 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £553 £575 £575
90th Percentile £648 £600 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £40.25 -
25th Percentile £81.75 £48.13 -
Median hourly rate £83.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.60% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £85.25 £63.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £83.50 £62.50 £53.25
% change year-on-year +33.60% +17.37% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 13,770 16,993 21,221
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.37% 92.01% 94.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,432 10,367 14,371
10th Percentile £215 £220 £230
25th Percentile £363 £375 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +1.83%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £684 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,208 1,773 1,162
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.48 £18.50 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.90 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -42.71% +17.07% +76.80%
75th Percentile £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +65.50%

Test Manager
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Test Manager in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Test Manager in the UK excluding London

Test Manager
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Manager in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Test Manager in the UK excluding London

Test Manager
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Manager in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 5 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Manager in the UK excluding London

Test Manager
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Manager in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Test Manager in the UK excluding London

Test Manager
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Manager within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 5 August 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 of England -15 28 £450 -10.00% 2
South East +20 17 £525 - 7
North West -5 17 £429 -13.98% 2
South West +23 11 £575 +2.23% 3
Yorkshire -4 11 £522 -0.50%
Scotland +1 9 £550 +2.14%
Midlands -18 7 £488 -7.14% 3
West Midlands -10 6 £350 -37.78% 3
East of England +1 4 £320 -28.89% 2
Isle of Man +3 2 £400 -
Northern Ireland - 2 £550 -
Test Manager
UK

Test Manager Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 5 August 2025, Test Manager 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 UK excluding London region featuring Test Manager in the job title.

1 46 (57.50%) Test Strategy
2 30 (37.50%) User Acceptance Testing
3 29 (36.25%) QA
4 28 (35.00%) Test Automation
5 24 (30.00%) Test Management
5 24 (30.00%) Test Planning
6 21 (26.25%) Continuous Improvement
6 21 (26.25%) Agile
6 21 (26.25%) Finance
7 20 (25.00%) End-to-End Testing
8 19 (23.75%) Risk Management
9 18 (22.50%) Security Cleared
10 17 (21.25%) JIRA
10 17 (21.25%) Social Skills
10 17 (21.25%) Defect Management
11 16 (20.00%) Test Scripting
11 16 (20.00%) SC Cleared
12 15 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
13 14 (17.50%) Migration
13 14 (17.50%) System Integration Testing
13 14 (17.50%) Public Sector
14 12 (15.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 12 (15.00%) Integration Testing
15 11 (13.75%) Azure
15 11 (13.75%) Regression Testing
15 11 (13.75%) DevOps
16 9 (11.25%) Data Centre
16 9 (11.25%) Validation
16 9 (11.25%) Waterfall
17 8 (10.00%) Performance Testing

Test Manager Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (7.50%) Confluence
2 1 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.25%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (3.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (2.50%) Oracle Financials
2 2 (2.50%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 11 (13.75%) Azure
2 8 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (6.25%) AWS
3 5 (6.25%) Dynamics 365
4 4 (5.00%) Azure Pipelines
4 4 (5.00%) GitHub
5 3 (3.75%) SuccessFactors
6 2 (2.50%) Power Automate
7 1 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.25%) Amazon S3
7 1 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.25%) GCP
7 1 (1.25%) OCI
7 1 (1.25%) Serverless
7 1 (1.25%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.75%) Firewall
2 1 (1.25%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.50%) Oracle Reports
2 1 (1.25%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (1.25%) Apache Hive
2 1 (1.25%) Hadoop
2 1 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 17 (21.25%) JIRA
2 7 (8.75%) Selenium
3 5 (6.25%) HP UFT
4 4 (5.00%) JUnit
5 3 (3.75%) Cucumber
5 3 (3.75%) Git
5 3 (3.75%) Gradle
5 3 (3.75%) IntelliJ
5 3 (3.75%) Jenkins
5 3 (3.75%) Maven
6 2 (2.50%) Katalon Studio
6 2 (2.50%) Zephyr
7 1 (1.25%) GitLab
7 1 (1.25%) LoadRunner
7 1 (1.25%) MSTest
7 1 (1.25%) NUnit
7 1 (1.25%) Postman
7 1 (1.25%) Ranorex
7 1 (1.25%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 21 (26.25%) Finance
2 17 (21.25%) Social Skills
3 14 (17.50%) Public Sector
4 7 (8.75%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (8.75%) Banking
5 6 (7.50%) Telecoms
6 5 (6.25%) Influencing Skills
6 5 (6.25%) Military
7 3 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.25%) Automotive
8 1 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.25%) Law
8 1 (1.25%) Legal
8 1 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.25%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (6.25%) Playwright
2 3 (3.75%) RFC 2544
3 1 (1.25%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 9 (11.25%) Data Centre
2 3 (3.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 3 (3.75%) SCADA
3 2 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (2.50%) Management Information System
3 2 (2.50%) PKI
4 1 (1.25%) CMDB
4 1 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.25%) EMV
4 1 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.25%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.25%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.25%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (57.50%) Test Strategy
2 30 (37.50%) User Acceptance Testing
3 28 (35.00%) Test Automation
4 24 (30.00%) Test Management
4 24 (30.00%) Test Planning
5 21 (26.25%) Agile
5 21 (26.25%) Continuous Improvement
6 20 (25.00%) End-to-End Testing
7 19 (23.75%) Risk Management
8 17 (21.25%) Defect Management
9 16 (20.00%) Test Scripting
10 15 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
11 14 (17.50%) Migration
11 14 (17.50%) System Integration Testing
12 12 (15.00%) Integration Testing
12 12 (15.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 11 (13.75%) DevOps
13 11 (13.75%) Regression Testing
14 9 (11.25%) Validation
14 9 (11.25%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 3 (3.75%) Java
2 2 (2.50%) C#
3 1 (1.25%) JavaScript
3 1 (1.25%) Python
3 1 (1.25%) SQL
Qualifications
1 18 (22.50%) Security Cleared
2 16 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 8 (10.00%) ISTQB
4 3 (3.75%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 2 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.25%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.25%) CISM
6 1 (1.25%) CISSP
6 1 (1.25%) Degree
6 1 (1.25%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (36.25%) QA
2 1 (1.25%) SLA
2 1 (1.25%) Software Quality Assurance
Systems Management
1 4 (5.00%) HP ALM
2 1 (1.25%) Grafana
2 1 (1.25%) OPNET
Vendors
1 7 (8.75%) Microsoft
2 5 (6.25%) Cisco
3 4 (5.00%) HP
3 4 (5.00%) Oracle
4 3 (3.75%) SAP
4 3 (3.75%) Virgin Media
5 2 (2.50%) Avaloq
5 2 (2.50%) Databricks
5 2 (2.50%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.25%) BT
6 1 (1.25%) IBM
6 1 (1.25%) IFS
6 1 (1.25%) Informatica
6 1 (1.25%) JDA
6 1 (1.25%) Micro Focus
6 1 (1.25%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.25%) Snow
6 1 (1.25%) StreamSets