Software Testing Contracts

Software Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Software Testing skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Software Testing over the 6 months to 19 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 185 196 187
Rank change year-on-year +11 -9 +13
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 553 840 1,358
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.27% 1.38% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.47% 1.54% 1.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 361 545 887
10th Percentile £263 £307 £340
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - +11.11%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £575
90th Percentile £688 £700 £656
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £456 £450
% change year-on-year -5.75% +1.39% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 81 73
10th Percentile £39.02 £40.96 £24.20
25th Percentile £56.25 £42.50 £35.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £52.50 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% +7.14% +8.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £60.00
90th Percentile - £72.50 £65.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £51.25 £49.00
% change year-on-year +21.95% +4.59% +8.89%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software Testing is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,706 54,523 81,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.36% 89.87% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,375 37,727 57,191
10th Percentile £300 £325 £338
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +9.38%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +10.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,416 1,789 1,947
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.38 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £36.31 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.59% +45.22% -
75th Percentile £58.70 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £71.88 £75.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £36.00 £19.96
% change year-on-year -2.78% +80.41% -7.83%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Software Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing over the 6 months to 19 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Testing over the 6 months to 19 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 19 April 2024. 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
England +9 500 £450 -11.76% 443
UK excluding London +1 292 £430 -5.75% 406
London +15 210 £457 -16.91% 66
Work from Home +17 192 £450 -5.26% 165
South East +16 97 £425 +1.19% 91
North of England +24 59 £430 +1.18% 114
East of England +9 51 £420 -6.67% 61
Midlands +8 43 £475 -9.95% 60
Yorkshire +41 39 £428 -10.00% 25
West Midlands -6 27 £475 -11.71% 40
South West +2 25 £550 +6.02% 45
North West -5 20 £450 +5.88% 81
East Midlands +21 16 £460 +22.53% 20
Scotland -14 12 £425 -10.53% 30
Northern Ireland +3 2 - - 6
Isle of Man - 2 - - 1
Wales +12 1 £210 -66.40% 8

Software Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 16 (2.89%) Confluence
2 4 (0.72%) Apache
2 4 (0.72%) CMS
2 4 (0.72%) OpenStack
2 4 (0.72%) WebLogic
3 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.54%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.36%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.18%) Appian
5 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.18%) MTS
5 1 (0.18%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.18%) Tornado
Applications
1 29 (5.24%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (1.63%) Simulink
3 7 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.90%) Stateflow
4 5 (0.90%) TargetLink
5 3 (0.54%) Windchill
6 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (1.63%) Endur
2 5 (0.90%) FLEXCUBE
3 4 (0.72%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.54%) ENOVIA
4 3 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.36%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FSCM
5 2 (0.36%) WebTrends
5 2 (0.36%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.18%) SAP APO
6 1 (0.18%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 92 (16.64%) Azure
2 71 (12.84%) AWS
3 52 (9.40%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (3.80%) GitHub
5 15 (2.71%) Serverless
6 14 (2.53%) SaaS
7 12 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (1.99%) PaaS
9 9 (1.63%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (1.63%) Amazon S3
10 8 (1.45%) IaaS
11 7 (1.27%) Dynamics 365
11 7 (1.27%) Entra ID
11 7 (1.27%) Power Platform
11 7 (1.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (1.08%) GCP
12 6 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (0.90%) Azure Key Vault
13 5 (0.90%) Azure Monitor
13 5 (0.90%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 37 (6.69%) Modbus
1 37 (6.69%) RS-422
1 37 (6.69%) RS-485
2 19 (3.44%) LAN
3 7 (1.27%) DNS
3 7 (1.27%) Wireless
4 6 (1.08%) TCP/IP
5 5 (0.90%) DHCP
5 5 (0.90%) HTTP
5 5 (0.90%) SNMP
5 5 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.72%) Firewall
6 4 (0.72%) FTP
6 4 (0.72%) Internet
6 4 (0.72%) SMS
6 4 (0.72%) Software-Defined Radio
7 3 (0.54%) 5G
7 3 (0.54%) SSH
7 3 (0.54%) SSL
8 2 (0.36%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.06%) SQL Server
2 22 (3.98%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.80%) Oracle Database
4 17 (3.07%) Oracle Database 11g
5 15 (2.71%) Relational Database
6 12 (2.17%) NoSQL
7 10 (1.81%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (1.63%) MySQL
9 7 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (1.08%) Apache Cassandra
11 5 (0.90%) Data Lake
11 5 (0.90%) MongoDB
11 5 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.72%) Couchbase
12 4 (0.72%) Power BI
13 3 (0.54%) Big Data
13 3 (0.54%) Hadoop
14 2 (0.36%) DynamoDB
14 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 85 (15.37%) Git
2 74 (13.38%) Selenium
3 58 (10.49%) JIRA
4 53 (9.58%) Jenkins
5 34 (6.15%) Cucumber
6 27 (4.88%) JUnit
7 25 (4.52%) WebDriver
8 21 (3.80%) Postman
8 21 (3.80%) TestNG
9 20 (3.62%) REST Assured
10 18 (3.25%) Bitbucket
10 18 (3.25%) Visual Studio
11 16 (2.89%) GitLab
12 15 (2.71%) Appium
12 15 (2.71%) Cypress.io
13 13 (2.35%) JMeter
14 12 (2.17%) SpecFlow
15 11 (1.99%) SoapUI
15 11 (1.99%) Subversion
16 10 (1.81%) eggPlant
General
1 187 (33.82%) Social Skills
2 83 (15.01%) Finance
3 65 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (9.76%) Electronics
5 42 (7.59%) Public Sector
6 37 (6.69%) Banking
7 24 (4.34%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
9 21 (3.80%) Back Office
10 12 (2.17%) Investment Banking
10 12 (2.17%) Manufacturing
11 10 (1.81%) Aerospace
11 10 (1.81%) Automotive
11 10 (1.81%) Marketing
11 10 (1.81%) Retail
12 9 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.08%) Games
15 5 (0.90%) Front Office
15 5 (0.90%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 79 (14.29%) Developer
2 73 (13.20%) Analyst
3 67 (12.12%) Software Engineer
4 53 (9.58%) Test Engineer
5 52 (9.40%) Tester
6 51 (9.22%) Senior
7 47 (8.50%) Lead
8 43 (7.78%) Test Analyst
9 32 (5.79%) C++ Software Engineer
10 24 (4.34%) Test Manager
11 22 (3.98%) Hardware Engineer
11 22 (3.98%) Storage Manager
12 21 (3.80%) Software Developer
13 16 (2.89%) Software Test Engineer
14 15 (2.71%) Business Analyst
14 15 (2.71%) PostgreSQL Developer
14 15 (2.71%) QA Engineer
14 15 (2.71%) SQL Developer
15 14 (2.53%) Development Engineer
15 14 (2.53%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (7.78%) .NET
2 30 (5.42%) React
3 25 (4.52%) AngularJS
3 25 (4.52%) HTML
4 24 (4.34%) .NET Framework
5 20 (3.62%) CSS
6 19 (3.44%) REST
7 17 (3.07%) Node.js
8 16 (2.89%) RESTful
9 15 (2.71%) XML
10 14 (2.53%) Redux
10 14 (2.53%) Web Services
11 11 (1.99%) GraphQL
11 11 (1.99%) SOAP
11 11 (1.99%) Spring
12 10 (1.81%) YAML
13 9 (1.63%) jQuery
14 8 (1.45%) HTML5
14 8 (1.45%) Kafka
14 8 (1.45%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 40 (7.23%) Self-Motivation
2 19 (3.44%) Driving Licence
3 18 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 15 (2.71%) Algorithms
4 15 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 14 (2.53%) Data Centre
6 11 (1.99%) Mobile App
7 10 (1.81%) Client/Server
8 8 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.45%) Renewable Energy
9 7 (1.27%) Data Structures
9 7 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (1.27%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 6 (1.08%) Replication
11 5 (0.90%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.90%) Hedge funds
11 5 (0.90%) NHS
12 4 (0.72%) Clustering
13 3 (0.54%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 54 (9.76%) Windows
2 49 (8.86%) Linux
3 24 (4.34%) Unix
4 22 (3.98%) Windows 10
5 19 (3.44%) Windows 7
6 14 (2.53%) zOS
7 13 (2.35%) Android
8 4 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.36%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.36%) Windows Server
11 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (44.67%) Agile
2 187 (33.82%) Test Automation
3 163 (29.48%) DevOps
4 148 (26.76%) Software Engineering
5 88 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
6 87 (15.73%) CI/CD
7 85 (15.37%) Unit Testing
8 83 (15.01%) Continuous Integration
9 80 (14.47%) Scrum
10 69 (12.48%) Test Scripting
11 68 (12.30%) Continuous Improvement
11 68 (12.30%) TDD
12 63 (11.39%) Customer Requirements
12 63 (11.39%) Test Strategy
13 53 (9.58%) SDLC
14 50 (9.04%) User Acceptance Testing
15 46 (8.32%) End-to-End Testing
16 43 (7.78%) Migration
17 42 (7.59%) Pair Programming
18 41 (7.41%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 107 (19.35%) C#
2 106 (19.17%) SQL
3 86 (15.55%) Python
4 85 (15.37%) Java
5 58 (10.49%) C
6 57 (10.31%) C++
6 57 (10.31%) JavaScript
7 30 (5.42%) TypeScript
8 26 (4.70%) PL/SQL
9 21 (3.80%) Bash
10 18 (3.25%) PowerShell
11 13 (2.35%) JCL
12 11 (1.99%) Go
13 10 (1.81%) MATLAB
13 10 (1.81%) REXX
14 9 (1.63%) Bourne shell
14 9 (1.63%) Korn
15 7 (1.27%) VBScript
16 6 (1.08%) PHP
17 5 (0.90%) VBA
Qualifications
1 127 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 100 (18.08%) Degree
3 87 (15.73%) SC Cleared
4 51 (9.22%) ISTQB
5 31 (5.61%) DV Cleared
6 29 (5.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (3.07%) ISEB
8 13 (2.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 12 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.45%) Master's Degree
11 7 (1.27%) Numerate Degree
12 5 (0.90%) Chartered Engineer
13 4 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 3 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
15 2 (0.36%) A+ Certification
15 2 (0.36%) ISEB Practitioner
15 2 (0.36%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 2 (0.36%) MCSE
15 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
15 2 (0.36%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (15.37%) QA
2 12 (2.17%) Accessibility
3 7 (1.27%) AUTOSAR
4 6 (1.08%) ISO 9001
4 6 (1.08%) PCI DSS
5 5 (0.90%) ISO 26262
5 5 (0.90%) MISRA
5 5 (0.90%) MISRA C
5 5 (0.90%) Software Quality Assurance
6 4 (0.72%) WCAG
7 3 (0.54%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.36%) Automotive SPICE
8 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.36%) GDPR
8 2 (0.36%) PMO
8 2 (0.36%) SLA
9 1 (0.18%) HAZOP
9 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 24 (4.34%) Firmware
2 16 (2.89%) Docker
3 13 (2.35%) NFS
3 13 (2.35%) Time Sharing Option
4 7 (1.27%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.72%) VirtualBox
7 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 28 (5.06%) SCCM
2 24 (4.34%) Kubernetes
3 23 (4.16%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 22 (3.98%) Ansible
5 13 (2.35%) Terraform
6 6 (1.08%) HP ALM
6 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.72%) Kibana
7 4 (0.72%) WSUS
8 3 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.18%) Grafana
10 1 (0.18%) Iperf
10 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Clustering
10 1 (0.18%) Opsgenie
10 1 (0.18%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.18%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 67 (12.12%) Oracle
2 66 (11.93%) Microsoft
3 29 (5.24%) IBM
4 28 (5.06%) HP
5 19 (3.44%) Broadcom
6 18 (3.25%) Dell
7 14 (2.53%) SAP
8 13 (2.35%) Brocade
8 13 (2.35%) CA
9 9 (1.63%) Google
9 9 (1.63%) OpenLink
10 7 (1.27%) Adobe
11 5 (0.90%) Databricks
11 5 (0.90%) ServiceNow
11 5 (0.90%) Siemens
11 5 (0.90%) VMware
12 4 (0.72%) Optimizely
13 3 (0.54%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.54%) Micro Focus
13 3 (0.54%) PTC