Test Planning Contracts

Test Planning
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Test Planning skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Planning over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 425 418 582
Rank change year-on-year -7 +164 +17
Contract jobs citing Test Planning 95 165 136
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.32% 0.38% 0.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.36% 0.44% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 67 123 90
10th Percentile £348 £363 £374
25th Percentile £353 £413 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £513 £463
Median % change year-on-year -21.95% +10.81% -3.65%
75th Percentile £494 £606 £588
90th Percentile £585 £712 £653
UK excluding London median daily rate £371 £450 £480
% change year-on-year -17.56% -6.25% +11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 1
10th Percentile £43.55 £69.75 -
25th Percentile £65.38 £86.25 -
Median hourly rate £81.25 £87.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +25.00% +129.51%
75th Percentile £85.50 £88.75 -
90th Percentile £85.95 £89.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.00 £87.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% +25.00% -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test Planning 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Test Planning
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Planning as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Planning in the UK

Test Planning
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Planning.

Daily rate trend for Test Planning in the UK

Test Planning
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Planning over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Planning in the UK

Test Planning
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Planning.

Hourly rate trend for Test Planning in the UK

Test Planning
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Planning over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Planning in the UK

Test Planning
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Planning within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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
England -9 86 £410 -20.40% 84
London -1 47 £425 -26.09% 39
UK excluding London +37 40 £371 -17.56% 56
Work from Home +12 30 £380 -26.50% 72
North of England +18 19 £360 -28.00% 9
North West +24 17 £358 -37.74% 6
South East +45 8 £375 -25.00% 20
South West +41 5 £375 -4.46% 5
East of England +21 3 £600 +60.00% 18
Midlands +14 3 - - 3
East Midlands +8 2 - - 1
Scotland +10 1 - - 6
West Midlands +8 1 - - 2
Yorkshire +1 1 £450 -6.93% 3
North East -1 1 - - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 2

Test Planning
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 10 (10.53%) Confluence
2 2 (2.11%) CICS
2 2 (2.11%) WebSphere
3 1 (1.05%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.05%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.05%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.05%) CANalyzer
2 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.05%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (7.37%) Kondor
2 3 (3.16%) Finacle
3 2 (2.11%) Murex MxG2000
4 1 (1.05%) Endur
4 1 (1.05%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (1.05%) SAP ERP
4 1 (1.05%) Teamcenter
4 1 (1.05%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 19 (20.00%) Azure
1 19 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
2 5 (5.26%) AWS
2 5 (5.26%) SaaS
3 4 (4.21%) Power Automate
3 4 (4.21%) Power Platform
4 3 (3.16%) GitHub
4 3 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
4 3 (3.16%) PowerApps
5 2 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (2.11%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (2.11%) Serverless
6 1 (1.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (1.05%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.05%) BrowserStack
6 1 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (1.05%) Firebase
6 1 (1.05%) GCP
6 1 (1.05%) Sauce Labs
6 1 (1.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.11%) Firewall
1 2 (2.11%) LAN
1 2 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (1.05%) Ethernet
2 1 (1.05%) PuTTY
2 1 (1.05%) SSH
2 1 (1.05%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.32%) MS Access
2 3 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (3.16%) Hadoop
2 3 (3.16%) SQL Server
3 2 (2.11%) DB2
4 1 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.05%) Apache Hive
4 1 (1.05%) Big Data
4 1 (1.05%) Delta Lake
4 1 (1.05%) Impala
4 1 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.05%) Power BI
4 1 (1.05%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 26 (27.37%) JIRA
2 10 (10.53%) Jenkins
3 8 (8.42%) Postman
3 8 (8.42%) Selenium
4 6 (6.32%) QARun
4 6 (6.32%) REST Assured
4 6 (6.32%) WinRunner
5 5 (5.26%) Cypress.io
5 5 (5.26%) JMeter
6 3 (3.16%) Git
6 3 (3.16%) SpecFlow
6 3 (3.16%) TestRail
6 3 (3.16%) Zephyr
7 2 (2.11%) Appium
7 2 (2.11%) Bitbucket
7 2 (2.11%) Cucumber
7 2 (2.11%) eggPlant
7 2 (2.11%) Gatling
7 2 (2.11%) SOAtest
7 2 (2.11%) TestCafe
General
1 43 (45.26%) Social Skills
2 38 (40.00%) Finance
3 21 (22.11%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (22.11%) Banking
4 8 (8.42%) Public Sector
5 6 (6.32%) Marketing
5 6 (6.32%) Presentation Skills
6 5 (5.26%) Telecoms
7 4 (4.21%) Electronics
7 4 (4.21%) Manufacturing
8 3 (3.16%) Investment Banking
9 2 (2.11%) Back Office
9 2 (2.11%) General Ledger
9 2 (2.11%) Retail Banking
10 1 (1.05%) Aerospace
10 1 (1.05%) Automotive
10 1 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (1.05%) Front Office
10 1 (1.05%) Local Government
10 1 (1.05%) Retail
Job Titles
1 30 (31.58%) Analyst
2 22 (23.16%) Lead
3 21 (22.11%) Test Analyst
4 19 (20.00%) Test Manager
5 18 (18.95%) Test Leader
6 15 (15.79%) Senior
7 12 (12.63%) Senior Analyst
8 11 (11.58%) Tester
9 8 (8.42%) Business Analyst
9 8 (8.42%) Senior Test Analyst
10 5 (5.26%) Finance Business Analyst
10 5 (5.26%) Test Engineer
11 4 (4.21%) Automation Tester
11 4 (4.21%) Financial Analyst
11 4 (4.21%) QA Engineer
11 4 (4.21%) Senior Business Analyst
11 4 (4.21%) Senior UAT Analyst
11 4 (4.21%) UAT Analyst
11 4 (4.21%) UAT Test Analyst
12 3 (3.16%) Senior Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (8.42%) Web Services
2 6 (6.32%) Middleware
3 5 (5.26%) Playwright
4 3 (3.16%) JSON
4 3 (3.16%) REST
4 3 (3.16%) XML
5 2 (2.11%) J2EE
5 2 (2.11%) Kafka
5 2 (2.11%) RFC 2544
6 1 (1.05%) .NET
6 1 (1.05%) ADO
6 1 (1.05%) boto
6 1 (1.05%) Chai
6 1 (1.05%) Flutter
6 1 (1.05%) Jest
6 1 (1.05%) Oracle Fusion
6 1 (1.05%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (1.05%) SAP PI
6 1 (1.05%) WebdriverIO
6 1 (1.05%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 11 (11.58%) Product Ownership
2 7 (7.37%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.16%) Low-Code
4 2 (2.11%) Derivative
4 2 (2.11%) EPoS
4 2 (2.11%) FPGA
4 2 (2.11%) Mainframe
4 2 (2.11%) Management Information System
4 2 (2.11%) Mobile Banking
4 2 (2.11%) Mobile Payment
4 2 (2.11%) Online Banking
4 2 (2.11%) OTC Derivatives
4 2 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
4 2 (2.11%) Verilog
4 2 (2.11%) VHDL
4 2 (2.11%) VSAM
5 1 (1.05%) Equities
5 1 (1.05%) Fixed Income
5 1 (1.05%) Market Risk
5 1 (1.05%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 12 (12.63%) Windows
2 8 (8.42%) Unix
3 2 (2.11%) Data ONTAP
3 2 (2.11%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (45.26%) Test Automation
2 42 (44.21%) Agile
3 34 (35.79%) Test Strategy
4 31 (32.63%) User Acceptance Testing
5 25 (26.32%) DevOps
6 23 (24.21%) Problem-Solving
7 21 (22.11%) Defect Management
8 20 (21.05%) Integration Testing
8 20 (21.05%) System Integration Testing
9 19 (20.00%) Migration
9 19 (20.00%) Test Management
10 18 (18.95%) Validation
11 17 (17.89%) Software Testing
12 16 (16.84%) Manual Testing
13 15 (15.79%) CI/CD
13 15 (15.79%) Scenario Testing
13 15 (15.79%) Stakeholder Management
14 14 (14.74%) Regression Testing
14 14 (14.74%) Risk Management
14 14 (14.74%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 14 (14.74%) SQL
2 8 (8.42%) JavaScript
3 7 (7.37%) Java
4 4 (4.21%) C#
5 3 (3.16%) TypeScript
6 2 (2.11%) COBOL
6 2 (2.11%) JCL
6 2 (2.11%) Python
6 2 (2.11%) REXX
6 2 (2.11%) RPG
6 2 (2.11%) SOQL
6 2 (2.11%) SystemVerilog
6 2 (2.11%) VB
7 1 (1.05%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 13 (13.68%) Security Cleared
2 12 (12.63%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.37%) Degree
3 7 (7.37%) ISTQB
4 4 (4.21%) CBAP
5 3 (3.16%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.11%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 2 (2.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (2.11%) PhD
6 2 (2.11%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.05%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.05%) IIBA
7 1 (1.05%) ISEB
7 1 (1.05%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (37.89%) QA
2 2 (2.11%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.05%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.05%) PMO
3 1 (1.05%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (2.11%) Firmware
2 1 (1.05%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (6.32%) HP ALM
2 1 (1.05%) HP Quality Center
2 1 (1.05%) Terraform
Vendors
1 19 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.37%) SAP
3 6 (6.32%) Citrix
3 6 (6.32%) HP
3 6 (6.32%) Murex
3 6 (6.32%) Oracle
4 5 (5.26%) Cisco
5 3 (3.16%) FIS
5 3 (3.16%) Salesforce
6 2 (2.11%) Ab Initio
6 2 (2.11%) Atlassian
6 2 (2.11%) Informatica
6 2 (2.11%) NetApp
6 2 (2.11%) Parasoft
6 2 (2.11%) Workday
7 1 (1.05%) Avaloq
7 1 (1.05%) Calypso
7 1 (1.05%) Charles River
7 1 (1.05%) Micro Focus
7 1 (1.05%) OpenLink