Test Strategy Contracts

Test Strategy
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Test Strategy skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Test Strategy over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 221 214 224
Rank change year-on-year -7 +10 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Strategy 364 492 715
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.25% 1.13% 1.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.37% 1.31% 1.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 301 508
10th Percentile £344 £358 £400
25th Percentile £406 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.67% - +1.35%
75th Percentile £556 £600 £598
90th Percentile £695 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.95% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 12
10th Percentile £28.18 £58.75 -
25th Percentile £35.51 £64.38 £39.68
Median hourly rate £60.00 £70.00 £58.94
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +18.77% +126.68%
75th Percentile £71.88 £72.50 £62.55
90th Percentile £80.13 - £80.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £55.33
% change year-on-year -4.00% +12.97% +191.18%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test Strategy 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 26,551 37,621 53,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.30% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,137 24,254 37,244
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £744 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,437 1,746
10th Percentile £14.70 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -4.83% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.00 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% +1.39% +80.00%

Test Strategy
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Test Strategy in the UK

Test Strategy
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Test Strategy in the UK

Test Strategy
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Strategy over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Strategy in the UK

Test Strategy
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Test Strategy in the UK

Test Strategy
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Strategy over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Strategy in the UK

Test Strategy
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 Test Strategy within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +9 335 £475 -9.52% 302
UK excluding London +45 198 £466 -1.95% 200
London -36 141 £475 -13.64% 130
Work from Home -21 111 £475 -9.52% 171
South East +64 65 £450 -4.76% 44
North of England +50 53 £450 - 60
Midlands +37 53 £500 +25.00% 25
West Midlands +32 45 £507 +33.90% 17
North West +27 31 £447 -0.67% 38
Yorkshire +18 17 £463 - 15
South West +34 12 £610 +8.45% 19
East of England +2 9 £750 +41.18% 24
East Midlands +9 8 £386 -8.42% 8
North East +3 5 £520 +27.61% 8
Wales -2 4 £322 -39.89% 11
Scotland -8 4 £525 +1.11% 10
Northern Ireland - 1 £550 - 6

Test Strategy
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 20 (5.49%) Confluence
2 3 (0.82%) CICS
2 3 (0.82%) CMS
2 3 (0.82%) Headless CMS
3 2 (0.55%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.55%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.55%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.55%) WordPress
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 6 (1.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.37%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.10%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 12 (3.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.37%) NetSuite
3 4 (1.10%) Endur
4 3 (0.82%) Unit4 Business World
5 2 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.55%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.27%) Cerner Millennium
6 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.27%) Orchestrade
6 1 (0.27%) SAP CRM
6 1 (0.27%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 82 (22.53%) Azure
2 46 (12.64%) AWS
3 43 (11.81%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (5.77%) Power Platform
5 20 (5.49%) GitHub
6 18 (4.95%) PowerApps
7 15 (4.12%) GCP
8 11 (3.02%) SaaS
9 10 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (1.37%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (1.37%) Power Automate
11 5 (1.37%) Tricentis Tosca
12 4 (1.10%) Azure Pipelines
12 4 (1.10%) BrowserStack
12 4 (1.10%) SuccessFactors
13 2 (0.55%) OCI
13 2 (0.55%) Sauce Labs
13 2 (0.55%) Twilio
14 1 (0.27%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 20 (5.49%) MPLS
2 16 (4.40%) LAN
2 16 (4.40%) WAN
3 15 (4.12%) ATM
3 15 (4.12%) Ethernet
3 15 (4.12%) Frame Relay
3 15 (4.12%) GPRS
3 15 (4.12%) GSM
3 15 (4.12%) LTE
3 15 (4.12%) SAN
3 15 (4.12%) SDH
3 15 (4.12%) UMTS
3 15 (4.12%) VPN
3 15 (4.12%) Wireshark
4 5 (1.37%) BGP
4 5 (1.37%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.37%) VLAN
5 2 (0.55%) Firewall
5 2 (0.55%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.27%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (1.92%) NoSQL
3 6 (1.65%) MySQL
4 4 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (1.10%) Power BI
5 3 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (0.82%) DB2
5 3 (0.82%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.82%) SQL Server
6 2 (0.55%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.55%) Electronic Patient Records
6 2 (0.55%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.55%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.55%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.27%) Big Data
7 1 (0.27%) IDMS
Development Applications
1 95 (26.10%) JIRA
2 61 (16.76%) Selenium
3 41 (11.26%) Jenkins
4 35 (9.62%) JMeter
5 33 (9.07%) Postman
6 32 (8.79%) Cypress.io
6 32 (8.79%) Git
7 29 (7.97%) REST Assured
8 19 (5.22%) Cucumber
9 15 (4.12%) JUnit
10 14 (3.85%) LoadRunner
11 10 (2.75%) Bitbucket
11 10 (2.75%) Gatling
12 9 (2.47%) TestRail
13 8 (2.20%) GitLab
14 7 (1.92%) Appium
14 7 (1.92%) SoapUI
14 7 (1.92%) SpecFlow
15 5 (1.37%) Maven
15 5 (1.37%) NUnit
General
1 166 (45.60%) Social Skills
2 66 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (17.86%) Finance
4 27 (7.42%) Banking
4 27 (7.42%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.42%) Telecoms
5 10 (2.75%) Front Office
5 10 (2.75%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (2.20%) Retail
7 7 (1.92%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (1.37%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.10%) Automotive
9 4 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.10%) Law
9 4 (1.10%) Legal
9 4 (1.10%) Marketing
9 4 (1.10%) Military
10 3 (0.82%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 69 (18.96%) Test Manager
2 66 (18.13%) Lead
3 50 (13.74%) Senior
4 49 (13.46%) Tester
5 46 (12.64%) Analyst
6 44 (12.09%) Test Engineer
7 41 (11.26%) Test Leader
8 26 (7.14%) QA Engineer
9 23 (6.32%) Developer
10 20 (5.49%) Business Analyst
11 19 (5.22%) Test Analyst
12 16 (4.40%) Automation Tester
12 16 (4.40%) Senior Test Engineer
13 14 (3.85%) IP Engineer
14 13 (3.57%) Senior Analyst
15 11 (3.02%) Test Automation Engineer
16 10 (2.75%) Consultant
17 9 (2.47%) Automation Test Lead
17 9 (2.47%) Programme Test Manager
17 9 (2.47%) Test Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.77%) Playwright
2 19 (5.22%) REST
3 12 (3.30%) Node.js
4 10 (2.75%) React
5 7 (1.92%) .NET
5 7 (1.92%) Jest
5 7 (1.92%) pytest
6 6 (1.65%) GraphQL
6 6 (1.65%) Middleware
6 6 (1.65%) RESTful
7 5 (1.37%) CSS
7 5 (1.37%) HTML
7 5 (1.37%) XML
8 4 (1.10%) SailPoint
9 3 (0.82%) FIX Protocol
9 3 (0.82%) Gherkin
9 3 (0.82%) J2EE
9 3 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (0.82%) Spring Boot
9 3 (0.82%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 30 (8.24%) Product Ownership
2 21 (5.77%) Self-Motivation
3 15 (4.12%) Data Centre
4 13 (3.57%) SCADA
5 9 (2.47%) CMDB
6 7 (1.92%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.92%) FMCG
7 6 (1.65%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.65%) NHS
8 5 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.37%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.37%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 4 (1.10%) Mainframe
10 3 (0.82%) Low-Code
10 3 (0.82%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.82%) State Machine
11 2 (0.55%) Infotainment
Operating Systems
1 26 (7.14%) Linux
2 22 (6.04%) Unix
3 14 (3.85%) Windows
4 1 (0.27%) Android
4 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (44.51%) Test Automation
2 147 (40.38%) Agile
3 125 (34.34%) Problem-Solving
4 95 (26.10%) DevOps
5 92 (25.27%) CI/CD
6 72 (19.78%) User Acceptance Testing
7 67 (18.41%) Test Management
8 62 (17.03%) Test Scripting
9 59 (16.21%) Stakeholder Management
10 53 (14.56%) Performance Testing
11 51 (14.01%) API Testing
12 49 (13.46%) Validation
13 48 (13.19%) Regression Testing
14 46 (12.64%) Software Testing
15 44 (12.09%) End-to-End Testing
15 44 (12.09%) System Integration Testing
16 40 (10.99%) Scrum
17 39 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
17 39 (10.71%) Defect Management
18 37 (10.16%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 57 (15.66%) Java
2 53 (14.56%) SQL
3 43 (11.81%) Python
4 32 (8.79%) JavaScript
5 27 (7.42%) TypeScript
6 14 (3.85%) C#
7 6 (1.65%) PL/SQL
8 5 (1.37%) Go
8 5 (1.37%) Perl
9 4 (1.10%) VBA
10 3 (0.82%) COBOL
10 3 (0.82%) JCL
11 2 (0.55%) MATLAB
11 2 (0.55%) REXX
11 2 (0.55%) RPG
12 1 (0.27%) ABAP
12 1 (0.27%) PHP
12 1 (0.27%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.27%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.27%) VB
Qualifications
1 53 (14.56%) Security Cleared
2 46 (12.64%) SC Cleared
3 43 (11.81%) ISTQB
4 28 (7.69%) Degree
5 24 (6.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 21 (5.77%) ISEB
7 15 (4.12%) CCNP
7 15 (4.12%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.37%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.37%) Master's Degree
10 4 (1.10%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.10%) PMI Certification
10 4 (1.10%) PMP
11 2 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (0.55%) CBAP
11 2 (0.55%) CISA
11 2 (0.55%) CRISC
11 2 (0.55%) HND
12 1 (0.27%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (34.07%) QA
2 17 (4.67%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.20%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.37%) GDPR
6 3 (0.82%) Software Quality Assurance
6 3 (0.82%) WCAG
7 2 (0.55%) COSHH
7 2 (0.55%) GRC
7 2 (0.55%) GxP
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 14001
7 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.55%) ITGC
7 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.55%) SOX 404
8 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.27%) IFRS
8 1 (0.27%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.27%) NIST
8 1 (0.27%) SEPA
System Software
1 20 (5.49%) Docker
2 1 (0.27%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 16 (4.40%) HP ALM
2 14 (3.85%) Kubernetes
3 11 (3.02%) Ansible
4 8 (2.20%) Terraform
5 3 (0.82%) Packer
6 2 (0.55%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.55%) Grafana
7 1 (0.27%) CA Endevor
7 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 34 (9.34%) Microsoft
2 33 (9.07%) Oracle
3 29 (7.97%) SAP
4 19 (5.22%) Cisco
5 16 (4.40%) HP
6 15 (4.12%) Juniper
7 11 (3.02%) ServiceNow
8 9 (2.47%) Workday
9 8 (2.20%) Informatica
10 7 (1.92%) Databricks
11 6 (1.65%) MuleSoft
11 6 (1.65%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.37%) Talend
13 4 (1.10%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.10%) ION Trading
13 4 (1.10%) Murex
14 3 (0.82%) Ariba
14 3 (0.82%) CheckPoint
14 3 (0.82%) Google
14 3 (0.82%) Solace