Test Specialist Contracts

Test Specialist
UK

The median Test Specialist daily rate in the UK is £464 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 19 April 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 566 703 825
Rank change year-on-year +137 +122 -173
Contract jobs requiring a Test Specialist 20 13 30
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.046% 0.021% 0.033%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.049% 0.023% 0.035%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 8 18
10th Percentile £398 £367 £400
25th Percentile £429 £400 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £442 £469
Median % change year-on-year +4.92% -5.71% +2.46%
75th Percentile £496 £503 £496
90th Percentile £559 £550 £549
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £461 £480
% change year-on-year +15.51% -3.96% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £66.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 40,501 57,364 85,821
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.55% 95.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,442 40,011 60,276
10th Percentile £275 £313 £313
25th Percentile £409 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £748 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -1.40% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,615 1,620 2,120
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £19.33 £15.47
Median hourly rate £35.00 £45.00 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.22% +95.65% -
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.77 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.50 £42.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -14.12% +117.95% +2.63%

Test Specialist
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Test Specialist in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Specialist in the UK

Test Specialist
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Test Specialist in the UK

Test Specialist
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Specialist over the 6 months to 19 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Test Specialist in the UK

Test Specialist
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Test Specialist in the UK

Test Specialist
Top 9 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Specialist 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 +121 18 £464 +4.92% 5
London +111 9 £475 +7.71%
UK excluding London +72 9 £533 +15.51% 5
Work from Home +126 6 £453 +12.07% 4
South East +17 5 £613 - 2
Scotland +41 2 - - 1
East Midlands - 1 £453 - 1
Midlands - 1 £453 - 1
South West - 1 - -

Test Specialist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 19 April 2024, Test Specialist 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 featuring Test Specialist in the job title.

1 10 (50.00%) Test Automation
2 8 (40.00%) QA
3 7 (35.00%) SC Cleared
3 7 (35.00%) Security Cleared
4 5 (25.00%) Java
4 5 (25.00%) Oracle
4 5 (25.00%) Finance
4 5 (25.00%) API Testing
5 4 (20.00%) Validation
5 4 (20.00%) JMeter
5 4 (20.00%) ISTQB
5 4 (20.00%) Unix
5 4 (20.00%) JIRA
5 4 (20.00%) Performance Testing
5 4 (20.00%) Cucumber
5 4 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
6 3 (15.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 3 (15.00%) GitHub
6 3 (15.00%) Software Testing
6 3 (15.00%) Test Management
6 3 (15.00%) Git
6 3 (15.00%) DV Cleared
6 3 (15.00%) JavaScript
6 3 (15.00%) SQL
6 3 (15.00%) Business Continuity
6 3 (15.00%) Agile
6 3 (15.00%) ITIL
6 3 (15.00%) BT
6 3 (15.00%) TypeScript
6 3 (15.00%) ISTQB Advanced Certification

Test Specialist Skill Set
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 1 (5.00%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (5.00%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 3 (15.00%) GitHub
2 2 (10.00%) AWS
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon EC2
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon EKS
3 1 (5.00%) Amazon S3
3 1 (5.00%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (5.00%) OCI
3 1 (5.00%) SaaS
3 1 (5.00%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.00%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (5.00%) Apache Hive
1 1 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (5.00%) Hadoop
1 1 (5.00%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 4 (20.00%) Cucumber
1 4 (20.00%) JIRA
1 4 (20.00%) JMeter
2 3 (15.00%) Git
2 3 (15.00%) GitLab
3 2 (10.00%) Cypress.io
3 2 (10.00%) Jenkins
3 2 (10.00%) JUnit
3 2 (10.00%) Selenium
3 2 (10.00%) Zephyr
4 1 (5.00%) LoadRunner
4 1 (5.00%) REST Assured
General
1 5 (25.00%) Finance
2 3 (15.00%) Public Sector
3 2 (10.00%) Social Skills
4 1 (5.00%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (5.00%) Banking
4 1 (5.00%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (10.00%) Gherkin
1 2 (10.00%) Jest
1 2 (10.00%) Playwright
1 2 (10.00%) REST
1 2 (10.00%) WebdriverIO
2 1 (5.00%) Kafka
2 1 (5.00%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 1 (5.00%) Onboarding
1 1 (5.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (20.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (50.00%) Test Automation
2 5 (25.00%) API Testing
3 4 (20.00%) Performance Testing
3 4 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
3 4 (20.00%) Validation
4 3 (15.00%) Agile
4 3 (15.00%) Business Continuity
4 3 (15.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 3 (15.00%) Creative Thinking
4 3 (15.00%) ITIL
4 3 (15.00%) Software Testing
4 3 (15.00%) Test Management
5 2 (10.00%) Acceptance Criteria
5 2 (10.00%) End-to-End Testing
5 2 (10.00%) Generative AI
5 2 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
5 2 (10.00%) Scenario Testing
5 2 (10.00%) Task Automation
5 2 (10.00%) Test Planning
5 2 (10.00%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 5 (25.00%) Java
2 3 (15.00%) JavaScript
2 3 (15.00%) SQL
2 3 (15.00%) TypeScript
3 2 (10.00%) Python
3 2 (10.00%) Shell Script
4 1 (5.00%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 7 (35.00%) SC Cleared
1 7 (35.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (20.00%) ISTQB
3 3 (15.00%) DV Cleared
3 3 (15.00%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
4 1 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (5.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (40.00%) QA
2 1 (5.00%) Data Quality
2 1 (5.00%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 2 (10.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (5.00%) Ansible
1 1 (5.00%) Grafana
1 1 (5.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (25.00%) Oracle
2 3 (15.00%) BT
3 1 (5.00%) Confluent
3 1 (5.00%) HP
3 1 (5.00%) IBM
3 1 (5.00%) Informatica
3 1 (5.00%) Micro Focus
3 1 (5.00%) OpenText
3 1 (5.00%) StreamSets