Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Contract Tester Skill Set
Period
to 25 October 2021

The median contractor rate for a Tester was £438 per day in advertised job vacancies during the 6 months to 25 October 2021.

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

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Tester
UK
6 months to
25 Oct 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 248 240 239
Rank change year-on-year -8 -1 -47
Contract jobs requiring a Tester 913 344 968
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.08% 1.08% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 1.17% 1.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 664 240 596
10th Percentile £305 £270 £278
25th Percentile £363 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% - -
75th Percentile £500 £463 £475
90th Percentile £588 £506 £550
UK excluding London median daily rate £421 £375 £375
% change year-on-year +12.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 12
10th Percentile " " £10.75
25th Percentile £18.00 " £11.03
Median hourly rate £26.00 £50.00 £13.10
Median % change year-on-year -48.00% +281.68% +4.80%
75th Percentile £45.65 £52.50 £13.81
90th Percentile £46.75 £54.00 £23.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.89 £50.00 £13.10
% change year-on-year -60.22% +281.68% -20.61%

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.

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK
Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 79,127 29,398 79,422
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.28% 92.31% 94.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 55,119 19,869 53,215
10th Percentile £300 £260 £258
25th Percentile £408 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +2.70% +2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £569
90th Percentile £700 £663 £645
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £425
% change year-on-year +5.88% - +2.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,084 962 2,723
10th Percentile £11.88 £11.17 £11.17
25th Percentile £13.67 £14.00 £13.75
Median hourly rate £19.93 £22.00 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.43% +15.79% +8.57%
75th Percentile £45.00 £43.75 £43.00
90th Percentile £62.45 £54.00 £51.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £19.50 £17.50
% change year-on-year -10.26% +11.43% -

Tester
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Tester in the UK

Tester
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Tester in the UK

Tester
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Tester over the 6 months to 25 October 2021.

Daily rate histogram for Tester in the UK

Tester
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Tester in the UK

Tester
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Tester over the 6 months to 25 October 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for Tester in the UK

Tester
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 Tester within the UK over the 6 months to 25 October 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -35 706 £425 +6.25% 181
UK excluding London -23 371 £421 +12.33% 156
London -58 315 £450 +8.76% 42
Work from Home -44 296 £450 +25.00% 50
North of England -30 97 £405 +8.00% 57
Midlands -34 74 £385 +9.69% 19
South East -65 64 £380 -1.94% 27
South West -12 55 £443 -1.67% 21
West Midlands -33 53 £413 +17.52% 9
Scotland -40 49 £450 +5.88% 8
North West -31 48 £410 +30.16% 28
Yorkshire -24 36 £415 +3.75% 22
East of England -57 27 £427 -5.11% 14
East Midlands -35 21 £355 +10.08% 10
North East 0 15 £340 -19.62% 7
Wales -25 5 £500 +31.58% 10

Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring IT Skills

For the 6 months to 25 October 2021, Tester contract jobs required the following IT skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Tester in the job title.

1 582 (63.75%) Test Automation
2 369 (40.42%) Agile Software Development
3 281 (30.78%) Selenium
4 218 (23.88%) Java
5 207 (22.67%) JIRA
6 195 (21.36%) QA
7 179 (19.61%) Cucumber
7 179 (19.61%) Social Skills
8 153 (16.76%) Test Scripting
9 144 (15.77%) SQL
10 139 (15.22%) Software Testing
11 136 (14.90%) BDD
12 131 (14.35%) Security Cleared
13 126 (13.80%) Performance Testing
14 125 (13.69%) Python
15 124 (13.58%) Azure
16 118 (12.92%) Finance
17 115 (12.60%) Postman
18 112 (12.27%) Jenkins
19 111 (12.16%) JMeter
20 110 (12.05%) API Testing
21 109 (11.94%) Scrum
22 102 (11.17%) SC Cleared
23 101 (11.06%) DevOps
24 100 (10.95%) Functional Testing
24 100 (10.95%) JavaScript
25 98 (10.73%) Manual Testing
26 97 (10.62%) Git (software)
26 97 (10.62%) C#
27 95 (10.41%) Test Strategy

Tester Skill Set
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 67 (7.34%) Confluence
2 10 (1.10%) SAS
3 7 (0.77%) WebSphere
4 6 (0.66%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.55%) WebLogic
6 4 (0.44%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.44%) CMS
6 4 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.44%) IBM Domino
7 3 (0.33%) Cloud Foundry
8 2 (0.22%) CICS
8 2 (0.22%) Drupal
8 2 (0.22%) MQSeries
8 2 (0.22%) WordPress
9 1 (0.11%) Apache
9 1 (0.11%) Mule
Applications
1 18 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.11%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (0.88%) SAP HCM
2 7 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.44%) BASE24
4 4 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.33%) Magento
5 3 (0.33%) Salesforce.com CRM
6 2 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
6 2 (0.22%) Loan IQ
6 2 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.22%) Shopify
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle BPM
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.11%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.11%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
7 1 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
7 1 (0.11%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 124 (13.58%) Azure
2 69 (7.56%) AWS
3 37 (4.05%) GitHub
4 21 (2.30%) Serverless
5 19 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
5 19 (2.08%) SaaS
6 15 (1.64%) BrowserStack
7 12 (1.31%) GCP
7 12 (1.31%) SuccessFactors
8 11 (1.20%) Amazon S3
9 10 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (1.10%) Power Platform
10 8 (0.88%) BlazeMeter
10 8 (0.88%) PaaS
11 7 (0.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (0.77%) Azure Logic Apps
12 6 (0.66%) Amazon SQS
13 5 (0.55%) Azure Service Bus
13 5 (0.55%) IaaS
14 4 (0.44%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.86%) HTTP
1 17 (1.86%) Network Security
2 11 (1.20%) Wireshark
3 9 (0.99%) VPN
4 7 (0.77%) ATM
4 7 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (0.66%) Internet
5 6 (0.66%) WAN
6 5 (0.55%) DSL
6 5 (0.55%) FTP
6 5 (0.55%) LAN
7 4 (0.44%) 4G
7 4 (0.44%) 5G
7 4 (0.44%) Bluetooth
7 4 (0.44%) Radio Access Network
7 4 (0.44%) SAN
7 4 (0.44%) SMS
7 4 (0.44%) XCAP
8 3 (0.33%) MQTT
8 3 (0.33%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
2 20 (2.19%) SQL Server
3 14 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
4 13 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (1.31%) MongoDB
6 11 (1.20%) Big Data
7 9 (0.99%) DB2
7 9 (0.99%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 7 (0.77%) Power BI
10 6 (0.66%) Amazon DynamoDB
11 5 (0.55%) Apache Cassandra
11 5 (0.55%) BusinessObjects
11 5 (0.55%) MySQL
11 5 (0.55%) Riak
12 4 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (0.44%) DbVisualizer
12 4 (0.44%) Hadoop
13 3 (0.33%) Flink
13 3 (0.33%) PowerCenter
Development Applications
1 281 (30.78%) Selenium
2 207 (22.67%) JIRA
3 179 (19.61%) Cucumber
4 115 (12.60%) Postman
5 112 (12.27%) Jenkins
6 111 (12.16%) JMeter
7 97 (10.62%) Git (software)
8 73 (8.00%) SoapUI
9 50 (5.48%) REST Assured
9 50 (5.48%) WebDriver
10 49 (5.37%) Gatling
11 45 (4.93%) LoadRunner
12 43 (4.71%) SpecFlow
13 38 (4.16%) Appium
14 31 (3.40%) Cypress.io
15 23 (2.52%) JUnit
16 22 (2.41%) Maven
17 18 (1.97%) TeamCity
18 16 (1.75%) GitLab
19 14 (1.53%) TestNG
General
1 179 (19.61%) Social Skills
2 118 (12.92%) Finance
3 81 (8.87%) Public Sector
4 49 (5.37%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (5.37%) Banking
5 27 (2.96%) Retail
6 17 (1.86%) Electronics
6 17 (1.86%) Telecoms
7 13 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
8 12 (1.31%) Manufacturing
9 9 (0.99%) Marketing
10 8 (0.88%) Games
10 8 (0.88%) Investment Banking
11 7 (0.77%) Multimedia
11 7 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (0.66%) Retail Banking
13 5 (0.55%) Law
13 5 (0.55%) Legal
13 5 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.44%) Documentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (6.02%) Gherkin
2 54 (5.91%) SOAP
3 53 (5.81%) REST
3 53 (5.81%) XML
4 50 (5.48%) .NET
5 39 (4.27%) RESTful
6 38 (4.16%) Web Services
7 30 (3.29%) JSON
8 24 (2.63%) Node.js
9 20 (2.19%) Spring
10 19 (2.08%) pytest
11 18 (1.97%) WireMock
12 17 (1.86%) .NET Framework
13 15 (1.64%) Beautiful Soup
14 13 (1.42%) AngularJS
14 13 (1.42%) Kafka
15 12 (1.31%) HTML
16 11 (1.20%) React
17 10 (1.10%) Jest
17 10 (1.10%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 39 (4.27%) Mobile App
2 26 (2.85%) User Experience
3 18 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
4 16 (1.75%) Client/Server
5 13 (1.42%) Mainframe
6 12 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (0.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 7 (0.77%) NHS
8 7 (0.77%) Raspberry Pi
9 6 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (0.66%) SCADA
10 5 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
11 3 (0.33%) Equities
11 3 (0.33%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.33%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.33%) PlayStation
11 3 (0.33%) Xbox
12 2 (0.22%) Fixed Income
12 2 (0.22%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 50 (5.48%) Unix
2 46 (5.04%) Windows
3 45 (4.93%) Linux
4 35 (3.83%) Apple iOS
5 29 (3.18%) Android
6 7 (0.77%) Embedded Linux
6 7 (0.77%) Mac OS X
7 2 (0.22%) Kali Linux
7 2 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.22%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (63.75%) Test Automation
2 369 (40.42%) Agile Software Development
3 153 (16.76%) Test Scripting
4 139 (15.22%) Software Testing
5 136 (14.90%) BDD
6 126 (13.80%) Performance Testing
7 110 (12.05%) API Testing
8 109 (11.94%) Scrum
9 101 (11.06%) DevOps
10 100 (10.95%) Functional Testing
11 98 (10.73%) Manual Testing
12 95 (10.41%) Test Strategy
13 83 (9.09%) Scenario Testing
14 81 (8.87%) TDD
15 79 (8.65%) Regression Testing
16 67 (7.34%) Problem-Solving
16 67 (7.34%) SDET
17 59 (6.46%) Defect Management
18 58 (6.35%) User Acceptance Testing
19 53 (5.81%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 218 (23.88%) Java
2 144 (15.77%) SQL
3 125 (13.69%) Python
4 100 (10.95%) JavaScript
5 97 (10.62%) C#
6 27 (2.96%) C
7 23 (2.52%) Ruby
8 21 (2.30%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.97%) C++
10 17 (1.86%) Groovy
11 16 (1.75%) Shell Script
12 15 (1.64%) Scala
13 13 (1.42%) Bash Shell
14 11 (1.20%) Java 8
15 8 (0.88%) COBOL
16 7 (0.77%) Perl
17 5 (0.55%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.55%) VBScript
18 4 (0.44%) Go
18 4 (0.44%) VBA
Qualifications
1 131 (14.35%) Security Cleared
2 102 (11.17%) SC Cleared
3 80 (8.76%) ISTQB
4 51 (5.59%) ISEB
5 40 (4.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 26 (2.85%) DV Cleared
7 24 (2.63%) CREST Certified
8 23 (2.52%) Degree
9 12 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
10 10 (1.10%) CHECK Team Leader
10 10 (1.10%) Cyber Scheme
11 9 (0.99%) OSCP
12 7 (0.77%) Tigerscheme
13 6 (0.66%) CHECK Team Member
14 4 (0.44%) DBS Check
15 3 (0.33%) Computer Science Degree
16 2 (0.22%) CCNP
16 2 (0.22%) Cisco Certification
16 2 (0.22%) CISSP
16 2 (0.22%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 195 (21.36%) QA
2 40 (4.38%) Accessibility
3 8 (0.88%) NCSC
4 6 (0.66%) Data Quality
5 5 (0.55%) HL7
5 5 (0.55%) SLA
6 4 (0.44%) GRC
6 4 (0.44%) ISO 8583
7 3 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.33%) NIST
7 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.22%) WCAG
9 1 (0.11%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.11%) WAI
System Software
1 38 (4.16%) Docker
2 3 (0.33%) HDFS
3 1 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.11%) Firmware
3 1 (0.11%) vCloud
3 1 (0.11%) Xen
Systems Management
1 27 (2.96%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.41%) Terraform
3 13 (1.42%) HP Quality Center
4 8 (0.88%) HP ALM
5 7 (0.77%) Grafana
6 5 (0.55%) Kibana
6 5 (0.55%) Rancher
7 4 (0.44%) HP Fortify
7 4 (0.44%) WebInspect
8 3 (0.33%) Prometheus
9 2 (0.22%) Nessus
9 2 (0.22%) Netcool
9 2 (0.22%) Nmap
10 1 (0.11%) Ansible
10 1 (0.11%) Istio
10 1 (0.11%) Puppet
Vendors
1 71 (7.78%) Oracle
2 63 (6.90%) Microsoft
3 31 (3.40%) SAP
4 19 (2.08%) HP
4 19 (2.08%) Salesforce.com
5 17 (1.86%) IBM
6 11 (1.20%) Google
7 9 (0.99%) CA Agile Central
7 9 (0.99%) New Relic
8 8 (0.88%) Splunk
9 7 (0.77%) Atlassian
9 7 (0.77%) CA
10 6 (0.66%) AppDynamics
10 6 (0.66%) Dynatrace
10 6 (0.66%) Informatica
10 6 (0.66%) MuleSoft
10 6 (0.66%) SOASTA, Inc
11 5 (0.55%) hybris
11 5 (0.55%) webMethods
12 4 (0.44%) Cisco