Tester Contract Job Trends

Tester
UK

The median Tester daily rate in the UK is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 250 269 222
Rank change year-on-year +19 -47 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Tester 413 310 491
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 0.91% 1.11%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.24% 0.98% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 176 312
10th Percentile £325 £305 £325
25th Percentile £375 £350 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £436 £461
Median % change year-on-year +3.15% -5.42% +2.50%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £575
90th Percentile £600 £618 £644
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £425 £440
% change year-on-year -4.12% -3.41% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 2
10th Percentile - - £21.85
25th Percentile - £76.25 £29.88
Median hourly rate £32.71 £77.50 £46.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.79% +68.48% +217.13%
75th Percentile - £78.75 £64.38
90th Percentile - - £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.71 - £17.00
% change year-on-year - - +24.77%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides 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 33,289 31,718 41,239
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.98% 92.78% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,068 19,534 27,738
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 999 1,468
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.52 £15.14
25th Percentile £18.19 £21.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.47 £34.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.09% -23.60% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.84 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.46 £72.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.76%

Tester
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Tester' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Tester job vacancy trend in the UK

Tester
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the UK

Tester
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Tester over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Tester in the UK

Tester
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Tester job vacancies in the UK

Tester
Top 16 Contract Job 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 18 December 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 +30 357 £450 - 169
London +34 202 £500 +5.26% 18
Work from Home +43 164 £468 +8.41% 267
UK excluding London -13 158 £408 -4.12% 166
South East +4 62 £413 -2.94% 51
North of England -41 43 £375 -6.25% 38
Midlands -19 28 £449 +0.90% 29
Yorkshire -31 19 £375 -16.67% 14
West Midlands -21 16 £500 +14.94% 18
North West -25 15 £325 -18.75% 23
East Midlands -7 12 £360 -20.88% 10
North East +1 9 £550 +29.41% 1
South West -7 9 £475 +5.56% 19
Wales +11 8 £700 +16.67% 3
Scotland -7 6 £538 +38.71% 4
East of England -22 5 £400 +4.92% 20

Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 December 2025, Tester contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Tester in the job title.

1 206 (49.88%) Test Automation
2 141 (34.14%) Security Cleared
3 114 (27.60%) SC Cleared
4 113 (27.36%) Agile
5 100 (24.21%) Azure
6 97 (23.49%) Penetration Testing
7 90 (21.79%) Python
8 84 (20.34%) CI/CD
8 84 (20.34%) Selenium
9 82 (19.85%) QA
9 82 (19.85%) Test Scripting
10 80 (19.37%) JIRA
11 68 (16.46%) AWS
12 64 (15.50%) SQL
12 64 (15.50%) Test Strategy
13 58 (14.04%) DevOps
14 55 (13.32%) Cybersecurity
14 55 (13.32%) Playwright
15 51 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
16 50 (12.11%) Validation
17 46 (11.14%) API Testing
18 43 (10.41%) Manual Testing
18 43 (10.41%) Regression Testing
18 43 (10.41%) User Acceptance Testing
19 42 (10.17%) C#
20 41 (9.93%) Java
21 40 (9.69%) Azure DevOps
21 40 (9.69%) CHECK Team Member
22 39 (9.44%) Postman
22 39 (9.44%) Software Testing

Tester Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 25 (6.05%) Confluence
2 4 (0.97%) Oracle Application Server
3 3 (0.73%) Apache
3 3 (0.73%) CMS
3 3 (0.73%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.24%) EPiServer
5 1 (0.24%) JBoss
5 1 (0.24%) SAS
5 1 (0.24%) Sitecore CMS
5 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.24%) WebLogic
Applications
1 13 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (2.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.24%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.24%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 6 (1.45%) NetSuite
2 5 (1.21%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.48%) Maximo
4 2 (0.48%) ProductWriter
4 2 (0.48%) SAP Payroll
4 2 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 100 (24.21%) Azure
2 68 (16.46%) AWS
3 40 (9.69%) Azure DevOps
4 28 (6.78%) GitHub
5 14 (3.39%) Dynamics 365
5 14 (3.39%) Power Platform
6 13 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (2.91%) GCP
8 11 (2.66%) Snowflake
9 8 (1.94%) Amazon S3
10 7 (1.69%) Entra ID
11 6 (1.45%) Azure Storage
12 5 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.21%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 4 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
13 4 (0.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 3 (0.73%) Azure Service Bus
14 3 (0.73%) dbt
14 3 (0.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 3 (0.73%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 13 (3.15%) Firewall
1 13 (3.15%) Wireless
2 11 (2.66%) Wireshark
3 5 (1.21%) HTTP
3 5 (1.21%) Network Security
3 5 (1.21%) VLAN
3 5 (1.21%) VPN
4 4 (0.97%) Internet
4 4 (0.97%) Intranet
4 4 (0.97%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.73%) BGP
5 3 (0.73%) Cisco ASA
5 3 (0.73%) MPLS
5 3 (0.73%) Multicast
5 3 (0.73%) OSPF
6 1 (0.24%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.24%) GSM
6 1 (0.24%) ISDN
6 1 (0.24%) RTP
6 1 (0.24%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (1.69%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.21%) Azure SQL Database
4 5 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.97%) MySQL
5 4 (0.97%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.97%) Oracle ODI
5 4 (0.97%) Power BI
5 4 (0.97%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.97%) Star Schema
6 3 (0.73%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.73%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.48%) Big Data
7 2 (0.48%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.24%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.24%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 84 (20.34%) Selenium
2 80 (19.37%) JIRA
3 39 (9.44%) Postman
4 38 (9.20%) Jenkins
5 32 (7.75%) Cypress.io
6 30 (7.26%) Cucumber
7 25 (6.05%) Burp Suite
7 25 (6.05%) Metasploit
8 22 (5.33%) JMeter
9 21 (5.08%) GitLab
10 20 (4.84%) SpecFlow
11 18 (4.36%) Git
12 17 (4.12%) JUnit
12 17 (4.12%) REST Assured
12 17 (4.12%) Zephyr
13 16 (3.87%) TestRail
14 9 (2.18%) MSTest
15 8 (1.94%) Gatling
15 8 (1.94%) SoapUI
15 8 (1.94%) Visual Studio
General
1 138 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 48 (11.62%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (10.41%) Finance
4 40 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 25 (6.05%) Banking
6 10 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.45%) Military
8 5 (1.21%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.21%) Telecoms
9 4 (0.97%) Automotive
9 4 (0.97%) Manufacturing
9 4 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.48%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.48%) Electronics
10 2 (0.48%) Marketing
11 1 (0.24%) Billing
11 1 (0.24%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.24%) Retail
11 1 (0.24%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.24%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (13.32%) Playwright
2 25 (6.05%) REST
3 17 (4.12%) .NET
4 16 (3.87%) RESTful
5 13 (3.15%) XML
6 11 (2.66%) JSON
6 11 (2.66%) pytest
7 10 (2.42%) SOAP
7 10 (2.42%) Web Services
8 7 (1.69%) Gherkin
9 6 (1.45%) SailPoint
9 6 (1.45%) SAML
10 5 (1.21%) JWT
10 5 (1.21%) Node.js
10 5 (1.21%) OAuth
10 5 (1.21%) React
11 4 (0.97%) Apache NiFi
11 4 (0.97%) HTML
11 4 (0.97%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 4 (0.97%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 12 (2.91%) Security Posture
2 11 (2.66%) Product Ownership
3 10 (2.42%) Mobile App
4 8 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (1.21%) NHS
6 4 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (0.97%) Replication
7 3 (0.73%) Algorithms
7 3 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (0.73%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (0.73%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (0.73%) Onboarding
7 3 (0.73%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.48%) CSOC
8 2 (0.48%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.48%) Fixed Income
8 2 (0.48%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (0.48%) iSeries
8 2 (0.48%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.48%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 26 (6.30%) Linux
1 26 (6.30%) Windows
2 11 (2.66%) Android
3 10 (2.42%) Kali Linux
4 6 (1.45%) Apple iOS
4 6 (1.45%) Unix
5 2 (0.48%) VMS
6 1 (0.24%) FreeRTOS
6 1 (0.24%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.24%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.24%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (49.88%) Test Automation
2 113 (27.36%) Agile
3 97 (23.49%) Penetration Testing
4 84 (20.34%) CI/CD
5 82 (19.85%) Test Scripting
6 64 (15.50%) Test Strategy
7 58 (14.04%) DevOps
8 55 (13.32%) Cybersecurity
9 51 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
10 50 (12.11%) Validation
11 46 (11.14%) API Testing
12 43 (10.41%) Manual Testing
12 43 (10.41%) Regression Testing
12 43 (10.41%) User Acceptance Testing
13 39 (9.44%) Software Testing
14 36 (8.72%) SDLC
15 33 (7.99%) Test Management
16 30 (7.26%) Scenario Testing
17 29 (7.02%) Defect Management
17 29 (7.02%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 90 (21.79%) Python
2 64 (15.50%) SQL
3 42 (10.17%) C#
4 41 (9.93%) Java
5 38 (9.20%) JavaScript
6 24 (5.81%) Bash
7 22 (5.33%) TypeScript
8 18 (4.36%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.69%) XPath
10 6 (1.45%) Go
11 5 (1.21%) Scala
12 3 (0.73%) Ruby
13 2 (0.48%) C
13 2 (0.48%) C++
13 2 (0.48%) C-shell
13 2 (0.48%) Korn
13 2 (0.48%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.24%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.24%) Rust
14 1 (0.24%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 141 (34.14%) Security Cleared
2 114 (27.60%) SC Cleared
3 40 (9.69%) CHECK Team Member
4 34 (8.23%) CHECK Team Leader
5 28 (6.78%) Degree
6 27 (6.54%) ISTQB
7 22 (5.33%) DV Cleared
8 21 (5.08%) CREST Certified
9 19 (4.60%) OSCP
10 15 (3.63%) GPEN
11 13 (3.15%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 10 (2.42%) CEH
13 8 (1.94%) CISA
13 8 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.69%) Cyber Scheme
15 6 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
15 6 (1.45%) Postgraduate
16 5 (1.21%) CISSP
16 5 (1.21%) OSCE
17 4 (0.97%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (19.85%) QA
2 29 (7.02%) Accessibility
3 26 (6.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (3.87%) NIST
5 15 (3.63%) Data Quality
6 9 (2.18%) COBIT
6 9 (2.18%) GDPR
6 9 (2.18%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.94%) NCSC
8 7 (1.69%) WCAG
9 6 (1.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.45%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.45%) PMO
10 3 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.73%) SLA
11 2 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.48%) ITGC
11 2 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.48%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 19 (4.60%) Docker
2 6 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.73%) Firmware
4 2 (0.48%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 28 (6.78%) Nmap
2 15 (3.63%) Kubernetes
3 10 (2.42%) Nessus
4 6 (1.45%) Grafana
5 4 (0.97%) Ansible
5 4 (0.97%) HP ALM
5 4 (0.97%) Terraform
6 3 (0.73%) Iperf
6 3 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.24%) Puppet
7 1 (0.24%) SCCM
7 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (6.05%) Oracle
2 23 (5.57%) Microsoft
3 18 (4.36%) Salesforce
4 12 (2.91%) SAP
5 10 (2.42%) Databricks
6 9 (2.18%) Splunk
7 6 (1.45%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.21%) HP
9 4 (0.97%) CheckPoint
9 4 (0.97%) Dynatrace
9 4 (0.97%) IBM
9 4 (0.97%) Wind River
10 3 (0.73%) Cisco
10 3 (0.73%) Fortinet
10 3 (0.73%) MuleSoft
10 3 (0.73%) Palo Alto
10 3 (0.73%) Rapid7
10 3 (0.73%) Siebel
10 3 (0.73%) SolarWinds
10 3 (0.73%) Workday