Manual Testing Contracts

Manual Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Manual Testing skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Manual Testing over the 6 months to 11 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
11 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 446 504 519
Rank change year-on-year +58 +15 -2
Contract jobs citing Manual Testing 144 197 354
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.33% 0.34% 0.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.39% 0.38% 0.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 159 237
10th Percentile £320 £312 £304
25th Percentile £375 £403 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +20.00%
75th Percentile £575 £606 £532
90th Percentile £644 £675 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £469 £425
% change year-on-year -4.00% +10.29% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 16
10th Percentile - - £16.25
25th Percentile £58.75 - £17.81
Median hourly rate £60.00 - £48.50
75th Percentile £61.25 - £50.88
90th Percentile - - £59.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 - £49.75
% change year-on-year - - +2.05%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Manual Testing is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,094 51,920 79,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.26% 89.82% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,889 35,981 55,625
10th Percentile £300 £325 £343
25th Percentile £413 £438 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,438 1,716 1,886
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.24 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.40 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.29% +41.73% +4.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.06 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.74% +75.00% -6.98%

Manual Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Manual Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Manual Testing over the 6 months to 11 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Manual Testing in the UK

Manual Testing
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Manual Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 11 May 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 +63 126 £450 -10.00% 63
London +71 67 £478 -13.18% 17
Work from Home +104 62 £450 -8.16% 31
UK excluding London +30 60 £450 -4.00% 50
North of England +24 18 £400 -12.33% 20
South East +19 16 £444 -11.25% 10
Midlands +36 12 £363 - 8
South West +8 10 £585 +11.43% 7
Yorkshire +14 9 £400 -5.88% 7
North West +14 9 £450 -4.00% 13
West Midlands +20 7 £288 -32.35% 6
East Midlands +23 5 £363 +21.85% 2
Wales +22 4 £509 - 2

Manual Testing
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 (6.94%) Confluence
2 3 (2.08%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.69%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.69%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.69%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (2.78%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.69%) Endur
2 1 (0.69%) Magento
2 1 (0.69%) MIS ActiveH
2 1 (0.69%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 41 (28.47%) Azure
2 32 (22.22%) Azure DevOps
3 9 (6.25%) GitHub
4 8 (5.56%) AWS
5 4 (2.78%) GCP
5 4 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (2.08%) BrowserStack
6 3 (2.08%) OpenShift
6 3 (2.08%) Power Platform
7 2 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.39%) BlazeMeter
7 2 (1.39%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (1.39%) Firebase
7 2 (1.39%) PowerApps
7 2 (1.39%) SaaS
7 2 (1.39%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 1 (0.69%) Boomi
8 1 (0.69%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.69%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
8 1 (0.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.78%) HTTP
1 4 (2.78%) TCP/IP
1 4 (2.78%) VLAN
1 4 (2.78%) Wireless
2 3 (2.08%) 5G
3 1 (0.69%) SMS
3 1 (0.69%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.47%) SQL Server
2 4 (2.78%) MongoDB
2 4 (2.78%) Oracle Database
3 3 (2.08%) Big Data
3 3 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (2.08%) Hadoop
3 3 (2.08%) Relational Database
4 2 (1.39%) MySQL
4 2 (1.39%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 36 (25.00%) Selenium
2 30 (20.83%) Postman
3 29 (20.14%) JIRA
4 23 (15.97%) Git
5 21 (14.58%) Visual Studio
6 19 (13.19%) Jenkins
7 15 (10.42%) Cypress.io
7 15 (10.42%) WebDriver
8 13 (9.03%) Cucumber
9 12 (8.33%) SpecFlow
10 10 (6.94%) Appium
11 9 (6.25%) JMeter
11 9 (6.25%) NUnit
12 7 (4.86%) Gatling
13 6 (4.17%) Bitbucket
14 5 (3.47%) GitLab
14 5 (3.47%) LoadRunner
14 5 (3.47%) Rational Performance Tester
15 4 (2.78%) Artifactory
15 4 (2.78%) Moq
General
1 39 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 22 (15.28%) Finance
3 16 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 10 (6.94%) Banking
6 8 (5.56%) Back Office
7 4 (2.78%) Marketing
7 4 (2.78%) Telecoms
8 3 (2.08%) Electronics
8 3 (2.08%) Investment Banking
8 3 (2.08%) Legal
8 3 (2.08%) Manufacturing
8 3 (2.08%) Retail
9 2 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.69%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.69%) Front Office
10 1 (0.69%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.69%) Law
10 1 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 41 (28.47%) Analyst
2 39 (27.08%) Test Analyst
3 37 (25.69%) Tester
4 31 (21.53%) Senior
5 26 (18.06%) Test Engineer
6 16 (11.11%) Manual Tester
7 13 (9.03%) Senior Test Engineer
8 12 (8.33%) Automation Tester
8 12 (8.33%) Senior Analyst
8 12 (8.33%) Senior Test Analyst
9 10 (6.94%) Test Automation Engineer
10 9 (6.25%) Lead
11 7 (4.86%) QA Engineer
11 7 (4.86%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
12 6 (4.17%) Developer
13 5 (3.47%) Manual Test Analyst
13 5 (3.47%) QA Leader
13 5 (3.47%) QA Tester
13 5 (3.47%) Test Manager
14 4 (2.78%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (18.06%) .NET
2 11 (7.64%) Playwright
3 10 (6.94%) AngularJS
4 9 (6.25%) .NET Framework
4 9 (6.25%) XML
5 8 (5.56%) Kafka
6 7 (4.86%) ADO
6 7 (4.86%) GraphQL
7 6 (4.17%) RESTful
8 5 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (3.47%) REST
8 5 (3.47%) Web Services
9 4 (2.78%) ActiveMQ
9 4 (2.78%) Entity Framework
9 4 (2.78%) JSON
9 4 (2.78%) SOAP
10 3 (2.08%) .NET Core
10 3 (2.08%) Gherkin
10 3 (2.08%) HTML
10 3 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 12 (8.33%) Product Ownership
2 11 (7.64%) Mobile App
3 7 (4.86%) Derivative
4 4 (2.78%) Interest Rate Derivative
5 3 (2.08%) Cloud Native
5 3 (2.08%) Fixed Income
5 3 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
5 3 (2.08%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.39%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.39%) NHS
7 1 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.69%) Equities
7 1 (0.69%) Fat Client
7 1 (0.69%) Market Risk
7 1 (0.69%) Replication
7 1 (0.69%) Robotics
7 1 (0.69%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 1 (0.69%) Thin Client
7 1 (0.69%) W3C
Operating Systems
1 12 (8.33%) Linux
2 8 (5.56%) Windows
3 7 (4.86%) Unix
4 5 (3.47%) Android
5 4 (2.78%) Embedded Linux
5 4 (2.78%) Mac OS X
6 2 (1.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (67.36%) Test Automation
2 79 (54.86%) Agile
3 46 (31.94%) DevOps
4 41 (28.47%) Software Testing
5 39 (27.08%) Test Strategy
6 32 (22.22%) Scrum
7 30 (20.83%) Performance Testing
8 29 (20.14%) BDD
8 29 (20.14%) Continuous Integration
9 28 (19.44%) CI/CD
9 28 (19.44%) Scenario Testing
10 25 (17.36%) User Acceptance Testing
11 22 (15.28%) Non-Functional Testing
12 21 (14.58%) Test Scripting
13 19 (13.19%) Acceptance Criteria
14 18 (12.50%) Regression Testing
15 17 (11.81%) End-to-End Testing
15 17 (11.81%) Kanban
15 17 (11.81%) TDD
16 16 (11.11%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 27 (18.75%) C#
2 25 (17.36%) Java
2 25 (17.36%) SQL
3 20 (13.89%) Python
4 17 (11.81%) JavaScript
5 10 (6.94%) TypeScript
6 5 (3.47%) Bash
7 4 (2.78%) C++
7 4 (2.78%) Groovy
7 4 (2.78%) Kotlin
7 4 (2.78%) Perl
7 4 (2.78%) Scala
7 4 (2.78%) Shell Script
8 3 (2.08%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.39%) R
10 1 (0.69%) Ruby
10 1 (0.69%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 13 (9.03%) Security Cleared
2 11 (7.64%) Degree
3 9 (6.25%) SC Cleared
4 7 (4.86%) ISTQB
5 5 (3.47%) DV Cleared
6 3 (2.08%) ISEB
7 2 (1.39%) SANS
8 1 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.69%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.69%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (20.83%) QA
2 16 (11.11%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.39%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.69%) GxP
4 1 (0.69%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (8.33%) Docker
2 4 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.78%) VirtualBox
3 1 (0.69%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 5 (3.47%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.78%) Iperf
3 3 (2.08%) Grafana
3 3 (2.08%) HP ALM
4 2 (1.39%) Ansible
4 2 (1.39%) Graylog
4 2 (1.39%) HP Fortify
4 2 (1.39%) HP Quality Center
4 2 (1.39%) Nagios
4 2 (1.39%) Nessus
4 2 (1.39%) Progress Chef
4 2 (1.39%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.39%) Puppet
4 2 (1.39%) Terraform
4 2 (1.39%) WebInspect
5 1 (0.69%) Kibana
5 1 (0.69%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 22 (15.28%) Microsoft
2 16 (11.11%) Oracle
3 7 (4.86%) SAP
4 6 (4.17%) HP
5 5 (3.47%) IBM
5 5 (3.47%) Salesforce
6 3 (2.08%) Splunk
7 2 (1.39%) Aderant
7 2 (1.39%) Adobe
7 2 (1.39%) Checkmarx
7 2 (1.39%) Veracode
8 1 (0.69%) Brio
8 1 (0.69%) Dell
8 1 (0.69%) Fujitsu
8 1 (0.69%) NEC
8 1 (0.69%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.69%) Perfecto Mobile
8 1 (0.69%) ServiceNow