Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SDET skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited SDET over the 6 months to 16 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
16 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 501 543 578
Rank change year-on-year +42 +35 -73
Contract jobs citing SDET 75 141 282
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.18% 0.25% 0.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.28% 0.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 112 213
10th Percentile £413 £414 £406
25th Percentile £431 £472 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £671 £625
90th Percentile £629 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +4.84% - +5.85%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

SDET 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 36,679 51,168 79,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.19% 89.82% 90.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,608 35,479 55,636
10th Percentile £300 £325 £345
25th Percentile £413 £438 £429
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.16%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £479
% change year-on-year - +4.38% +9.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,436 1,692 1,900
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.64 £12.50
25th Percentile £15.94 £16.10 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.27 £35.65 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +1.75% +38.82% +5.35%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.21%

SDET
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for SDET in the UK

SDET
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for SDET in the UK

SDET
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDET over the 6 months to 16 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SDET in the UK

SDET
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for SDET in the UK

SDET
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDET within the UK over the 6 months to 16 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 +64 64 £500 -13.04% 23
London +49 46 £500 -13.04% 9
Work from Home +110 33 £450 -10.00% 17
UK excluding London +42 23 £498 +4.84% 14
North of England +32 9 £500 +29.03% 4
South East +20 9 £450 -20.00% 4
Yorkshire - 5 £450 - 4
North West +20 4 £500 +29.03%
Scotland +14 3 £498 +4.84% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £550 - 1

SDET
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 5 (6.67%) Confluence
2 1 (1.33%) nginx
Business Applications
1 3 (4.00%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (2.67%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 17 (22.67%) AWS
2 15 (20.00%) Azure
3 6 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (8.00%) GitHub
4 5 (6.67%) Amazon EC2
4 5 (6.67%) Amazon S3
5 3 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (4.00%) Amazon SQS
6 2 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (2.67%) GCP
6 2 (2.67%) Serverless
7 1 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (1.33%) BrowserStack
7 1 (1.33%) Entra ID
7 1 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (1.33%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 5 (6.67%) TCP/IP
2 2 (2.67%) 5G
2 2 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (1.33%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.00%) MariaDB
1 3 (4.00%) MySQL
1 3 (4.00%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.67%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.67%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 38 (50.67%) Selenium
2 24 (32.00%) Cucumber
3 18 (24.00%) Jenkins
4 13 (17.33%) Git
5 11 (14.67%) REST Assured
6 10 (13.33%) JMeter
6 10 (13.33%) WebDriver
7 9 (12.00%) Cypress.io
7 9 (12.00%) JUnit
7 9 (12.00%) SpecFlow
7 9 (12.00%) TestNG
8 8 (10.67%) JIRA
9 6 (8.00%) Bitbucket
9 6 (8.00%) Maven
10 5 (6.67%) Octopus Deploy
10 5 (6.67%) SoapUI
10 5 (6.67%) TeamCity
11 4 (5.33%) Artifactory
11 4 (5.33%) GitLab
12 3 (4.00%) Gradle
General
1 19 (25.33%) Finance
2 14 (18.67%) Banking
3 11 (14.67%) Social Skills
4 7 (9.33%) Public Sector
5 5 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (5.33%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.33%) Aviation
7 1 (1.33%) Back Office
7 1 (1.33%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (18.67%) Developer
2 11 (14.67%) Software Developer
2 11 (14.67%) Tester
3 9 (12.00%) Developer in Test
4 8 (10.67%) Software Engineer
5 7 (9.33%) Automation Tester
6 6 (8.00%) Development Engineer
6 6 (8.00%) QA Engineer
6 6 (8.00%) Senior
6 6 (8.00%) Software Development Engineer
6 6 (8.00%) Test Development Engineer
6 6 (8.00%) Test Engineer
7 5 (6.67%) C# Developer
7 5 (6.67%) Lead
8 4 (5.33%) C# Software Developer
8 4 (5.33%) QA Leader
8 4 (5.33%) Test Automation Engineer
9 3 (4.00%) Azure Developer
9 3 (4.00%) Linux Engineer
10 2 (2.67%) JavaScript Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (13.33%) REST
2 7 (9.33%) Playwright
2 7 (9.33%) SOAP
3 6 (8.00%) RESTful
4 5 (6.67%) Spring Boot
4 5 (6.67%) XML
5 4 (5.33%) Gherkin
5 4 (5.33%) Middleware
6 3 (4.00%) .NET
6 3 (4.00%) Chai
6 3 (4.00%) JAXB
6 3 (4.00%) JAX-RS
6 3 (4.00%) Node.js
6 3 (4.00%) Spring
6 3 (4.00%) Web Services
7 2 (2.67%) Software Packaging
7 2 (2.67%) SwiftUI
8 1 (1.33%) .NET Framework
8 1 (1.33%) CSS
8 1 (1.33%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (8.00%) Greenfield Project
2 5 (6.67%) Data Protection Act
2 5 (6.67%) Product Ownership
3 3 (4.00%) Fixed Income
3 3 (4.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 2 (2.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (1.33%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.33%) Derivative
5 1 (1.33%) Equities
5 1 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.33%) Machine to Machine
5 1 (1.33%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.33%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 1 (1.33%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (10.67%) Linux
2 7 (9.33%) Windows
3 4 (5.33%) Embedded Linux
4 1 (1.33%) Android
4 1 (1.33%) Apple iOS
4 1 (1.33%) Mac OS
4 1 (1.33%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (81.33%) Test Automation
2 39 (52.00%) Software Testing
3 28 (37.33%) CI/CD
4 27 (36.00%) Agile
5 23 (30.67%) BDD
6 18 (24.00%) Microservices
7 15 (20.00%) DevOps
8 13 (17.33%) Test Scripting
9 11 (14.67%) API Testing
10 10 (13.33%) End-to-End Testing
11 9 (12.00%) Continuous Integration
11 9 (12.00%) TDD
12 8 (10.67%) Fintech
12 8 (10.67%) Manual Testing
12 8 (10.67%) Performance Testing
12 8 (10.67%) Software Engineering
13 7 (9.33%) Computer Science
13 7 (9.33%) Problem-Solving
13 7 (9.33%) QA Automation
13 7 (9.33%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 37 (49.33%) Java
2 20 (26.67%) Python
3 17 (22.67%) JavaScript
4 16 (21.33%) C#
5 11 (14.67%) SQL
6 10 (13.33%) TypeScript
7 7 (9.33%) PowerShell
8 4 (5.33%) C++
8 4 (5.33%) Swift
9 2 (2.67%) C
10 1 (1.33%) ABAP
10 1 (1.33%) Bash
10 1 (1.33%) Scala
Qualifications
1 9 (12.00%) Security Cleared
2 7 (9.33%) Degree
2 7 (9.33%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.33%) ISTQB
4 3 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.67%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.33%) ISEB
6 1 (1.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (29.33%) QA
2 6 (8.00%) Accessibility
3 3 (4.00%) ISO 20022
3 3 (4.00%) WCAG
4 1 (1.33%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 6 (8.00%) Docker
2 5 (6.67%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (5.33%) VirtualBox
4 1 (1.33%) Active Directory
4 1 (1.33%) iptables
Systems Management
1 7 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 3 (4.00%) Terraform
3 1 (1.33%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 12 (16.00%) Oracle
2 5 (6.67%) Microsoft
3 3 (4.00%) SAP
4 2 (2.67%) Salesforce