Tester
UK

The median Tester daily rate in the UK is £450 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 5 May 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
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 316 287 293
Rank change year-on-year -29 +6 -42
Contract jobs requiring a Tester 296 567 852
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.69% 0.96% 0.96%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 1.01% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 416 643
10th Percentile £319 £313 £306
25th Percentile £363 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +7.46%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £525
90th Percentile £650 £688 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £425 £410
% change year-on-year - +3.66% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 23
10th Percentile £14.22 £55.80 £12.45
25th Percentile £20.18 £61.50 £15.75
Median hourly rate £30.15 £72.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.13% +300.00% -60.00%
75th Percentile £40.09 £81.50 £36.00
90th Percentile £46.04 £86.60 £58.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £10.30 £54.00 £18.25
% change year-on-year -80.93% +195.89% -42.06%

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 40,029 55,895 84,701
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.75% 94.62% 95.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,060 39,048 59,505
10th Percentile £280 £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 £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,566 2,078
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.11 £15.72
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.60
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +90.68% +4.89%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £76.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.00 £19.52
% change year-on-year -4.76% +115.16% +2.74%

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 5 May 2024.

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 5 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Tester in the UK

Tester
Top 17 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 5 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 -37 257 £450 -10.00% 107
London +19 151 £475 -13.64% 37
Work from Home +22 108 £425 -7.61% 43
UK excluding London -50 106 £425 - 76
North of England -11 39 £450 +5.88% 20
South East -5 33 £425 +1.19% 17
Yorkshire +15 23 £463 +2.78% 10
North West +3 13 £400 +17.65% 9
Midlands +15 12 £365 -14.12% 10
South West +10 11 £541 +20.28% 13
East Midlands +16 8 £380 - 6
Scotland +24 6 £375 -14.58% 5
West Midlands +11 4 £203 -59.50% 4
North East +1 3 £600 +29.03% 1
Northern Ireland +8 2 - - 2
Wales - 2 £562 - 3
East of England +1 1 - - 8

Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 5 May 2024, Tester 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 Tester in the job title.

1 173 (58.45%) Test Automation
2 101 (34.12%) Agile
3 62 (20.95%) QA
4 61 (20.61%) Java
5 60 (20.27%) Selenium
6 57 (19.26%) Security Cleared
6 57 (19.26%) Python
7 55 (18.58%) Social Skills
8 51 (17.23%) Software Testing
9 47 (15.88%) C#
10 46 (15.54%) JavaScript
11 45 (15.20%) Test Scripting
12 42 (14.19%) Scenario Testing
13 41 (13.85%) SQL
13 41 (13.85%) CI/CD
14 40 (13.51%) Azure
15 39 (13.18%) JIRA
16 38 (12.84%) Performance Testing
16 38 (12.84%) DevOps
17 37 (12.50%) SC Cleared
17 37 (12.50%) Scrum
18 35 (11.82%) User Acceptance Testing
18 35 (11.82%) Manual Testing
19 34 (11.49%) Regression Testing
20 33 (11.15%) Banking
20 33 (11.15%) BDD
21 32 (10.81%) Test Strategy
21 32 (10.81%) AWS
22 31 (10.47%) Functional Testing
22 31 (10.47%) Cucumber

Tester 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 10 (3.38%) Confluence
2 5 (1.69%) Apache
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.68%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.68%) CMS
4 2 (0.68%) IIS
4 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Windchill
2 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.68%) Mingle
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (1.69%) Endur
2 3 (1.01%) ENOVIA
2 3 (1.01%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.34%) BASE24
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 40 (13.51%) Azure
2 32 (10.81%) AWS
3 20 (6.76%) Azure DevOps
4 11 (3.72%) GitHub
5 7 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
5 7 (2.36%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.03%) BrowserStack
6 6 (2.03%) SaaS
7 5 (1.69%) Firebase
7 5 (1.69%) Serverless
8 4 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (1.35%) Azure Monitor
8 4 (1.35%) BlazeMeter
8 4 (1.35%) GCP
8 4 (1.35%) IaaS
8 4 (1.35%) PaaS
9 3 (1.01%) Amazon EC2
9 3 (1.01%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.01%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (1.01%) SAP Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.70%) Wireless
2 5 (1.69%) 5G
3 4 (1.35%) Broadband
3 4 (1.35%) Internet
4 3 (1.01%) BGP
4 3 (1.01%) Ethernet VPN
4 3 (1.01%) HTTP
4 3 (1.01%) MPLS
4 3 (1.01%) VPN
5 2 (0.68%) Diameter Protocol
5 2 (0.68%) Firewall
5 2 (0.68%) GGSN
5 2 (0.68%) IPsec
5 2 (0.68%) Radio Access Network
5 2 (0.68%) SGSN
6 1 (0.34%) 4G
6 1 (0.34%) DNS
6 1 (0.34%) LTE
6 1 (0.34%) Network Security
6 1 (0.34%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.41%) SQL Server
2 6 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (1.35%) Power BI
4 3 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (1.01%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.68%) Big Data
5 2 (0.68%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.68%) Hadoop
5 2 (0.68%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.68%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.34%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.34%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.34%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.34%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.34%) Metadata
6 1 (0.34%) Parquet
6 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 60 (20.27%) Selenium
2 39 (13.18%) JIRA
3 31 (10.47%) Cucumber
4 30 (10.14%) JMeter
5 29 (9.80%) Cypress.io
6 23 (7.77%) Jenkins
6 23 (7.77%) Postman
7 21 (7.09%) Git
8 19 (6.42%) SpecFlow
9 15 (5.07%) WebDriver
10 12 (4.05%) GitLab
11 11 (3.72%) JUnit
11 11 (3.72%) REST Assured
11 11 (3.72%) SoapUI
12 10 (3.38%) Appium
12 10 (3.38%) LoadRunner
13 8 (2.70%) TestRail
14 7 (2.36%) Maven
14 7 (2.36%) TestNG
15 6 (2.03%) TestComplete
General
1 55 (18.58%) Social Skills
2 33 (11.15%) Banking
3 28 (9.46%) Finance
4 24 (8.11%) Public Sector
5 23 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (4.73%) Back Office
7 12 (4.05%) Investment Banking
8 10 (3.38%) Front Office
8 10 (3.38%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.36%) Manufacturing
9 7 (2.36%) Prime Brokerage
10 6 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.69%) Legal
11 5 (1.69%) Wholesale Banking
12 4 (1.35%) Law
12 4 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.68%) Electronics
13 2 (0.68%) German Language
13 2 (0.68%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.43%) REST
2 17 (5.74%) Playwright
3 15 (5.07%) .NET
4 13 (4.39%) Web Services
5 12 (4.05%) ADO
5 12 (4.05%) Gherkin
6 11 (3.72%) JSON
7 10 (3.38%) WebdriverIO
7 10 (3.38%) XML
8 7 (2.36%) SOAP
9 6 (2.03%) .NET Framework
9 6 (2.03%) AngularJS
9 6 (2.03%) Middleware
10 5 (1.69%) Node.js
11 3 (1.01%) Chai
11 3 (1.01%) FIX Protocol
11 3 (1.01%) GraphQL
11 3 (1.01%) Jest
11 3 (1.01%) pytest
11 3 (1.01%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.77%) Mobile App
2 9 (3.04%) Product Ownership
3 8 (2.70%) Equities
4 7 (2.36%) Operational Technology
5 6 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.03%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (1.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 4 (1.35%) Hedge funds
8 3 (1.01%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.01%) Virtual Team
9 2 (0.68%) Algorithms
9 2 (0.68%) Cloud Native
9 2 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (0.68%) Derivative
9 2 (0.68%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.68%) PKI
9 2 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.34%) Reference Data
10 1 (0.34%) Robotics
10 1 (0.34%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 11 (3.72%) Linux
1 11 (3.72%) Windows
2 10 (3.38%) Unix
3 7 (2.36%) Android
4 6 (2.03%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.34%) AIX
5 1 (0.34%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (58.45%) Test Automation
2 101 (34.12%) Agile
3 51 (17.23%) Software Testing
4 45 (15.20%) Test Scripting
5 42 (14.19%) Scenario Testing
6 41 (13.85%) CI/CD
7 38 (12.84%) DevOps
7 38 (12.84%) Performance Testing
8 37 (12.50%) Scrum
9 35 (11.82%) Manual Testing
9 35 (11.82%) User Acceptance Testing
10 34 (11.49%) Regression Testing
11 33 (11.15%) BDD
12 32 (10.81%) Test Strategy
13 31 (10.47%) Functional Testing
14 28 (9.46%) Problem-Solving
15 25 (8.45%) API Testing
15 25 (8.45%) End-to-End Testing
16 24 (8.11%) Continuous Integration
17 22 (7.43%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 61 (20.61%) Java
2 57 (19.26%) Python
3 47 (15.88%) C#
4 46 (15.54%) JavaScript
5 41 (13.85%) SQL
6 17 (5.74%) TypeScript
7 12 (4.05%) C++
8 6 (2.03%) C
9 3 (1.01%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.01%) Perl
9 3 (1.01%) Ruby
9 3 (1.01%) Scala
9 3 (1.01%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.68%) Bash
10 2 (0.68%) Delphi
10 2 (0.68%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.68%) Swift
10 2 (0.68%) VBScript
11 1 (0.34%) VB
11 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 57 (19.26%) Security Cleared
2 37 (12.50%) SC Cleared
3 19 (6.42%) CREST Certified
3 19 (6.42%) OSCP
4 17 (5.74%) Degree
5 12 (4.05%) GIAC
5 12 (4.05%) GPEN
5 12 (4.05%) ISTQB
6 8 (2.70%) CEH
7 7 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.36%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.69%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 4 (1.35%) SANS
10 3 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.01%) CCNA
10 3 (1.01%) CHECK Team Leader
10 3 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.01%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.68%) CCNP
11 2 (0.68%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (20.95%) QA
2 20 (6.76%) Accessibility
3 7 (2.36%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.36%) NIST
4 6 (2.03%) PCI DSS
5 4 (1.35%) GDPR
5 4 (1.35%) NCSC
5 4 (1.35%) WCAG
6 3 (1.01%) ISO 9001
7 2 (0.68%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 9 (3.04%) Docker
2 8 (2.70%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 10 (3.38%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.68%) Grafana
2 2 (0.68%) Kibana
3 1 (0.34%) Ansible
3 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
3 1 (0.34%) HP Quality Center
3 1 (0.34%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 21 (7.09%) Oracle
2 13 (4.39%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.36%) Splunk
4 6 (2.03%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.03%) Virgin Media
5 5 (1.69%) Google
5 5 (1.69%) SAP
5 5 (1.69%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.35%) Adobe
6 4 (1.35%) Qualtrics
7 3 (1.01%) PTC
7 3 (1.01%) Siemens
7 3 (1.01%) Wind River
8 2 (0.68%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.68%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.68%) HP
8 2 (0.68%) IBM
8 2 (0.68%) OpenLink
9 1 (0.34%) Databricks
9 1 (0.34%) FIS