Software Testing Contracts

Software Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Software Testing skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Software Testing over the 6 months to 18 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 174 193 190
Rank change year-on-year +19 -3 +7
Contract jobs citing Software Testing 558 780 1,325
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.31% 1.37% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.52% 1.53% 1.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 368 525 852
10th Percentile £309 £291 £338
25th Percentile £399 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.04% -0.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £575 £630 £575
90th Percentile £682 £704 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £465
% change year-on-year +5.88% -8.60% +9.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 74 75
10th Percentile £37.55 £42.50 £17.25
25th Percentile £56.25 £42.81 £30.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £52.74 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.52% +7.62% +7.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £58.75
90th Percentile - £72.50 £63.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £52.50 £49.00
% change year-on-year +19.05% +7.14% +7.69%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Software 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 36,673 51,121 79,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.13% 89.77% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,631 35,432 55,673
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £438 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +7.07%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £480
% change year-on-year - +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,440 1,683 1,892
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.01 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.05 £36.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.13% +40.19% +7.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.54
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% -4.99%

Software Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Testing over the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Testing over the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Testing in the UK

Software Testing
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 Software Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 18 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 +23 489 £455 -9.10% 475
UK excluding London +16 294 £450 +5.88% 436
London +3 208 £465 -15.45% 87
Work from Home +22 199 £463 -1.60% 212
South East +37 92 £425 +6.25% 126
North of England +29 66 £450 +9.09% 69
Yorkshire +43 45 £430 -9.47% 24
East of England -4 45 £440 -2.22% 75
Midlands +20 39 £500 +20.48% 79
West Midlands +18 27 £500 +11.61% 45
South West -12 26 £550 +4.76% 54
North West -8 21 £475 +20.25% 44
Scotland -12 15 £482 +1.37% 27
East Midlands +16 12 £525 +40.00% 34
Northern Ireland +10 8 £563 - 8
Isle of Man - 2 - -
Wales +15 1 £210 -73.75% 12

Software 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 19 (3.41%) Confluence
2 7 (1.25%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.08%) CMS
4 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.90%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.72%) Apache
5 4 (0.72%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.54%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.18%) Appian
7 1 (0.18%) JBoss
7 1 (0.18%) MTS
7 1 (0.18%) SharePoint 2013
7 1 (0.18%) Tornado
Applications
1 26 (4.66%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.25%) Simulink
4 5 (0.90%) Stateflow
4 5 (0.90%) TargetLink
5 3 (0.54%) Windchill
6 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (1.79%) Endur
2 5 (0.90%) FLEXCUBE
3 4 (0.72%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.54%) ENOVIA
4 3 (0.54%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.54%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.36%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.36%) SAP FSCM
5 2 (0.36%) WebTrends
6 1 (0.18%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.18%) SAP APO
6 1 (0.18%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 93 (16.67%) Azure
2 72 (12.90%) AWS
3 57 (10.22%) Azure DevOps
4 34 (6.09%) GitHub
5 13 (2.33%) Serverless
6 12 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (2.15%) SaaS
7 9 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
7 9 (1.61%) Amazon S3
7 9 (1.61%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.43%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (1.43%) PaaS
9 7 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (1.25%) Entra ID
9 7 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 6 (1.08%) BrowserStack
10 6 (1.08%) GCP
10 6 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (1.08%) IaaS
10 6 (1.08%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 35 (6.27%) Modbus
1 35 (6.27%) RS-422
1 35 (6.27%) RS-485
2 15 (2.69%) LAN
3 7 (1.25%) DNS
3 7 (1.25%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.08%) DHCP
4 6 (1.08%) Internet
4 6 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
5 5 (0.90%) HTTP
5 5 (0.90%) SNMP
6 4 (0.72%) 5G
6 4 (0.72%) Firewall
6 4 (0.72%) SMS
6 4 (0.72%) Software-Defined Radio
6 4 (0.72%) VPN
6 4 (0.72%) Wireless
7 3 (0.54%) FTP
7 3 (0.54%) SSL
7 3 (0.54%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.38%) SQL Server
2 20 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (3.05%) Oracle Database
4 13 (2.33%) Oracle Database 11g
5 12 (2.15%) MySQL
5 12 (2.15%) NoSQL
5 12 (2.15%) Relational Database
6 10 (1.79%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.25%) Apache Cassandra
9 6 (1.08%) Power BI
10 5 (0.90%) Couchbase
10 5 (0.90%) MongoDB
10 5 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.72%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.54%) Big Data
12 3 (0.54%) MariaDB
13 2 (0.36%) DynamoDB
14 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 86 (15.41%) Git
2 70 (12.54%) Selenium
3 62 (11.11%) JIRA
4 46 (8.24%) Jenkins
5 37 (6.63%) Postman
6 34 (6.09%) Cucumber
7 30 (5.38%) WebDriver
8 29 (5.20%) JUnit
9 20 (3.58%) Visual Studio
10 19 (3.41%) Appium
10 19 (3.41%) JMeter
11 18 (3.23%) GitLab
11 18 (3.23%) REST Assured
12 17 (3.05%) TestNG
13 16 (2.87%) Bitbucket
14 15 (2.69%) Cypress.io
15 12 (2.15%) Subversion
16 11 (1.97%) SoapUI
16 11 (1.97%) SpecFlow
16 11 (1.97%) TestRail
General
1 201 (36.02%) Social Skills
2 86 (15.41%) Finance
3 64 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (8.60%) Electronics
5 43 (7.71%) Public Sector
6 36 (6.45%) Banking
7 35 (6.27%) Back Office
8 21 (3.76%) Telecoms
9 17 (3.05%) Organisational Skills
10 14 (2.51%) Investment Banking
11 12 (2.15%) Automotive
12 11 (1.97%) Retail
13 10 (1.79%) Aerospace
14 9 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (1.61%) Manufacturing
15 7 (1.25%) Marketing
16 6 (1.08%) Front Office
16 6 (1.08%) Retail Banking
17 5 (0.90%) Legal
17 5 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 86 (15.41%) Developer
2 77 (13.80%) Analyst
3 66 (11.83%) Software Engineer
4 60 (10.75%) Test Engineer
5 57 (10.22%) Senior
6 52 (9.32%) Tester
7 45 (8.06%) Lead
8 44 (7.89%) Test Analyst
9 35 (6.27%) Test Manager
10 28 (5.02%) C++ Software Engineer
11 27 (4.84%) Software Developer
12 23 (4.12%) Storage Manager
13 22 (3.94%) Senior Analyst
14 20 (3.58%) Senior Test Analyst
15 18 (3.23%) Hardware Engineer
16 16 (2.87%) QA Engineer
17 15 (2.69%) Software Tester
17 15 (2.69%) SQL Developer
17 15 (2.69%) Test Automation Engineer
18 13 (2.33%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (7.53%) .NET
2 26 (4.66%) React
2 26 (4.66%) Web Services
3 24 (4.30%) .NET Framework
3 24 (4.30%) AngularJS
4 23 (4.12%) REST
5 22 (3.94%) HTML
6 17 (3.05%) CSS
6 17 (3.05%) RESTful
7 15 (2.69%) Spring
7 15 (2.69%) Spring Boot
8 14 (2.51%) Redux
9 13 (2.33%) Node.js
9 13 (2.33%) SOAP
9 13 (2.33%) YAML
10 11 (1.97%) Gherkin
10 11 (1.97%) XML
11 9 (1.61%) GraphQL
11 9 (1.61%) jQuery
11 9 (1.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 41 (7.35%) Self-Motivation
2 31 (5.56%) Product Ownership
3 21 (3.76%) Mobile App
4 16 (2.87%) Algorithms
5 15 (2.69%) Driving Licence
6 14 (2.51%) Data Centre
7 10 (1.79%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (1.43%) Life Science
9 8 (1.43%) Renewable Energy
10 7 (1.25%) Client/Server
10 7 (1.25%) Data Structures
10 7 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.25%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.08%) NHS
11 6 (1.08%) Replication
12 5 (0.90%) Clustering
12 5 (0.90%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 5 (0.90%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 55 (9.86%) Linux
2 50 (8.96%) Windows
3 27 (4.84%) Unix
4 24 (4.30%) Android
5 17 (3.05%) Windows 10
6 15 (2.69%) Windows 7
6 15 (2.69%) zOS
7 4 (0.72%) Apple iOS
7 4 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
7 4 (0.72%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 277 (49.64%) Agile
2 210 (37.63%) Test Automation
3 162 (29.03%) DevOps
4 147 (26.34%) Software Engineering
5 103 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
6 102 (18.28%) Continuous Integration
7 87 (15.59%) CI/CD
8 83 (14.87%) Scrum
8 83 (14.87%) Test Strategy
8 83 (14.87%) Unit Testing
9 73 (13.08%) TDD
10 69 (12.37%) Test Scripting
11 68 (12.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 59 (10.57%) Customer Requirements
13 57 (10.22%) SDLC
14 47 (8.42%) Computer Science
15 46 (8.24%) Performance Testing
16 44 (7.89%) Project Management
16 44 (7.89%) User Acceptance Testing
17 41 (7.35%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 104 (18.64%) SQL
2 96 (17.20%) C#
2 96 (17.20%) Java
3 81 (14.52%) Python
4 61 (10.93%) JavaScript
5 57 (10.22%) C++
6 55 (9.86%) C
7 30 (5.38%) TypeScript
8 27 (4.84%) Bash
9 23 (4.12%) PL/SQL
10 17 (3.05%) PowerShell
11 16 (2.87%) Kotlin
12 14 (2.51%) JCL
13 10 (1.79%) Go
13 10 (1.79%) REXX
14 9 (1.61%) Bourne shell
14 9 (1.61%) Korn
15 8 (1.43%) MATLAB
16 5 (0.90%) Perl
16 5 (0.90%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 119 (21.33%) Security Cleared
2 105 (18.82%) Degree
3 79 (14.16%) SC Cleared
4 50 (8.96%) ISTQB
5 36 (6.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (5.73%) DV Cleared
7 14 (2.51%) ISEB
8 11 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.43%) Master's Degree
10 7 (1.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 7 (1.25%) Numerate Degree
11 4 (0.72%) Chartered Engineer
11 4 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 2 (0.36%) CISSP
12 2 (0.36%) ISEB Practitioner
13 1 (0.18%) CEH
13 1 (0.18%) PhD
13 1 (0.18%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.18%) PMP
13 1 (0.18%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (15.59%) QA
2 11 (1.97%) Accessibility
3 7 (1.25%) AUTOSAR
3 7 (1.25%) PCI DSS
4 6 (1.08%) HL7
4 6 (1.08%) MISRA
4 6 (1.08%) MISRA C
5 5 (0.90%) ISO 26262
5 5 (0.90%) Software Quality Assurance
6 4 (0.72%) WCAG
7 3 (0.54%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.54%) GDPR
8 2 (0.36%) Automotive SPICE
8 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.36%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.36%) PMO
8 2 (0.36%) SLA
9 1 (0.18%) Def Stans
System Software
1 21 (3.76%) Docker
2 19 (3.41%) Firmware
3 14 (2.51%) NFS
3 14 (2.51%) Time Sharing Option
4 7 (1.25%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.72%) VirtualBox
5 4 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 28 (5.02%) Kubernetes
2 26 (4.66%) Ansible
3 24 (4.30%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 21 (3.76%) SCCM
5 15 (2.69%) Terraform
6 5 (0.90%) Puppet
7 3 (0.54%) HP ALM
7 3 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
7 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.36%) Grafana
8 2 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.36%) Kibana
8 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Clustering
8 2 (0.36%) Opsgenie
8 2 (0.36%) Rancher
9 1 (0.18%) Iperf
9 1 (0.18%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 82 (14.70%) Microsoft
2 67 (12.01%) Oracle
3 31 (5.56%) IBM
4 23 (4.12%) HP
5 19 (3.41%) Broadcom
5 19 (3.41%) Dell
6 14 (2.51%) Brocade
6 14 (2.51%) CA
7 11 (1.97%) SAP
8 10 (1.79%) Google
8 10 (1.79%) OpenLink
9 7 (1.25%) Adobe
10 6 (1.08%) VMware
11 5 (0.90%) Databricks
11 5 (0.90%) Red Hat
11 5 (0.90%) Siemens
11 5 (0.90%) Splunk
11 5 (0.90%) Xilinx
12 4 (0.72%) Optimizely
12 4 (0.72%) ServiceNow