SDET Contracts

Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring SDET skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SDET over the 6 months leading up to 12 June 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 508 558 579
Rank change year-on-year +50 +21 -31
Contract jobs citing SDET 76 139 275
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.17% 0.25% 0.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.28% 0.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 104 204
10th Percentile £413 £456 £400
25th Percentile £450 £481 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £585 £675 £638
90th Percentile £629 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% +5.21%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

SDET falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,178 49,770 79,013
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.13% 89.61% 90.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,737 34,458 55,587
10th Percentile £300 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £438 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £650
90th Percentile £750 £750 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £490
% change year-on-year - +2.04% +8.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,579 1,678 1,852
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.96 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.75 £15.90
Median hourly rate £37.00 £35.65 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.79% +37.12% +13.04%
75th Percentile £61.28 £65.00 £50.15
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.12 £34.90 £21.00
% change year-on-year +9.23% +66.18% -

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +39 65 £500 -13.04% 27
London +28 45 £500 -13.04% 13
Work from Home +110 34 £450 -10.00% 14
UK excluding London +23 26 £500 +5.26% 19
North of England +26 12 £500 +29.03% 3
South East +21 8 £450 -20.00% 7
Yorkshire - 8 £585 - 1
North West +16 4 £500 +29.03% 1
Scotland +32 3 £498 +4.84% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £550 -

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 (6.58%) Confluence
2 1 (1.32%) nginx
Business Applications
1 3 (3.95%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (2.63%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 14 (18.42%) Azure
2 13 (17.11%) AWS
3 8 (10.53%) GitHub
4 7 (9.21%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (3.95%) Amazon EC2
5 3 (3.95%) Amazon S3
6 2 (2.63%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (2.63%) Serverless
7 1 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.32%) Amazon SQS
7 1 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (1.32%) BrowserStack
7 1 (1.32%) Entra ID
7 1 (1.32%) GCP
7 1 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (1.32%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 5 (6.58%) TCP/IP
2 2 (2.63%) 5G
2 2 (2.63%) Wi-Fi
3 1 (1.32%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.95%) MariaDB
1 3 (3.95%) MySQL
1 3 (3.95%) NoSQL
1 3 (3.95%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.63%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.63%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 37 (48.68%) Selenium
2 25 (32.89%) Cucumber
3 16 (21.05%) Jenkins
4 11 (14.47%) Git
4 11 (14.47%) SpecFlow
5 10 (13.16%) JUnit
6 9 (11.84%) REST Assured
7 8 (10.53%) JIRA
7 8 (10.53%) JMeter
7 8 (10.53%) WebDriver
8 6 (7.89%) Bitbucket
8 6 (7.89%) Cypress.io
8 6 (7.89%) TestNG
9 5 (6.58%) Maven
9 5 (6.58%) Octopus Deploy
9 5 (6.58%) TeamCity
10 4 (5.26%) Artifactory
11 3 (3.95%) GitLab
11 3 (3.95%) SoapUI
12 1 (1.32%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 18 (23.68%) Finance
2 14 (18.42%) Banking
3 11 (14.47%) Social Skills
4 7 (9.21%) Public Sector
5 5 (6.58%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (3.95%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.32%) Aviation
7 1 (1.32%) Back Office
7 1 (1.32%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 15 (19.74%) Developer
2 12 (15.79%) Software Developer
3 10 (13.16%) Developer in Test
4 8 (10.53%) Software Engineer
4 8 (10.53%) Tester
5 6 (7.89%) Development Engineer
5 6 (7.89%) QA Engineer
5 6 (7.89%) Senior
5 6 (7.89%) Software Development Engineer
5 6 (7.89%) Test Development Engineer
5 6 (7.89%) Test Engineer
6 5 (6.58%) C# Developer
6 5 (6.58%) Lead
7 4 (5.26%) Automation Tester
7 4 (5.26%) C# Software Developer
7 4 (5.26%) QA Leader
7 4 (5.26%) Test Automation Engineer
8 3 (3.95%) Azure Developer
8 3 (3.95%) Linux Engineer
9 2 (2.63%) C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (11.84%) REST
2 8 (10.53%) Playwright
3 7 (9.21%) Gherkin
3 7 (9.21%) RESTful
4 5 (6.58%) SOAP
4 5 (6.58%) Spring Boot
4 5 (6.58%) XML
5 3 (3.95%) .NET
5 3 (3.95%) Software Packaging
6 2 (2.63%) Middleware
6 2 (2.63%) Node.js
6 2 (2.63%) Spring
6 2 (2.63%) SwiftUI
6 2 (2.63%) Web Services
7 1 (1.32%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.32%) AngularJS
7 1 (1.32%) Chai
7 1 (1.32%) CSS
7 1 (1.32%) JAXB
7 1 (1.32%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 5 (6.58%) Product Ownership
2 4 (5.26%) Data Protection Act
3 3 (3.95%) Fixed Income
3 3 (3.95%) Greenfield Project
3 3 (3.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 1 (1.32%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.32%) Derivative
4 1 (1.32%) Equities
4 1 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.32%) Machine to Machine
4 1 (1.32%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.32%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 1 (1.32%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (10.53%) Linux
1 8 (10.53%) Windows
2 4 (5.26%) Embedded Linux
3 1 (1.32%) Android
3 1 (1.32%) Apple iOS
3 1 (1.32%) Mac OS
3 1 (1.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (81.58%) Test Automation
2 42 (55.26%) Software Testing
3 28 (36.84%) Agile
4 25 (32.89%) CI/CD
5 20 (26.32%) BDD
6 16 (21.05%) DevOps
6 16 (21.05%) Microservices
6 16 (21.05%) Test Scripting
7 13 (17.11%) API Testing
8 10 (13.16%) End-to-End Testing
8 10 (13.16%) Manual Testing
9 9 (11.84%) Continuous Integration
9 9 (11.84%) Performance Testing
10 8 (10.53%) Software Engineering
11 7 (9.21%) Computer Science
11 7 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
11 7 (9.21%) TDD
12 6 (7.89%) Fintech
12 6 (7.89%) Functional Testing
13 5 (6.58%) Performance Management
Programming Languages
1 38 (50.00%) Java
2 18 (23.68%) C#
3 16 (21.05%) JavaScript
4 13 (17.11%) Python
5 11 (14.47%) SQL
6 9 (11.84%) TypeScript
7 7 (9.21%) PowerShell
8 4 (5.26%) C++
8 4 (5.26%) Swift
9 1 (1.32%) ABAP
9 1 (1.32%) Bash
9 1 (1.32%) C
9 1 (1.32%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7 (9.21%) Degree
1 7 (9.21%) Security Cleared
2 4 (5.26%) ISTQB
2 4 (5.26%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (3.95%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (25.00%) QA
2 5 (6.58%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.95%) ISO 20022
3 3 (3.95%) WCAG
4 1 (1.32%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 5 (6.58%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (5.26%) VirtualBox
3 3 (3.95%) Docker
4 1 (1.32%) Active Directory
4 1 (1.32%) iptables
Systems Management
1 5 (6.58%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.95%) Terraform
3 1 (1.32%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 11 (14.47%) Oracle
2 5 (6.58%) Microsoft
3 2 (2.63%) SAP
4 1 (1.32%) Salesforce