Test Engineer Contracts

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £425 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 25 April 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
25 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 317 389 407
Rank change year-on-year +72 +18 -42
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 292 366 520
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.67% 0.61% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.64% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 262 321
10th Percentile £300 £338 £331
25th Percentile £375 £413 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +5.26% +16.85%
75th Percentile £519 £600 £550
90th Percentile £580 £700 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -10.53% +5.56% +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 16 26
10th Percentile £26.88 £41.25 £17.00
25th Percentile £35.00 £50.63 £31.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £56.25 £47.93
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% +17.37% +6.50%
75th Percentile £59.44 £70.00 £56.00
90th Percentile £62.00 £71.88 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £56.25 £50.85
% change year-on-year -24.44% +10.62% +13.00%

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 40,482 56,783 84,604
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.77% 94.58% 95.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,407 39,621 59,331
10th Percentile £275 £313 £313
25th Percentile £408 £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 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,642 1,607 2,111
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.28 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.45 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.68 £45.00 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.71% +95.65% +1.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.60 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £42.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -11.76% +117.95% +2.63%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Test Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 25 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 25 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 25 April 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 +98 264 £430 -16.10% 199
UK excluding London +72 196 £425 -10.53% 174
Work from Home +120 111 £425 -5.56% 60
London +60 72 £438 -28.57% 32
South East +32 59 £426 +6.56% 64
North of England +37 52 £425 -15.00% 22
North West +33 37 £450 -5.26% 11
South West +15 35 £559 +9.56% 27
Midlands +37 22 £255 -36.17% 21
East Midlands +33 21 £255 -32.00% 4
East of England +5 19 £420 -8.70% 34
Yorkshire +29 15 £411 -17.75% 8
Wales +15 6 £363 -39.58% 3
Scotland +18 3 £364 -22.86% 9
West Midlands +25 1 £525 +6.28% 17

Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 25 April 2024, Test Engineer 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 Test Engineer in the job title.

1 142 (48.63%) Test Automation
2 91 (31.16%) Agile
3 75 (25.68%) Security Cleared
4 69 (23.63%) JIRA
5 65 (22.26%) Python
6 64 (21.92%) Test Scripting
7 57 (19.52%) SC Cleared
7 57 (19.52%) Java
8 55 (18.84%) Social Skills
9 54 (18.49%) Software Testing
10 52 (17.81%) Selenium
11 50 (17.12%) SQL
12 49 (16.78%) AWS
13 48 (16.44%) CI/CD
14 38 (13.01%) Regression Testing
15 36 (12.33%) DevOps
16 35 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
16 35 (11.99%) Performance Testing
17 33 (11.30%) Confluence
17 33 (11.30%) Scrum
18 30 (10.27%) JMeter
18 30 (10.27%) Jenkins
19 29 (9.93%) QA
19 29 (9.93%) Cucumber
19 29 (9.93%) Finance
20 28 (9.59%) Windows
20 28 (9.59%) Degree
21 27 (9.25%) Manual Testing
21 27 (9.25%) BDD
22 26 (8.90%) Accessibility

Test Engineer 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 33 (11.30%) Confluence
2 15 (5.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.42%) Apache
3 10 (3.42%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.68%) CMS
5 1 (0.34%) MTS
5 1 (0.34%) nginx
5 1 (0.34%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
Applications
1 14 (4.79%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.68%) Simulink
4 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.34%) MIS ActiveH
2 1 (0.34%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 49 (16.78%) AWS
2 19 (6.51%) Azure
3 13 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (2.05%) BrowserStack
4 6 (2.05%) GitHub
5 5 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
5 5 (1.71%) Serverless
6 4 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (1.03%) GCP
7 3 (1.03%) Power Platform
8 2 (0.68%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (0.68%) PaaS
8 2 (0.68%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 2 (0.68%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 2 (0.68%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (0.34%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.34%) Azure Monitor
9 1 (0.34%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.34%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (0.34%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.82%) DHCP
1 17 (5.82%) DNS
2 15 (5.14%) Wireless
3 12 (4.11%) BGP
3 12 (4.11%) MPLS
4 11 (3.77%) VPN
5 10 (3.42%) Ethernet VPN
5 10 (3.42%) Radio Access Network
6 9 (3.08%) TCP/IP
7 5 (1.71%) 5G
8 4 (1.37%) HTTP
8 4 (1.37%) VLAN
9 3 (1.03%) 4G
9 3 (1.03%) SNMP
10 2 (0.68%) Cisco Nexus
10 2 (0.68%) Multicast
10 2 (0.68%) OSPF
10 2 (0.68%) RS-232
10 2 (0.68%) Software-Defined Radio
11 1 (0.34%) 3G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.48%) MongoDB
2 11 (3.77%) NoSQL
2 11 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (1.03%) Power BI
5 1 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.34%) Big Data
5 1 (0.34%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.34%) Data Mining
5 1 (0.34%) HDInsight
5 1 (0.34%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 69 (23.63%) JIRA
2 52 (17.81%) Selenium
3 30 (10.27%) Jenkins
3 30 (10.27%) JMeter
4 29 (9.93%) Cucumber
5 17 (5.82%) Cypress.io
5 17 (5.82%) Postman
6 15 (5.14%) GitLab
7 14 (4.79%) Git
7 14 (4.79%) TestRail
8 12 (4.11%) Robot Framework
9 9 (3.08%) LabVIEW
10 8 (2.74%) Gatling
11 7 (2.40%) JUnit
11 7 (2.40%) WebDriver
12 6 (2.05%) Bitbucket
12 6 (2.05%) NUnit
12 6 (2.05%) Visual Studio
13 5 (1.71%) REST Assured
14 4 (1.37%) Appium
General
1 55 (18.84%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (9.93%) Finance
4 21 (7.19%) Public Sector
5 19 (6.51%) Military
6 16 (5.48%) Telecoms
7 12 (4.11%) Electronics
8 11 (3.77%) Manufacturing
9 7 (2.40%) Aerospace
9 7 (2.40%) Banking
9 7 (2.40%) Marketing
10 6 (2.05%) Automotive
11 5 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.37%) Retail
13 2 (0.68%) Aviation
13 2 (0.68%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.68%) Law
14 1 (0.34%) Documentation Skills
14 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.79%) REST
2 12 (4.11%) .NET
3 11 (3.77%) SOAP
4 10 (3.42%) NETCONF
4 10 (3.42%) Playwright
4 10 (3.42%) RESTCONF
4 10 (3.42%) YANG
5 8 (2.74%) AngularJS
6 7 (2.40%) Node.js
7 6 (2.05%) Gherkin
7 6 (2.05%) RESTful
8 5 (1.71%) GraphQL
8 5 (1.71%) LDAP
8 5 (1.71%) Web Services
9 4 (1.37%) ActiveMQ
9 4 (1.37%) CSS
9 4 (1.37%) Jest
9 4 (1.37%) Kafka
10 3 (1.03%) HTML
11 2 (0.68%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.51%) Self-Motivation
2 17 (5.82%) PKI
3 5 (1.71%) Algorithms
3 5 (1.71%) Product Ownership
4 4 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
4 4 (1.37%) Management Information System
4 4 (1.37%) Mobile App
5 3 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (0.68%) ASIC
6 2 (0.68%) Data Centre
6 2 (0.68%) Life Science
7 1 (0.34%) Digital TV
7 1 (0.34%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.34%) GNSS
7 1 (0.34%) Housing Association
7 1 (0.34%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.34%) Machine to Machine
7 1 (0.34%) Market Risk
7 1 (0.34%) MPEG
7 1 (0.34%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 28 (9.59%) Windows
2 22 (7.53%) Linux
3 15 (5.14%) Windows Server
3 15 (5.14%) Windows Server 2012
4 12 (4.11%) Unix
5 4 (1.37%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.34%) Android
6 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.34%) CentOS
6 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (48.63%) Test Automation
2 91 (31.16%) Agile
3 64 (21.92%) Test Scripting
4 54 (18.49%) Software Testing
5 48 (16.44%) CI/CD
6 38 (13.01%) Regression Testing
7 36 (12.33%) DevOps
8 35 (11.99%) Performance Testing
9 33 (11.30%) Scrum
10 27 (9.25%) BDD
10 27 (9.25%) Manual Testing
11 25 (8.56%) Integration Testing
11 25 (8.56%) Scenario Testing
12 24 (8.22%) Non-Functional Testing
12 24 (8.22%) Test Strategy
13 23 (7.88%) Security Testing
14 22 (7.53%) Validation
15 21 (7.19%) Continuous Improvement
16 19 (6.51%) API Testing
17 18 (6.16%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 65 (22.26%) Python
2 57 (19.52%) Java
3 50 (17.12%) SQL
4 25 (8.56%) JavaScript
5 24 (8.22%) C#
6 15 (5.14%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.79%) Shell Script
8 8 (2.74%) C
9 7 (2.40%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.05%) Bash
11 5 (1.71%) C++
11 5 (1.71%) MATLAB
12 4 (1.37%) Groovy
12 4 (1.37%) Scala
13 2 (0.68%) Ada
13 2 (0.68%) Ada 95
13 2 (0.68%) Perl
13 2 (0.68%) Ruby
14 1 (0.34%) PHP
Qualifications
1 75 (25.68%) Security Cleared
2 57 (19.52%) SC Cleared
3 28 (9.59%) Degree
4 17 (5.82%) ISTQB
5 16 (5.48%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (5.14%) MCSA
6 15 (5.14%) MCSE
6 15 (5.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 12 (4.11%) DV Cleared
7 12 (4.11%) NVQ Level 3
8 6 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 3 (1.03%) ISEB
11 2 (0.68%) CCIE
11 2 (0.68%) CCNP
11 2 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.68%) CTC Cleared
11 2 (0.68%) HNC
11 2 (0.68%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (9.93%) QA
2 26 (8.90%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.37%) WCAG
4 2 (0.68%) Def Stans
4 2 (0.68%) GAMP
4 2 (0.68%) GxP
4 2 (0.68%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 21 (7.19%) Docker
2 20 (6.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (5.14%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.37%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.37%) vSphere
5 2 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.34%) Firmware
6 1 (0.34%) iptables
Systems Management
1 10 (3.42%) Grafana
2 8 (2.74%) Prometheus
3 7 (2.40%) Ansible
3 7 (2.40%) Terraform
4 4 (1.37%) Iperf
4 4 (1.37%) Kubernetes
5 3 (1.03%) Kibana
6 2 (0.68%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.68%) Opsgenie
7 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.34%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 25 (8.56%) Microsoft
2 20 (6.85%) VMware
3 7 (2.40%) SAP
4 5 (1.71%) Oracle
5 4 (1.37%) Atlassian
5 4 (1.37%) Wind River
6 2 (0.68%) Cisco
6 2 (0.68%) Google
6 2 (0.68%) HP
6 2 (0.68%) PagerDuty
6 2 (0.68%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.68%) Siemens
6 2 (0.68%) Splunk
7 1 (0.34%) Adobe
7 1 (0.34%) Databricks
7 1 (0.34%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.34%) IBM
7 1 (0.34%) IBM Sterling
7 1 (0.34%) NEC
7 1 (0.34%) Workday