Principal Test Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Principal Test Engineer
UK > England

The median Principal Test Engineer daily rate in England is £498, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 September 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 627 500 -
Rank change year-on-year -127 - -
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Test Engineer 5 3 0
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.011% 0.011% -
As % of the Job Titles category 0.012% 0.012% -
Number of daily rates quoted 4 3 0
10th Percentile - £410 -
25th Percentile £363 £463 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £550 -
Median % change year-on-year -9.55% - -
75th Percentile £633 £594 -
90th Percentile £637 £620 -
UK median daily rate £498 £463 -
% change year-on-year +7.57% - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 42,401 25,041 30,219
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 91.40% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,455 16,149 19,296
10th Percentile £326 £281 £304
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,293 1,339 1,564
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.54 £14.41
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £46.87
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -46.34% +6.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%

Principal Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Principal Test Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Principal Test Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Principal Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in England

Principal Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Principal Test Engineer in England over the 6 months to 5 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Principal Test Engineer in England

Principal Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in England

Principal Test Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Test Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 5 September 2026. 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
North of England -65 3 £630 +14.55% 2
North West -57 2 £630 +14.55% 2
South East - 1 £375 - 7
South West - 1 £375 -
West Midlands - 1 - -
Yorkshire - 1 - -
Midlands - 1 - - 2
North East - 1 - -
Principal Test Engineer
UK

Principal Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 5 September 2026, Principal Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Principal Test Engineer in the job title.

1 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
1 4 (80.00%) Continuous Improvement
1 4 (80.00%) Technical Leadership
1 4 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 3 (60.00%) Accessibility
2 3 (60.00%) API Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 3 (60.00%) AWS
2 3 (60.00%) Coaching
2 3 (60.00%) DevOps
2 3 (60.00%) Docker
2 3 (60.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Gatling
2 3 (60.00%) GitHub
2 3 (60.00%) GitLab
2 3 (60.00%) Grafana
2 3 (60.00%) Integration Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Java
2 3 (60.00%) Jenkins
2 3 (60.00%) Kafka
2 3 (60.00%) Microservices
2 3 (60.00%) MongoDB
2 3 (60.00%) Non-Functional Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Observability
2 3 (60.00%) Performance Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Playwright
2 3 (60.00%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (60.00%) Prometheus
2 3 (60.00%) Relational Database
2 3 (60.00%) REST Assured

Principal Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Cloud Services
1 3 (60.00%) AWS
1 3 (60.00%) GitHub
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (60.00%) MongoDB
1 3 (60.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 3 (60.00%) Gatling
1 3 (60.00%) GitLab
1 3 (60.00%) Jenkins
1 3 (60.00%) REST Assured
1 3 (60.00%) Selenium
1 3 (60.00%) Serenity BDD
General
1 3 (60.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (60.00%) Kafka
1 3 (60.00%) Playwright
1 3 (60.00%) Spring
1 3 (60.00%) Spring Boot
1 3 (60.00%) Spring Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (40.00%) Embedded Linux
1 2 (40.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) CI/CD
1 4 (80.00%) Continuous Improvement
1 4 (80.00%) Technical Leadership
1 4 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 3 (60.00%) API Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 3 (60.00%) Coaching
2 3 (60.00%) DevOps
2 3 (60.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Integration Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Microservices
2 3 (60.00%) Non-Functional Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Observability
2 3 (60.00%) Performance Testing
2 3 (60.00%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (60.00%) SDET
2 3 (60.00%) Test Strategy
3 2 (40.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
3 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
4 1 (20.00%) Scaled Agile Framework
Programming Languages
1 3 (60.00%) Java
2 2 (40.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 3 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (40.00%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (60.00%) Accessibility
2 1 (20.00%) QA
System Software
1 3 (60.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (60.00%) Grafana
1 3 (60.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 3 (60.00%) Splunk