Test Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Test Engineer
UK > England

The median Test Engineer daily rate in England is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 December 2025.

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

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 319 311 325
Rank change year-on-year -8 +14 +94
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 237 208 242
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.75% 0.71% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.83% 0.77% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 157 140 168
10th Percentile £303 £312 £363
25th Percentile £363 £385 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £465 £438
Median % change year-on-year -8.60% +6.29% -2.78%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £538
90th Percentile £643 £600 £600
UK median daily rate £425 £461 £438
% change year-on-year -7.86% +5.43% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 12 15
10th Percentile £22.31 £38.76 £32.65
25th Percentile £33.00 £55.39 £36.25
Median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.40% +56.25% -33.33%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.81 £62.00
90th Percentile £56.75 £71.63 £75.60
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -42.40% +56.25% -33.33%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 28,658 27,111 34,658
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.24% 92.91% 93.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,308 16,895 23,809
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,754 870 1,350
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.62 £15.31
25th Percentile £18.20 £21.25 £19.62
Median hourly rate £26.30 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.94% -20.00% +38.46%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.85 £73.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.52 £45.00
% change year-on-year -24.97% -25.51% +50.00%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Test Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer in England over the 6 months to 17 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Engineer in England

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Engineer in England over the 6 months to 17 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in England

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 Test Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 17 December 2025. 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 -13 73 £425 +6.25% 35
London -3 69 £445 -3.26% 17
Midlands -9 34 £550 +29.41% 12
Yorkshire -27 33 £435 +6.75% 7
West Midlands -19 23 £700 +64.71% 6
South East -40 21 £295 -41.00% 23
North East +5 20 £425 +37.10% 10
North West -22 20 £395 -1.25% 18
East of England -3 19 £375 -6.25% 21
South West -14 13 £500 -4.76% 16
East Midlands -16 11 £400 +2.24% 6
Test Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 December 2025, 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 Test Engineer in the job title.

1 153 (64.56%) Test Automation
2 85 (35.86%) CI/CD
3 74 (31.22%) Agile
4 59 (24.89%) QA
5 57 (24.05%) Java
6 54 (22.78%) Selenium
7 53 (22.36%) Azure
7 53 (22.36%) Security Cleared
8 52 (21.94%) Cucumber
9 49 (20.68%) DevOps
10 47 (19.83%) API Testing
10 47 (19.83%) AWS
10 47 (19.83%) Test Scripting
11 46 (19.41%) Test Strategy
12 42 (17.72%) Python
13 39 (16.46%) JIRA
14 38 (16.03%) Manual Testing
14 38 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
14 38 (16.03%) SC Cleared
15 37 (15.61%) BDD
16 35 (14.77%) Postman
16 35 (14.77%) Software Testing
17 33 (13.92%) GitLab
18 32 (13.50%) REST
19 31 (13.08%) Performance Testing
20 30 (12.66%) JavaScript
21 29 (12.24%) Non-Functional Testing
22 28 (11.81%) Jenkins
22 28 (11.81%) Microservices
22 28 (11.81%) Playwright

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:

Application Platforms
1 8 (3.38%) Confluence
2 3 (1.27%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.84%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.42%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.42%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.84%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.84%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.42%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.42%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.42%) ProductWriter
2 1 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 53 (22.36%) Azure
2 47 (19.83%) AWS
3 22 (9.28%) Azure DevOps
4 17 (7.17%) GCP
5 9 (3.80%) Serverless
6 7 (2.95%) AWS Lambda
6 7 (2.95%) Power Platform
7 5 (2.11%) Amazon SQS
7 5 (2.11%) GitHub
7 5 (2.11%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (2.11%) SaaS
8 4 (1.69%) BlazeMeter
9 3 (1.27%) PowerApps
9 3 (1.27%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.84%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (0.84%) Amazon EventBridge
10 2 (0.84%) AWS CodePipeline
10 2 (0.84%) BrowserStack
10 2 (0.84%) Google Analytics
10 2 (0.84%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.38%) Ethernet
1 8 (3.38%) Firewall
1 8 (3.38%) SD-WAN
1 8 (3.38%) Wireshark
2 5 (2.11%) 5G
2 5 (2.11%) HTTP
3 4 (1.69%) 4G
3 4 (1.69%) VoIP
3 4 (1.69%) WAN
4 3 (1.27%) 3G
4 3 (1.27%) Cisco IOS
4 3 (1.27%) DHCP
4 3 (1.27%) DNS
4 3 (1.27%) FTP
4 3 (1.27%) SNMP
4 3 (1.27%) Spanning Tree
4 3 (1.27%) SSH
4 3 (1.27%) TACACS
5 2 (0.84%) IOS XR
5 2 (0.84%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.38%) SQL Server
2 5 (2.11%) MongoDB
2 5 (2.11%) MySQL
3 3 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (1.27%) Power BI
4 2 (0.84%) Oracle ODI
4 2 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.84%) Star Schema
5 1 (0.42%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.42%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.42%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 54 (22.78%) Selenium
2 52 (21.94%) Cucumber
3 39 (16.46%) JIRA
4 35 (14.77%) Postman
5 33 (13.92%) GitLab
6 28 (11.81%) Jenkins
7 27 (11.39%) Git
8 23 (9.70%) REST Assured
9 18 (7.59%) Cypress.io
10 17 (7.17%) JMeter
11 10 (4.22%) Gatling
12 9 (3.80%) TestRail
13 7 (2.95%) WebDriver
14 6 (2.53%) Appium
14 6 (2.53%) Bitbucket
14 6 (2.53%) LoadRunner
15 5 (2.11%) SpecFlow
16 4 (1.69%) Mockito
17 3 (1.27%) Zephyr
18 2 (0.84%) Robot Framework
General
1 47 (19.83%) Social Skills
2 45 (18.99%) Public Sector
3 22 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (8.44%) Finance
5 18 (7.59%) Telecoms
6 12 (5.06%) Banking
7 8 (3.38%) Military
8 6 (2.53%) Investment Banking
9 5 (2.11%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.11%) Automotive
10 4 (1.69%) Back Office
11 3 (1.27%) Front Office
11 3 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.42%) Avionics
13 1 (0.42%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.42%) Health Technology
13 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.42%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (13.50%) REST
2 28 (11.81%) Playwright
3 14 (5.91%) Node.js
4 13 (5.49%) .NET
5 12 (5.06%) WireMock
6 9 (3.80%) Kafka
7 7 (2.95%) RFC 2544
8 6 (2.53%) LDAP
8 6 (2.53%) Middleware
8 6 (2.53%) pytest
8 6 (2.53%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.53%) React
8 6 (2.53%) SailPoint
8 6 (2.53%) Spring Boot
8 6 (2.53%) Swagger
8 6 (2.53%) WebdriverIO
9 5 (2.11%) Gherkin
9 5 (2.11%) JMS
9 5 (2.11%) OpenID
9 5 (2.11%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 11 (4.64%) Cloud Native
2 10 (4.22%) Product Ownership
3 8 (3.38%) Data Centre
3 8 (3.38%) Fibre Optics
4 5 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (1.69%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.69%) Mobile App
5 4 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.27%) Low-Code
7 2 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.84%) Hedge funds
7 2 (0.84%) Management Information System
7 2 (0.84%) NHS
7 2 (0.84%) PKI
7 2 (0.84%) Replication
8 1 (0.42%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (0.42%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.53%) Windows
2 4 (1.69%) Android
2 4 (1.69%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.27%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.84%) Linux
4 2 (0.84%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.42%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (64.56%) Test Automation
2 85 (35.86%) CI/CD
3 74 (31.22%) Agile
4 49 (20.68%) DevOps
5 47 (19.83%) API Testing
5 47 (19.83%) Test Scripting
6 46 (19.41%) Test Strategy
7 38 (16.03%) Manual Testing
7 38 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
8 37 (15.61%) BDD
9 35 (14.77%) Software Testing
10 31 (13.08%) Performance Testing
11 29 (12.24%) Non-Functional Testing
12 28 (11.81%) Microservices
12 28 (11.81%) Scrum
13 25 (10.55%) Scenario Testing
13 25 (10.55%) TDD
14 23 (9.70%) Continuous Improvement
14 23 (9.70%) Regression Testing
15 22 (9.28%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 57 (24.05%) Java
2 42 (17.72%) Python
3 30 (12.66%) JavaScript
4 25 (10.55%) SQL
5 19 (8.02%) TypeScript
6 15 (6.33%) C#
7 12 (5.06%) Bash
8 5 (2.11%) PHP
8 5 (2.11%) VB.NET
9 3 (1.27%) Ruby
10 2 (0.84%) VB
11 1 (0.42%) Bicep
11 1 (0.42%) Perl
11 1 (0.42%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.42%) VBA
Qualifications
1 53 (22.36%) Security Cleared
2 38 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 10 (4.22%) ISTQB
4 7 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (2.95%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.53%) Degree
6 5 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (1.27%) CCNA
8 3 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.84%) CEH
9 2 (0.84%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.84%) MCSA
9 2 (0.84%) MCSE
9 2 (0.84%) OSCP
9 2 (0.84%) SANS
9 2 (0.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.42%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.42%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (24.89%) QA
2 25 (10.55%) Accessibility
3 12 (5.06%) WCAG
4 4 (1.69%) NIST
5 3 (1.27%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.84%) EU AI Act
6 2 (0.84%) HL7
6 2 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.84%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.42%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 26 (10.97%) Docker
2 3 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (6.33%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.80%) Grafana
3 8 (3.38%) Ansible
3 8 (3.38%) Terraform
4 4 (1.69%) Kibana
5 3 (1.27%) HP ALM
5 3 (1.27%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 22 (9.28%) Microsoft
2 18 (7.59%) Cisco
3 9 (3.80%) Splunk
4 7 (2.95%) Meraki
4 7 (2.95%) Nokia
5 6 (2.53%) Juniper
5 6 (2.53%) ServiceNow
6 5 (2.11%) Citrix
6 5 (2.11%) New Relic
6 5 (2.11%) UiPath
7 4 (1.69%) AppDynamics
7 4 (1.69%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.69%) Oracle
7 4 (1.69%) Salesforce
8 3 (1.27%) HP
8 3 (1.27%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.84%) Databricks
9 2 (0.84%) MuleSoft
9 2 (0.84%) Optimizely
9 2 (0.84%) Workday