Test-First Development Contract Job Trends in England

Test-First Development
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Test-First Development skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 528 512 -
Rank change year-on-year -16 - -
Contract jobs citing Test-First Development 2 2 0
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.007% 0.006% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.007% 0.007% -
Number of daily rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £358 - -
25th Percentile £371 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £394 £800 -
Median % change year-on-year -50.75% - -
75th Percentile £421 - -
90th Percentile £434 - -
UK median daily rate £394 £800 -
% change year-on-year -50.75% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

Test-First Development 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 27,406 26,969 34,678
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.94% 87.30% 88.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,388 16,451 23,708
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,797 990 1,453
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.10 £14.59
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.24 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% -20.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%

Test-First Development
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test-First Development relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Test-First Development job vacancy trend in England

Test-First Development
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Test-First Development.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Test-First Development

Test-First Development
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Test-First Development.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Test-First Development

Test-First Development
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-First Development within the England region over the 6 months to 25 November 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
London +9 2 £394 -50.75%
Test-First Development
UK

Test-First Development
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 1 (50.00%) AWS
1 1 (50.00%) GitHub
1 1 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (50.00%) Apache Cassandra
1 1 (50.00%) Big Data
1 1 (50.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (50.00%) MongoDB
1 1 (50.00%) NoSQL
1 1 (50.00%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (50.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (50.00%) GitLab
1 1 (50.00%) Jenkins
1 1 (50.00%) JUnit
1 1 (50.00%) Mockito
1 1 (50.00%) NUnit
1 1 (50.00%) Selenium
1 1 (50.00%) SpecFlow
1 1 (50.00%) Team Foundation Server
1 1 (50.00%) Visual Studio
1 1 (50.00%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 1 (50.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (50.00%) Developer
1 1 (50.00%) Java Developer
1 1 (50.00%) Senior
1 1 (50.00%) Senior Tester
1 1 (50.00%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (50.00%) AngularJS
1 1 (50.00%) CSS
1 1 (50.00%) HTML
1 1 (50.00%) Kafka
1 1 (50.00%) React
1 1 (50.00%) REST
1 1 (50.00%) Spring
1 1 (50.00%) Spring Boot
1 1 (50.00%) Vue
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Agile
1 2 (100.00%) CI/CD
2 1 (50.00%) Analytics
2 1 (50.00%) Business Intelligence
2 1 (50.00%) Data Governance
2 1 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
2 1 (50.00%) Data Protection
2 1 (50.00%) ETL
2 1 (50.00%) Expense Management
2 1 (50.00%) Microservices
2 1 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (50.00%) Software Engineering
2 1 (50.00%) Test Automation
2 1 (50.00%) Test Strategy
2 1 (50.00%) User Acceptance Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Visualisation
2 1 (50.00%) V-Model
2 1 (50.00%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 2 (100.00%) JavaScript
1 2 (100.00%) SQL
2 1 (50.00%) C#
2 1 (50.00%) Java
2 1 (50.00%) PL/SQL
2 1 (50.00%) PowerShell
2 1 (50.00%) T-SQL
2 1 (50.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (50.00%) HP APS
System Software
1 1 (50.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (50.00%) HP ALM
1 1 (50.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (50.00%) HP
1 1 (50.00%) Microsoft