Principal Test Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Principal Test Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Test Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £630, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 June 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 432 - 392
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Test Engineer 10 0 2
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.040% - 0.010%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.044% - 0.010%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 0 2
10th Percentile £613 - -
25th Percentile £618 - £750
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £630 - £775
75th Percentile £638 - £800
90th Percentile £639 - -
UK median daily rate £630 £500 £775
% change year-on-year +26.00% -35.48% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £60.50 - -
Median hourly rate £61.00 - -
75th Percentile £61.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £61.00 - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 excluding London with a recognized job title 22,909 11,840 19,181
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.83% 91.70% 92.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,157 7,517 11,558
10th Percentile £300 £213 £213
25th Percentile £403 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £594
90th Percentile £677 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,648 871 2,427
10th Percentile £14.65 £13.50 £12.50
25th Percentile £20.07 £16.95 £15.76
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.48 £60.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £42.70 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +52.48% -25.33% -16.67%

Principal Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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 the UK excluding London.

Principal Test Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Principal Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Principal Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Principal Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Principal Test Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 4 June 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
Scotland - 7 - - 1
North of England - 3 £630 - 1
North West - 2 £630 - 1
West Midlands - 1 - -
Yorkshire - 1 - -
Midlands - 1 - -
North East - 1 - -
Principal Test Engineer
UK

Principal Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 4 June 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 UK excluding London region featuring Principal Test Engineer in the job title.

1 4 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 3 (30.00%) Accessibility
2 3 (30.00%) API Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 3 (30.00%) AWS
2 3 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (30.00%) Coaching
2 3 (30.00%) DevOps
2 3 (30.00%) Docker
2 3 (30.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Gatling
2 3 (30.00%) GitHub
2 3 (30.00%) GitLab
2 3 (30.00%) Grafana
2 3 (30.00%) Integration Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Java
2 3 (30.00%) Jenkins
2 3 (30.00%) Kafka
2 3 (30.00%) Microservices
2 3 (30.00%) MongoDB
2 3 (30.00%) Non-Functional Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Observability
2 3 (30.00%) Performance Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Playwright
2 3 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (30.00%) Prometheus
2 3 (30.00%) Relational Database
2 3 (30.00%) REST Assured
2 3 (30.00%) SDET
2 3 (30.00%) Security Cleared

Principal Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (30.00%) AWS
1 3 (30.00%) GitHub
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (30.00%) MongoDB
1 3 (30.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) Gatling
1 3 (30.00%) GitLab
1 3 (30.00%) Jenkins
1 3 (30.00%) REST Assured
1 3 (30.00%) Selenium
1 3 (30.00%) Serenity BDD
General
1 6 (60.00%) Aerospace
2 4 (40.00%) Social Skills
3 1 (10.00%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (30.00%) Kafka
1 3 (30.00%) Playwright
1 3 (30.00%) Spring
1 3 (30.00%) Spring Boot
1 3 (30.00%) Spring Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 3 (30.00%) API Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 3 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (30.00%) Coaching
2 3 (30.00%) DevOps
2 3 (30.00%) End-to-End Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Integration Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Microservices
2 3 (30.00%) Non-Functional Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Observability
2 3 (30.00%) Performance Testing
2 3 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (30.00%) SDET
2 3 (30.00%) Technical Leadership
2 3 (30.00%) Test Automation
2 3 (30.00%) Test Strategy
3 2 (20.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
4 1 (10.00%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 3 (30.00%) Java
2 1 (10.00%) C
2 1 (10.00%) C++
Qualifications
1 3 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (20.00%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (30.00%) Accessibility
System Software
1 3 (30.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (30.00%) Grafana
1 3 (30.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 3 (30.00%) Splunk