Unit Testing Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Unit Testing
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Unit Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 297 201 143
Rank change year-on-year -96 -58 +17
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 178 183 267
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.64% 1.19% 1.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 1.34% 1.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 98 163
10th Percentile £307 £349 £375
25th Percentile £402 £381 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £545
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -15.14% -0.91%
75th Percentile £600 £526 £638
90th Percentile £688 £632 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 25 38
10th Percentile £38.25 - £61.25
25th Percentile £62.50 - £62.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.92% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Unit Testing 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 the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 22,607 13,682 14,817
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.90% 89.22% 82.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,955 8,230 8,595
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £409 £368 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £660 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,637 1,416 1,236
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.12 £16.95 £17.95
Median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +7.50%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.18 £66.15
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.13 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

Unit Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Unit Testing relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Unit Testing job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Unit Testing
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Unit Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Unit Testing

Unit Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Unit Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Unit Testing in the UK excluding London

Unit Testing
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Unit Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Unit Testing

Unit Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Unit Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Unit Testing in the UK excluding London

Unit Testing
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 Unit Testing within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 14 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 -69 69 £463 +10.78% 56
South East -20 56 £513 +12.02% 38
North East -8 34 £510 -7.27% 11
Midlands -50 26 £500 +8.11% 31
West Midlands -33 24 £500 - 19
North West -77 23 £463 +2.27% 38
East of England -40 17 £619 +26.92% 30
Yorkshire -35 12 £447 +14.62% 7
Scotland -39 12 £460 -11.91% 33
South West -41 11 £500 -9.09% 28
East Midlands -32 2 £335 -24.08% 12
Unit Testing
UK

Unit Testing
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:

Application Platforms
1 2 (1.12%) Apache
1 2 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.12%) Apache Spark
1 2 (1.12%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.56%) Camunda
2 1 (0.56%) JBoss
2 1 (0.56%) Jupyter
2 1 (0.56%) Mule
2 1 (0.56%) Mule ESB
2 1 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
2 1 (0.56%) SAS
2 1 (0.56%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (5.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.25%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.69%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.69%) SAP SD
4 2 (1.12%) SAP MM
4 2 (1.12%) SAP PP
5 1 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.56%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.56%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.56%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.56%) SAP LE
5 1 (0.56%) SAP QM
5 1 (0.56%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.56%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 39 (21.91%) OpenShift
2 30 (16.85%) Azure
3 24 (13.48%) AWS
4 19 (10.67%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (8.43%) Serverless
6 14 (7.87%) Power Platform
7 10 (5.62%) GitHub
8 9 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (5.06%) PowerApps
9 8 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
9 8 (4.49%) Power Automate
10 6 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (3.37%) Azure Functions
10 6 (3.37%) Azure Logic Apps
11 5 (2.81%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (2.81%) Amazon SQS
12 4 (2.25%) Amazon Kinesis
12 4 (2.25%) GCP
13 3 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 3 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.74%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.74%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.56%) HTTP
2 1 (0.56%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.49%) NoSQL
1 8 (4.49%) PostgreSQL
1 8 (4.49%) Power BI
2 7 (3.93%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.81%) DynamoDB
3 5 (2.81%) MongoDB
4 4 (2.25%) MySQL
4 4 (2.25%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (1.12%) Data Lake
6 2 (1.12%) Delta Lake
6 2 (1.12%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.12%) Oracle Database
6 2 (1.12%) SAP HANA
6 2 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.56%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.56%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.56%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 42 (23.60%) Git
2 39 (21.91%) SonarQube
3 18 (10.11%) GitLab
4 16 (8.99%) JUnit
5 14 (7.87%) Eclipse
5 14 (7.87%) Visual Studio
6 12 (6.74%) Selenium
7 10 (5.62%) JIRA
7 10 (5.62%) Maven
8 9 (5.06%) Jenkins
9 8 (4.49%) Gradle
10 6 (3.37%) Cucumber
10 6 (3.37%) NUnit
11 4 (2.25%) Bitbucket
11 4 (2.25%) CppUnit
11 4 (2.25%) Cypress.io
11 4 (2.25%) PVCS
11 4 (2.25%) Rational DOORS
12 3 (1.69%) REST Assured
12 3 (1.69%) SpecFlow
General
1 51 (28.65%) Social Skills
2 23 (12.92%) Public Sector
3 20 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (11.24%) Finance
4 12 (6.74%) Military
5 11 (6.18%) Banking
6 10 (5.62%) Aerospace
7 6 (3.37%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (2.81%) Manufacturing
9 4 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.69%) Billing
11 2 (1.12%) Law
11 2 (1.12%) Retail
12 1 (0.56%) Advertising
12 1 (0.56%) Aviation
12 1 (0.56%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.56%) Legal
Job Titles
1 81 (45.51%) Developer
2 32 (17.98%) Software Engineer
3 28 (15.73%) Java Developer
4 21 (11.80%) Java Engineer
5 15 (8.43%) Consultant
6 13 (7.30%) Lead
7 11 (6.18%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 10 (5.62%) Java Software Engineer
9 9 (5.06%) C# Software Engineer
9 9 (5.06%) SAP Consultant
9 9 (5.06%) Senior
10 7 (3.93%) .NET Developer
10 7 (3.93%) C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (3.93%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.37%) C# Developer
11 6 (3.37%) Microsoft Developer
12 5 (2.81%) Lead Developer
12 5 (2.81%) Senior Developer
12 5 (2.81%) ServiceNow Developer
13 4 (2.25%) Scala Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (24.16%) AngularJS
2 36 (20.22%) Quarkus
3 29 (16.29%) REST
4 27 (15.17%) .NET
5 24 (13.48%) Web Services
6 23 (12.92%) Spring
7 19 (10.67%) React
8 18 (10.11%) Node.js
9 17 (9.55%) Spring Boot
10 16 (8.99%) RESTful
11 14 (7.87%) HTML
12 13 (7.30%) Kafka
13 12 (6.74%) Playwright
14 11 (6.18%) SOAP
14 11 (6.18%) Terraform
14 11 (6.18%) WPF
15 10 (5.62%) CSS
15 10 (5.62%) Middleware
16 9 (5.06%) WinForms
17 8 (4.49%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 11 (6.18%) Data Structures
2 10 (5.62%) Cloud Native
3 9 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (4.49%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.69%) CMDB
7 3 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.12%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.12%) NHS
9 1 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.56%) Embedded Systems
9 1 (0.56%) LIMS
9 1 (0.56%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.56%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (9.55%) Windows
2 13 (7.30%) Linux
3 1 (0.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (57.87%) Agile
2 73 (41.01%) Test Automation
3 69 (38.76%) CI/CD
4 62 (34.83%) Software Engineering
5 58 (32.58%) Scrum
6 51 (28.65%) DevOps
7 49 (27.53%) SDLC
8 42 (23.60%) Front End Development
9 41 (23.03%) Sprint Planning
10 40 (22.47%) Problem-Solving
11 39 (21.91%) User Acceptance Testing
12 37 (20.79%) DevSecOps
13 35 (19.66%) TDD
14 33 (18.54%) Sprint Review
15 31 (17.42%) Continuous Improvement
15 31 (17.42%) Integration Testing
16 23 (12.92%) Code Quality
16 23 (12.92%) Microservices
17 21 (11.80%) Continuous Integration
18 19 (10.67%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 65 (36.52%) Java
2 47 (26.40%) C#
3 45 (25.28%) JavaScript
4 43 (24.16%) SQL
5 16 (8.99%) C++
6 13 (7.30%) TypeScript
7 12 (6.74%) Python
8 5 (2.81%) ABAP
8 5 (2.81%) Scala
9 4 (2.25%) C
9 4 (2.25%) X++
10 3 (1.69%) Embedded C
11 2 (1.12%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.12%) T-SQL
11 2 (1.12%) VBA
11 2 (1.12%) XAML
12 1 (0.56%) Bicep
12 1 (0.56%) Go
12 1 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 65 (36.52%) Security Cleared
2 55 (30.90%) SC Cleared
3 11 (6.18%) Degree
4 8 (4.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.37%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (1.69%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.12%) ISTQB
7 2 (1.12%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.12%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.12%) PhD
8 1 (0.56%) ACCA
8 1 (0.56%) CIMA
8 1 (0.56%) CISA
8 1 (0.56%) CISSP
8 1 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.56%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (25.84%) QA
2 9 (5.06%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.81%) WCAG
4 4 (2.25%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.12%) GDPR
6 1 (0.56%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.56%) GMP
6 1 (0.56%) GRC
6 1 (0.56%) GxP
6 1 (0.56%) HL7
6 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.56%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 18 (10.11%) Docker
2 4 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 52 (29.21%) Kubernetes
2 36 (20.22%) Argo
3 2 (1.12%) Ansible
3 2 (1.12%) Grafana
4 1 (0.56%) Istio
4 1 (0.56%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.56%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 34 (19.10%) Red Hat
2 29 (16.29%) Microsoft
3 16 (8.99%) SAP
4 15 (8.43%) Oracle
5 8 (4.49%) ServiceNow
6 6 (3.37%) Splunk
7 4 (2.25%) Avaloq
7 4 (2.25%) UiPath
7 4 (2.25%) VMware
8 2 (1.12%) Adobe
8 2 (1.12%) Databricks
8 2 (1.12%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.12%) Google
8 2 (1.12%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.56%) AppDynamics
9 1 (0.56%) IFS
9 1 (0.56%) JDA
9 1 (0.56%) Pega
9 1 (0.56%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.56%) Workday