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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 297 203 145
Rank change year-on-year -94 -58 +14
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 182 183 275
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.64% 1.17% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 1.31% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 97 166
10th Percentile £322 £348 £375
25th Percentile £405 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £463 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.95% -15.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £581 £526 £638
90th Percentile £688 £641 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 24 36
10th Percentile £38.25 - £61.25
25th Percentile £62.50 - £64.38
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 22,922 13,974 14,559
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.92% 89.39% 83.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,873 8,417 8,228
10th Percentile £300 £230 £238
25th Percentile £409 £368 £381
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 £670 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,796 1,504 1,105
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.13 £14.99
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.23 £18.19
Median hourly rate £39.50 £22.32 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.01% -48.10% +1.18%
75th Percentile £66.00 £40.65 £66.61
90th Percentile £77.50 £66.85 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 67 £461 +9.50% 54
South East -28 51 £528 +27.11% 43
Midlands -48 32 £500 +8.11% 36
North East -8 31 £425 -22.73% 9
West Midlands -22 29 £500 -2.91% 18
North West -69 25 £463 +0.65% 36
East of England -34 19 £619 +26.92% 25
Scotland -34 15 £438 -12.50% 26
South West -30 12 £500 -9.09% 28
Yorkshire -42 11 £447 +14.62% 10
East Midlands -30 3 £568 +28.61% 18
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 11
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 4 (2.20%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.65%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.10%) Apache
3 2 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.55%) JBoss
4 1 (0.55%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.55%) Mule
4 1 (0.55%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.55%) SAS
4 1 (0.55%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (6.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.65%) SAP HCM
2 3 (1.65%) SAP Payroll
2 3 (1.65%) SAP SD
3 2 (1.10%) SAP EWM
3 2 (1.10%) SAP MM
3 2 (1.10%) SAP PP
4 1 (0.55%) Maximo
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.55%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.55%) SAP LE
4 1 (0.55%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.55%) SAP Travel Management
4 1 (0.55%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 38 (20.88%) Azure
2 31 (17.03%) AWS
2 31 (17.03%) OpenShift
3 23 (12.64%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (8.79%) Power Platform
5 13 (7.14%) GitHub
5 13 (7.14%) Serverless
6 10 (5.49%) PowerApps
7 8 (4.40%) Dynamics 365
7 8 (4.40%) Power Automate
8 6 (3.30%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (3.30%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (3.30%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (3.30%) Azure Functions
8 6 (3.30%) GCP
9 5 (2.75%) Amazon S3
9 5 (2.75%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (2.20%) Amazon SQS
11 3 (1.65%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.59%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.59%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.55%) HTTP
2 1 (0.55%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.95%) SQL Server
2 8 (4.40%) MongoDB
2 8 (4.40%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.40%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (4.40%) Power BI
3 5 (2.75%) Data Lake
3 5 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (2.20%) MySQL
5 3 (1.65%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.65%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.65%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.65%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.65%) SAP HANA
6 2 (1.10%) Chroma
6 2 (1.10%) Delta Lake
6 2 (1.10%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.10%) Pinecone
6 2 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
7 1 (0.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 45 (24.73%) Git
2 31 (17.03%) SonarQube
3 18 (9.89%) GitLab
3 18 (9.89%) JUnit
4 16 (8.79%) Visual Studio
5 14 (7.69%) Eclipse
6 12 (6.59%) Selenium
7 11 (6.04%) Jenkins
7 11 (6.04%) Maven
8 9 (4.95%) Cucumber
9 8 (4.40%) Gradle
9 8 (4.40%) NUnit
10 7 (3.85%) JIRA
11 6 (3.30%) Gatling
11 6 (3.30%) MSTest
12 4 (2.20%) CppUnit
12 4 (2.20%) Cypress.io
12 4 (2.20%) Mockito
12 4 (2.20%) Rational DOORS
12 4 (2.20%) TeamCity
General
1 55 (30.22%) Social Skills
2 27 (14.84%) Public Sector
3 23 (12.64%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (11.54%) Finance
5 14 (7.69%) Banking
6 12 (6.59%) Military
7 8 (4.40%) Aerospace
8 6 (3.30%) Manufacturing
8 6 (3.30%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.65%) Billing
10 3 (1.65%) Retail
11 2 (1.10%) Aviation
11 2 (1.10%) Law
12 1 (0.55%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.55%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.55%) Legal
Job Titles
1 84 (46.15%) Developer
2 26 (14.29%) Software Engineer
3 25 (13.74%) Java Developer
4 18 (9.89%) Java Engineer
5 16 (8.79%) Consultant
6 14 (7.69%) Lead
7 12 (6.59%) Senior
8 10 (5.49%) SAP Consultant
8 10 (5.49%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 9 (4.95%) .NET Developer
9 9 (4.95%) C# Software Engineer
10 8 (4.40%) C# Developer
10 8 (4.40%) Java Software Engineer
11 7 (3.85%) C++ Software Engineer
12 6 (3.30%) Lead Developer
12 6 (3.30%) ServiceNow Developer
12 6 (3.30%) Software Developer
13 5 (2.75%) C# .NET Developer
13 5 (2.75%) Data Engineer
13 5 (2.75%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (18.68%) AngularJS
2 33 (18.13%) .NET
3 31 (17.03%) REST
4 28 (15.38%) Quarkus
5 26 (14.29%) Web Services
6 24 (13.19%) Spring
7 21 (11.54%) RESTful
8 19 (10.44%) React
9 18 (9.89%) Node.js
9 18 (9.89%) Spring Boot
10 13 (7.14%) HTML
11 12 (6.59%) SOAP
11 12 (6.59%) WPF
12 11 (6.04%) .NET Framework
12 11 (6.04%) Kafka
12 11 (6.04%) Playwright
13 10 (5.49%) CSS
13 10 (5.49%) Terraform
14 9 (4.95%) Middleware
15 8 (4.40%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 12 (6.59%) Cloud Native
1 12 (6.59%) Product Ownership
2 11 (6.04%) Data Structures
3 10 (5.49%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (3.30%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.20%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.65%) CMDB
8 2 (1.10%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.10%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.55%) AS400
9 1 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.55%) LIMS
9 1 (0.55%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.55%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.55%) NHS
9 1 (0.55%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.55%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 20 (10.99%) Windows
2 14 (7.69%) Linux
3 1 (0.55%) Android
3 1 (0.55%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.55%) Unix
3 1 (0.55%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (53.85%) Agile
2 76 (41.76%) CI/CD
3 73 (40.11%) Test Automation
4 59 (32.42%) Software Engineering
5 56 (30.77%) Scrum
6 53 (29.12%) DevOps
7 46 (25.27%) SDLC
8 43 (23.63%) Integration Testing
9 42 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
9 42 (23.08%) User Acceptance Testing
10 39 (21.43%) TDD
11 38 (20.88%) Sprint Planning
12 34 (18.68%) Front End Development
13 33 (18.13%) Continuous Improvement
14 29 (15.93%) DevSecOps
14 29 (15.93%) Sprint Review
15 27 (14.84%) Code Quality
16 25 (13.74%) Microservices
17 23 (12.64%) Validation
18 22 (12.09%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 62 (34.07%) Java
2 50 (27.47%) JavaScript
3 49 (26.92%) C#
4 45 (24.73%) SQL
5 16 (8.79%) C++
6 14 (7.69%) Python
7 12 (6.59%) TypeScript
8 6 (3.30%) Scala
9 5 (2.75%) ABAP
10 4 (2.20%) C
10 4 (2.20%) XAML
11 3 (1.65%) Embedded C
11 3 (1.65%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.65%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.65%) X++
12 2 (1.10%) Go
12 2 (1.10%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.10%) VBA
13 1 (0.55%) Bash
13 1 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 63 (34.62%) Security Cleared
2 52 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.59%) Degree
4 9 (4.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.20%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.20%) PhD
7 3 (1.65%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.55%) ACCA
8 1 (0.55%) CIMA
8 1 (0.55%) CISA
8 1 (0.55%) CISSP
8 1 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.55%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.55%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (24.18%) QA
2 11 (6.04%) Accessibility
3 7 (3.85%) Data Quality
3 7 (3.85%) WCAG
4 3 (1.65%) GDPR
5 1 (0.55%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 1 (0.55%) GMP
5 1 (0.55%) GRC
5 1 (0.55%) GxP
5 1 (0.55%) HL7
5 1 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.55%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (11.54%) Docker
2 4 (2.20%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.55%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 49 (26.92%) Kubernetes
2 28 (15.38%) Argo
3 2 (1.10%) Ansible
3 2 (1.10%) Grafana
4 1 (0.55%) Istio
4 1 (0.55%) Kibana
4 1 (0.55%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.55%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 30 (16.48%) Microsoft
2 28 (15.38%) Red Hat
3 18 (9.89%) Oracle
4 17 (9.34%) SAP
5 9 (4.95%) ServiceNow
6 6 (3.30%) Splunk
7 5 (2.75%) Google
8 4 (2.20%) Avaloq
8 4 (2.20%) Databricks
8 4 (2.20%) UiPath
8 4 (2.20%) VMware
9 2 (1.10%) Adobe
9 2 (1.10%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.10%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.55%) Cloudera
10 1 (0.55%) Informatica
10 1 (0.55%) JDA
10 1 (0.55%) Pega
10 1 (0.55%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.55%) Talend