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 21 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 199 146
Rank change year-on-year -94 -53 +7
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 188 183 272
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.67% 1.19% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.83% 1.34% 1.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 97 166
10th Percentile £313 £348 £375
25th Percentile £402 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £463 £550
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% -15.91% -
75th Percentile £600 £525 £638
90th Percentile £688 £641 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 24 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 22,678 13,684 14,822
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.72% 89.20% 83.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,856 8,219 8,512
10th Percentile £300 £235 £243
25th Percentile £409 £368 £388
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 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,727 1,454 1,194
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £14.59
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £41.06 £22.32 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +84.00% -48.10% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.11 £65.75
90th Percentile £78.58 £67.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -59 72 £460 +9.20% 62
South East -27 56 £513 +23.49% 54
North East -8 35 £468 -15.00% 12
Midlands -47 29 £500 +8.11% 38
West Midlands -32 26 £500 - 25
North West -74 24 £461 +0.38% 45
East of England -35 19 £619 +26.92% 40
Scotland -42 14 £444 -11.20% 31
Yorkshire -39 13 £429 +10.00% 5
South West -34 11 £500 -9.09% 31
East Midlands -29 3 £568 +28.61% 13
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 3 (1.60%) Apache Spark
1 3 (1.60%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.06%) Apache
2 2 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.53%) Camunda
3 1 (0.53%) JBoss
3 1 (0.53%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.53%) Mule
3 1 (0.53%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.53%) SAS
3 1 (0.53%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (5.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.60%) SAP HCM
2 3 (1.60%) SAP Payroll
2 3 (1.60%) SAP SD
3 2 (1.06%) SAP MM
3 2 (1.06%) SAP PP
4 1 (0.53%) Maximo
4 1 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.53%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.53%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.53%) SAP LE
4 1 (0.53%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.53%) SAP Travel Management
4 1 (0.53%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 40 (21.28%) OpenShift
2 36 (19.15%) Azure
3 29 (15.43%) AWS
4 23 (12.23%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (7.98%) Power Platform
5 15 (7.98%) Serverless
6 13 (6.91%) GitHub
7 9 (4.79%) AWS Lambda
7 9 (4.79%) PowerApps
8 8 (4.26%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (4.26%) Power Automate
9 6 (3.19%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.19%) Azure Functions
9 6 (3.19%) Azure Logic Apps
10 5 (2.66%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.66%) Amazon SQS
10 5 (2.66%) GCP
11 4 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.13%) Amazon Kinesis
11 4 (2.13%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.38%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.38%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.53%) HTTP
2 1 (0.53%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.79%) Power BI
1 9 (4.79%) SQL Server
2 8 (4.26%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.26%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (3.19%) MongoDB
4 5 (2.66%) DynamoDB
5 4 (2.13%) Data Lake
5 4 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (2.13%) MySQL
5 4 (2.13%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.60%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 2 (1.06%) Delta Lake
7 2 (1.06%) DocumentDB
7 2 (1.06%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.53%) Metadata
8 1 (0.53%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.53%) Power Query
8 1 (0.53%) Redshift Spectrum
Development Applications
1 47 (25.00%) Git
2 39 (20.74%) SonarQube
3 20 (10.64%) GitLab
4 17 (9.04%) JUnit
5 16 (8.51%) Visual Studio
6 14 (7.45%) Eclipse
7 12 (6.38%) Selenium
8 11 (5.85%) Jenkins
9 10 (5.32%) Maven
10 9 (4.79%) JIRA
11 8 (4.26%) Gradle
12 7 (3.72%) Cucumber
12 7 (3.72%) NUnit
13 5 (2.66%) MSTest
13 5 (2.66%) TeamCity
14 4 (2.13%) Bitbucket
14 4 (2.13%) CppUnit
14 4 (2.13%) Cypress.io
14 4 (2.13%) Gatling
14 4 (2.13%) Rational DOORS
General
1 53 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 25 (13.30%) Public Sector
3 21 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (10.64%) Finance
5 12 (6.38%) Banking
5 12 (6.38%) Military
6 10 (5.32%) Aerospace
7 6 (3.19%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (2.66%) Manufacturing
9 4 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.60%) Billing
11 2 (1.06%) Aviation
11 2 (1.06%) Law
11 2 (1.06%) Retail
12 1 (0.53%) Advertising
12 1 (0.53%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.53%) Legal
Job Titles
1 86 (45.74%) Developer
2 32 (17.02%) Software Engineer
3 28 (14.89%) Java Developer
4 21 (11.17%) Java Engineer
5 15 (7.98%) Consultant
6 13 (6.91%) Lead
7 11 (5.85%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 10 (5.32%) Java Software Engineer
8 10 (5.32%) Senior
9 9 (4.79%) .NET Developer
9 9 (4.79%) C# Software Engineer
9 9 (4.79%) SAP Consultant
10 8 (4.26%) C# Developer
11 7 (3.72%) C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (3.72%) Software Developer
12 6 (3.19%) Microsoft Developer
12 6 (3.19%) ServiceNow Developer
13 5 (2.66%) C# .NET Developer
13 5 (2.66%) Data Engineer
13 5 (2.66%) WPF Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (22.87%) AngularJS
2 36 (19.15%) Quarkus
3 32 (17.02%) .NET
4 30 (15.96%) REST
5 26 (13.83%) Web Services
6 24 (12.77%) Spring
7 20 (10.64%) React
7 20 (10.64%) RESTful
8 18 (9.57%) Node.js
9 17 (9.04%) Spring Boot
10 15 (7.98%) WPF
11 14 (7.45%) HTML
12 13 (6.91%) Kafka
13 12 (6.38%) Playwright
13 12 (6.38%) SOAP
13 12 (6.38%) Terraform
14 11 (5.85%) .NET Framework
15 10 (5.32%) CSS
15 10 (5.32%) Middleware
16 9 (4.79%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 11 (5.85%) Cloud Native
1 11 (5.85%) Data Structures
2 10 (5.32%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.13%) Management Information System
5 4 (2.13%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.60%) CMDB
7 2 (1.06%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.06%) NHS
8 1 (0.53%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.53%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (0.53%) LIMS
8 1 (0.53%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.53%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.53%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (11.17%) Windows
2 14 (7.45%) Linux
3 1 (0.53%) Unix
3 1 (0.53%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (55.85%) Agile
2 77 (40.96%) Test Automation
3 76 (40.43%) CI/CD
4 67 (35.64%) Software Engineering
5 61 (32.45%) Scrum
6 57 (30.32%) DevOps
7 51 (27.13%) SDLC
8 43 (22.87%) Sprint Planning
9 42 (22.34%) Front End Development
9 42 (22.34%) Problem-Solving
10 40 (21.28%) User Acceptance Testing
11 38 (20.21%) Integration Testing
12 37 (19.68%) DevSecOps
12 37 (19.68%) TDD
13 33 (17.55%) Sprint Review
14 31 (16.49%) Continuous Improvement
15 28 (14.89%) Code Quality
16 25 (13.30%) Microservices
17 23 (12.23%) Validation
18 21 (11.17%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 68 (36.17%) Java
2 52 (27.66%) C#
3 47 (25.00%) JavaScript
4 44 (23.40%) SQL
5 16 (8.51%) C++
6 13 (6.91%) Python
6 13 (6.91%) TypeScript
7 5 (2.66%) ABAP
7 5 (2.66%) Scala
8 4 (2.13%) C
8 4 (2.13%) X++
8 4 (2.13%) XAML
9 3 (1.60%) Embedded C
10 2 (1.06%) Go
10 2 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 2 (1.06%) Shell Script
10 2 (1.06%) T-SQL
10 2 (1.06%) VBA
11 1 (0.53%) Bicep
11 1 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 69 (36.70%) Security Cleared
2 58 (30.85%) SC Cleared
3 13 (6.91%) Degree
4 9 (4.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.13%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.13%) PhD
7 3 (1.60%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.53%) ACCA
8 1 (0.53%) CIMA
8 1 (0.53%) CISA
8 1 (0.53%) CISSP
8 1 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.53%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (25.53%) QA
2 10 (5.32%) Accessibility
3 6 (3.19%) WCAG
4 5 (2.66%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.06%) GDPR
6 1 (0.53%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.53%) GMP
6 1 (0.53%) GRC
6 1 (0.53%) GxP
6 1 (0.53%) HL7
6 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.53%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 20 (10.64%) Docker
2 4 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.53%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 54 (28.72%) Kubernetes
2 36 (19.15%) Argo
3 2 (1.06%) Ansible
3 2 (1.06%) Grafana
4 1 (0.53%) Istio
4 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.53%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 34 (18.09%) Red Hat
2 29 (15.43%) Microsoft
3 17 (9.04%) Oracle
4 15 (7.98%) SAP
5 9 (4.79%) ServiceNow
6 6 (3.19%) Splunk
7 4 (2.13%) Avaloq
7 4 (2.13%) UiPath
7 4 (2.13%) VMware
8 3 (1.60%) Databricks
8 3 (1.60%) Google
9 2 (1.06%) Adobe
9 2 (1.06%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.06%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.53%) IFS
10 1 (0.53%) Informatica
10 1 (0.53%) JDA
10 1 (0.53%) Pega
10 1 (0.53%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.53%) Workday