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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 154 153
Rank change year-on-year -57 -1 +30
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 185 214 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.01% 1.55% 1.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.19% 1.76% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 130 188
10th Percentile £358 £346 £404
25th Percentile £398 £434 £472
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £524 £588
Median % change year-on-year -14.08% -10.85% +11.90%
75th Percentile £516 £650 £660
90th Percentile £604 £664 £693
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -9.09% -8.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 11 57
10th Percentile £55.00 £26.50 £48.32
25th Percentile £60.00 £47.50 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% -
75th Percentile £67.63 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £70.00 - £84.36
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% -

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 15,601 12,157 17,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.91% 88.32% 87.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,582 7,112 10,877
10th Percentile £226 £238 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £678 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,679 690 1,405
10th Percentile £14.36 £15.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.24 £20.12 £16.25
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.83 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -22.15% -23.46% +54.90%
75th Percentile £56.69 £64.01 £64.50
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.78 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.85
% change year-on-year -22.62% -16.34% +19.54%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 -12 62 £450 -7.69% 48
North West -5 42 £450 -7.69% 26
Midlands -29 37 £450 -15.89% 30
East of England -4 31 £469 +28.42% 31
South East -61 27 £500 -21.72% 74
West Midlands -21 23 £520 -27.02% 7
Scotland -13 17 £415 -7.78% 9
East Midlands -25 14 £402 -19.60% 22
South West -4 12 £500 +11.11% 28
Yorkshire -35 12 £420 - 16
North East -7 10 £494 - 6
Wales -10 8 £621 +195.83% 10
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 12 (6.49%) Apache Spark
2 11 (5.95%) Confluence
3 9 (4.86%) Apache
4 8 (4.32%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.62%) Mule
5 3 (1.62%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.54%) JBoss
6 1 (0.54%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.54%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.54%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.54%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 4 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.62%) SAP MDG
2 3 (1.62%) SAP MDG-F
2 3 (1.62%) SAP MDG-M
2 3 (1.62%) SAP MDG-S
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (1.08%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.54%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.54%) SAP HCM
4 1 (0.54%) SAP Payroll
4 1 (0.54%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.54%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 43 (23.24%) Azure
2 39 (21.08%) AWS
3 27 (14.59%) Azure DevOps
4 19 (10.27%) Serverless
5 18 (9.73%) GitHub
6 13 (7.03%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (5.41%) Amazon S3
8 10 (5.41%) AWS Step Functions
8 10 (5.41%) OpenShift
8 10 (5.41%) Power Platform
9 9 (4.86%) Dynamics 365
10 8 (4.32%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (3.78%) Azure AKS
11 7 (3.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (3.24%) npm
13 5 (2.70%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 5 (2.70%) Azure Functions
13 5 (2.70%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 21 (11.35%) TCP/IP
2 13 (7.03%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.54%) DNS
3 1 (0.54%) Internet
3 1 (0.54%) SSL
3 1 (0.54%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (7.03%) NoSQL
2 9 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
2 9 (4.86%) Redis
3 7 (3.78%) Amazon Athena
3 7 (3.78%) MongoDB
4 6 (3.24%) Aerospike
4 6 (3.24%) Big Data
5 5 (2.70%) Delta Lake
5 5 (2.70%) Hadoop
5 5 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.70%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.16%) Apache Hive
6 4 (2.16%) DynamoDB
6 4 (2.16%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.62%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.62%) HBase
7 3 (1.62%) Metadata
7 3 (1.62%) SAP Data Services
8 2 (1.08%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.08%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 59 (31.89%) Git
2 35 (18.92%) JIRA
3 23 (12.43%) GitLab
4 18 (9.73%) Jenkins
4 18 (9.73%) Visual Studio
5 17 (9.19%) SonarQube
6 15 (8.11%) JUnit
7 13 (7.03%) Eclipse
8 11 (5.95%) Postman
9 9 (4.86%) Rational DOORS
10 8 (4.32%) Gradle
10 8 (4.32%) PVCS
11 7 (3.78%) Selenium
12 6 (3.24%) Xcode
13 5 (2.70%) Bitbucket
13 5 (2.70%) Cypress.io
13 5 (2.70%) Maven
13 5 (2.70%) MLflow
13 5 (2.70%) MSTest
14 4 (2.16%) Artifactory
General
1 66 (35.68%) Social Skills
2 40 (21.62%) Finance
3 29 (15.68%) Public Sector
4 20 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (10.81%) Banking
5 18 (9.73%) Military
6 12 (6.49%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (4.86%) Electronics
7 9 (4.86%) Telecoms
8 7 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (2.70%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.70%) Manufacturing
9 5 (2.70%) Marketing
10 4 (2.16%) Health Technology
11 3 (1.62%) Law
12 2 (1.08%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.54%) Billing
13 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.54%) Legal
Job Titles
1 75 (40.54%) Developer
2 39 (21.08%) Software Engineer
3 32 (17.30%) Senior
4 26 (14.05%) Java Developer
5 19 (10.27%) C++ Software Engineer
5 19 (10.27%) Senior Developer
6 11 (5.95%) C# Software Engineer
7 9 (4.86%) Data Engineer
7 9 (4.86%) Lead
7 9 (4.86%) Senior Java Developer
8 8 (4.32%) AWS Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) C Software Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 7 (3.78%) Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (17.30%) Spring
2 29 (15.68%) React
2 29 (15.68%) Web Services
3 28 (15.14%) Node.js
3 28 (15.14%) REST
4 25 (13.51%) Spring Boot
5 22 (11.89%) RESTful
6 20 (10.81%) AngularJS
7 18 (9.73%) .NET
8 17 (9.19%) Kafka
9 15 (8.11%) Jest
10 14 (7.57%) HTML
11 13 (7.03%) CSS
12 12 (6.49%) PySpark
13 11 (5.95%) JSON
14 9 (4.86%) .NET Core
14 9 (4.86%) JMS
15 8 (4.32%) pytest
16 7 (3.78%) Quarkus
16 7 (3.78%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.27%) Cloud Native
2 17 (9.19%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.86%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 6 (3.24%) Mobile App
5 5 (2.70%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.16%) FPGA
6 4 (2.16%) NHS
6 4 (2.16%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.16%) PCIe
6 4 (2.16%) State Machine
7 3 (1.62%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (1.62%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.62%) Taxonomies
8 2 (1.08%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.08%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.54%) CUDA
9 1 (0.54%) IoT
9 1 (0.54%) PKI
9 1 (0.54%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 36 (19.46%) Linux
2 34 (18.38%) Windows
3 11 (5.95%) Android
4 9 (4.86%) Unix
5 7 (3.78%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.54%) OpenVMS
6 1 (0.54%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (55.68%) Agile
2 95 (51.35%) CI/CD
3 61 (32.97%) Problem-Solving
4 57 (30.81%) DevOps
4 57 (30.81%) Test Automation
5 49 (26.49%) Software Engineering
6 40 (21.62%) Microservices
7 38 (20.54%) TDD
8 34 (18.38%) Validation
9 32 (17.30%) Integration Testing
10 30 (16.22%) Containerisation
11 27 (14.59%) Code Quality
11 27 (14.59%) Scrum
12 25 (13.51%) Continuous Integration
13 22 (11.89%) Mentoring
14 21 (11.35%) Front End Development
14 21 (11.35%) Verification and Validation
15 20 (10.81%) Continuous Delivery
15 20 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
16 18 (9.73%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 55 (29.73%) Java
2 43 (23.24%) JavaScript
2 43 (23.24%) SQL
3 38 (20.54%) C#
4 35 (18.92%) Python
5 33 (17.84%) C++
6 16 (8.65%) C
7 14 (7.57%) TypeScript
8 13 (7.03%) PowerShell
9 12 (6.49%) Scala
10 7 (3.78%) Embedded C
10 7 (3.78%) Embedded C++
10 7 (3.78%) PL/SQL
10 7 (3.78%) Swift
11 5 (2.70%) ABAP
11 5 (2.70%) Kotlin
11 5 (2.70%) Objective-C
11 5 (2.70%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.62%) Ruby
13 2 (1.08%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 37 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 28 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.49%) Degree
4 10 (5.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.70%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.16%) ISTQB
6 4 (2.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.08%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (17.30%) QA
2 18 (9.73%) Accessibility
3 11 (5.95%) Data Quality
4 9 (4.86%) ISO 20022
4 9 (4.86%) PSD2
4 9 (4.86%) SEPA
5 7 (3.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (3.24%) SLA
7 5 (2.70%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (2.16%) HL7
9 3 (1.62%) WCAG
10 1 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.54%) GDPR
10 1 (0.54%) IEC 61508
10 1 (0.54%) IEC 62304
10 1 (0.54%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 32 (17.30%) Docker
2 9 (4.86%) Virtual Machines
2 9 (4.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.62%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 32 (17.30%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.32%) Terraform
3 7 (3.78%) Argo
4 5 (2.70%) Grafana
5 3 (1.62%) Hadoop YARN
5 3 (1.62%) Oozie
6 2 (1.08%) Control-M
6 2 (1.08%) HP ALM
6 2 (1.08%) Kibana
6 2 (1.08%) vRealize
7 1 (0.54%) Ansible
7 1 (0.54%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.54%) Podman
7 1 (0.54%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.54%) SELinux
7 1 (0.54%) Tivoli
7 1 (0.54%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 26 (14.05%) Microsoft
2 20 (10.81%) Oracle
3 12 (6.49%) Databricks
4 10 (5.41%) VMware
5 9 (4.86%) IBM
6 8 (4.32%) ANSYS
6 8 (4.32%) BeyondTrust
6 8 (4.32%) CyberArk
7 7 (3.78%) Red Hat
7 7 (3.78%) SAP
8 5 (2.70%) Splunk
9 4 (2.16%) Brio
10 3 (1.62%) Pega
10 3 (1.62%) Perforce
11 2 (1.08%) Ab Initio
11 2 (1.08%) Checkmarx
11 2 (1.08%) Dynatrace
11 2 (1.08%) Google
11 2 (1.08%) IFS
11 2 (1.08%) Workday