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 6 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 210 183
Rank change year-on-year -27 -27 -20
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 205 123 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.90% 0.97% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.09% 1.07% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 83 161
10th Percentile £358 £274 £375
25th Percentile £402 £356 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £471 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.85% -5.80% -
75th Percentile £547 £600 £662
90th Percentile £626 £655 £688
UK median daily rate £490 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -10.09% +3.81% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 11 40
10th Percentile £55.00 £26.50 £61.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £49.38 £64.06
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.38 -
90th Percentile - £65.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +10.64% -9.62% -

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 18,750 11,483 17,746
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.26% 90.56% 85.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,415 7,315 10,792
10th Percentile £280 £240 £238
25th Percentile £400 £380 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £581 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,972 761 1,952
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.84 £12.28
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £15.13
Median hourly rate £35.55 £30.00 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +18.50% -6.59% -13.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £35.91 £31.58 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.71% -2.83% -13.33%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 -37 59 £449 -4.32% 36
South East -33 57 £515 -17.60% 29
North West -25 33 £447 -5.89% 18
Midlands -57 27 £449 -3.03% 19
East of England -10 25 £613 - 2
North East +2 19 £513 +52.99% 10
Scotland -1 19 £432 +21.42% 6
South West -16 16 £500 -4.31% 13
East Midlands -31 15 £430 -7.08% 10
West Midlands -47 12 £519 +12.59% 9
Wales -12 9 £713 +239.29% 4
Yorkshire -45 9 £500 -16.67% 8
Northern Ireland -3 2 £369 -32.95% 1
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 16 (7.80%) Confluence
2 9 (4.39%) Apache Spark
3 5 (2.44%) Apache
4 4 (1.95%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.46%) NetWeaver
5 3 (1.46%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.98%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.98%) IIS
7 1 (0.49%) Camunda
7 1 (0.49%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.49%) Mule
7 1 (0.49%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 2 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.98%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.49%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 5 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.95%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.46%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.46%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.46%) SAP MDG
3 3 (1.46%) SAP MDG-F
3 3 (1.46%) SAP MDG-M
3 3 (1.46%) SAP MDG-S
4 2 (0.98%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Cash Management
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.49%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.49%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 46 (22.44%) Azure
2 38 (18.54%) AWS
3 27 (13.17%) Azure DevOps
4 26 (12.68%) GitHub
4 26 (12.68%) OpenShift
5 22 (10.73%) Serverless
6 14 (6.83%) Amazon S3
7 13 (6.34%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (5.37%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (4.88%) Dynamics 365
9 10 (4.88%) Power Platform
10 9 (4.39%) AWS Step Functions
10 9 (4.39%) Azure Functions
11 8 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.90%) GCP
12 7 (3.41%) Amazon ECS
12 7 (3.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 6 (2.93%) Azure Logic Apps
14 4 (1.95%) Azure Service Bus
14 4 (1.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 22 (10.73%) TCP/IP
2 17 (8.29%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.46%) Modbus
3 3 (1.46%) RS-232
3 3 (1.46%) RS-422
3 3 (1.46%) RS-485
4 1 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.85%) SQL Server
2 11 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.88%) DynamoDB
3 10 (4.88%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.39%) Relational Database
5 8 (3.90%) Aerospike
5 8 (3.90%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (3.41%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (2.93%) MongoDB
7 6 (2.93%) Redis
8 5 (2.44%) Data Lake
8 5 (2.44%) Delta Lake
9 4 (1.95%) SAP HANA
10 3 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (1.46%) Big Data
10 3 (1.46%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.46%) Oracle Database
10 3 (1.46%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.98%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 46 (22.44%) Git
2 45 (21.95%) GitLab
3 33 (16.10%) JIRA
4 31 (15.12%) Visual Studio
5 30 (14.63%) SonarQube
6 15 (7.32%) Eclipse
6 15 (7.32%) Jenkins
6 15 (7.32%) JUnit
7 10 (4.88%) Selenium
8 8 (3.90%) PVCS
8 8 (3.90%) Rational DOORS
9 7 (3.41%) JMeter
9 7 (3.41%) MSTest
10 5 (2.44%) Gradle
10 5 (2.44%) Maven
10 5 (2.44%) MLflow
10 5 (2.44%) NUnit
11 4 (1.95%) Mockito
11 4 (1.95%) XCTest
12 3 (1.46%) Cucumber
General
1 48 (23.41%) Social Skills
2 36 (17.56%) Finance
3 25 (12.20%) Public Sector
4 19 (9.27%) Military
5 14 (6.83%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (6.34%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (5.37%) Banking
7 11 (5.37%) Electronics
8 4 (1.95%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.95%) Health Technology
8 4 (1.95%) Law
9 2 (0.98%) General Ledger
9 2 (0.98%) Retail
10 1 (0.49%) Advertising
10 1 (0.49%) Legal
10 1 (0.49%) Marketing
10 1 (0.49%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 90 (43.90%) Developer
2 43 (20.98%) Software Engineer
3 30 (14.63%) Senior
4 22 (10.73%) Java Developer
5 15 (7.32%) Senior Developer
6 14 (6.83%) C++ Software Engineer
6 14 (6.83%) Full-Stack Developer
6 14 (6.83%) Java Engineer
7 11 (5.37%) C# Software Engineer
8 10 (4.88%) .NET Developer
9 9 (4.39%) Data Engineer
10 8 (3.90%) AWS Engineer
10 8 (3.90%) Consultant
10 8 (3.90%) Integration Engineer
10 8 (3.90%) Java Software Engineer
10 8 (3.90%) Lead
11 7 (3.41%) C# Developer
11 7 (3.41%) Embedded C Engineer
11 7 (3.41%) Embedded C Software Engineer
11 7 (3.41%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (16.10%) RESTful
2 30 (14.63%) Web Services
3 29 (14.15%) AngularJS
4 28 (13.66%) .NET
5 26 (12.68%) Node.js
6 24 (11.71%) Quarkus
7 23 (11.22%) React
8 20 (9.76%) REST
9 18 (8.78%) Spring
10 17 (8.29%) Jest
11 16 (7.80%) Kafka
12 13 (6.34%) Swagger
13 12 (5.85%) PySpark
14 11 (5.37%) .NET Framework
14 11 (5.37%) CSS
14 11 (5.37%) Spring Boot
14 11 (5.37%) YAML
15 10 (4.88%) HTML
15 10 (4.88%) OpenAPI
15 10 (4.88%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 19 (9.27%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.29%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.39%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.44%) NHS
4 5 (2.44%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 3 (1.46%) IoT
6 2 (0.98%) Algorithms
6 2 (0.98%) Data Structures
6 2 (0.98%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (0.98%) Onboarding
6 2 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.49%) Derivative
7 1 (0.49%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.49%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.49%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 31 (15.12%) Windows
2 25 (12.20%) Linux
3 6 (2.93%) Android
4 4 (1.95%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.46%) Unix
6 1 (0.49%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (63.41%) Agile
2 94 (45.85%) CI/CD
3 73 (35.61%) Test Automation
4 65 (31.71%) Software Engineering
5 59 (28.78%) DevOps
6 56 (27.32%) Problem-Solving
7 53 (25.85%) Scrum
8 45 (21.95%) TDD
9 40 (19.51%) SDLC
10 37 (18.05%) Microservices
11 33 (16.10%) Validation
12 31 (15.12%) Continuous Integration
13 28 (13.66%) Data Modelling
13 28 (13.66%) Front End Development
13 28 (13.66%) Integration Testing
14 26 (12.68%) Sprint Planning
15 25 (12.20%) Code Quality
15 25 (12.20%) Full-Stack Development
16 24 (11.71%) DevSecOps
17 23 (11.22%) Sprint Review
Programming Languages
1 72 (35.12%) Java
2 57 (27.80%) C#
3 56 (27.32%) SQL
4 42 (20.49%) JavaScript
5 34 (16.59%) C++
6 33 (16.10%) Python
7 23 (11.22%) TypeScript
8 17 (8.29%) C
9 10 (4.88%) PL/SQL
10 9 (4.39%) PowerShell
11 8 (3.90%) Scala
12 7 (3.41%) ABAP
12 7 (3.41%) Embedded C
12 7 (3.41%) Embedded C++
13 6 (2.93%) Apex Code
14 5 (2.44%) Shell Script
15 4 (1.95%) Swift
16 3 (1.46%) SOQL
16 3 (1.46%) SOSL
17 2 (0.98%) Bash
Qualifications
1 66 (32.20%) Security Cleared
2 54 (26.34%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.83%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (5.85%) Degree
5 8 (3.90%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.90%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (1.95%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.49%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (16.59%) QA
2 12 (5.85%) Data Quality
3 9 (4.39%) Accessibility
3 9 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (3.90%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 5 (2.44%) ISO 20022
5 5 (2.44%) PSD2
5 5 (2.44%) SEPA
6 4 (1.95%) HL7
7 2 (0.98%) SLA
8 1 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.49%) GDPR
System Software
1 30 (14.63%) Docker
2 9 (4.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.90%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 38 (18.54%) Kubernetes
2 24 (11.71%) Argo
3 8 (3.90%) Terraform
4 3 (1.46%) Grafana
5 2 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.98%) vRealize
6 1 (0.49%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.49%) Kibana
6 1 (0.49%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.49%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 30 (14.63%) Microsoft
2 22 (10.73%) Red Hat
3 19 (9.27%) Oracle
4 16 (7.80%) Databricks
5 11 (5.37%) Salesforce
6 10 (4.88%) VMware
7 9 (4.39%) IBM
7 9 (4.39%) SAP
8 8 (3.90%) ANSYS
9 6 (2.93%) Veracode
10 4 (1.95%) Brio
10 4 (1.95%) Splunk
11 3 (1.46%) Google
12 2 (0.98%) Ab Initio
12 2 (0.98%) Avaloq
12 2 (0.98%) IFS
12 2 (0.98%) NEC
13 1 (0.49%) Dynatrace
13 1 (0.49%) ServiceNow
13 1 (0.49%) Workday