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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 247 180 167
Rank change year-on-year -67 -13 +1
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 174 174 286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.86% 1.30% 1.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.02% 1.45% 1.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 91 109 176
10th Percentile £358 £309 £391
25th Percentile £402 £363 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £490 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.16% -14.78% +9.52%
75th Percentile £525 £638 £675
90th Percentile £600 £665 £706
UK median daily rate £485 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -11.82% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 7 50
10th Percentile £55.00 £25.94 £61.25
25th Percentile £60.00 £37.00 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £71.56
90th Percentile £76.63 £64.25 £84.80
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +23.81% -19.23% -

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 16,977 11,972 17,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.13% 89.34% 86.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,342 7,126 11,102
10th Percentile £248 £233 £250
25th Percentile £385 £375 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,821 636 1,758
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.47 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +6.22%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% -

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 -25 60 £447 -8.31% 28
North West -5 43 £446 -10.80% 16
South East -48 30 £505 -19.28% 25
East of England -7 28 £600 - 12
Midlands -54 28 £440 -13.73% 13
Scotland -15 19 £418 -2.91% 8
West Midlands -40 16 £600 -15.79% 4
North East -6 12 £494 +47.39% 6
East Midlands -28 12 £402 -13.08% 9
South West -15 11 £500 -4.31% 25
Wales -8 7 £725 +245.24% 6
Yorkshire -48 7 £500 -16.67% 6
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 (9.20%) Confluence
2 9 (5.17%) Apache Spark
3 6 (3.45%) Apache
3 6 (3.45%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (2.30%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.72%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.57%) IIS
6 1 (0.57%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.57%) Mule
6 1 (0.57%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
Business Applications
1 5 (2.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.30%) SAP HCM
2 4 (2.30%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.72%) SAP MDG
3 3 (1.72%) SAP MDG-F
3 3 (1.72%) SAP MDG-M
3 3 (1.72%) SAP MDG-S
4 2 (1.15%) NEC Housing
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle Cash Management
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (1.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (1.15%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.57%) SAP SD
5 1 (0.57%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 43 (24.71%) Azure
2 36 (20.69%) AWS
3 24 (13.79%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (10.34%) Serverless
5 17 (9.77%) GitHub
6 13 (7.47%) OpenShift
7 11 (6.32%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (6.32%) Dynamics 365
8 10 (5.75%) Amazon S3
8 10 (5.75%) AWS Step Functions
8 10 (5.75%) Power Platform
9 9 (5.17%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (4.60%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (4.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (3.45%) Azure Functions
12 6 (3.45%) Azure Logic Apps
13 5 (2.87%) Azure Service Bus
13 5 (2.87%) GCP
14 4 (2.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 17 (9.77%) TCP/IP
2 12 (6.90%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.72%) Modbus
3 3 (1.72%) RS-232
3 3 (1.72%) RS-422
3 3 (1.72%) RS-485
4 1 (0.57%) DNS
4 1 (0.57%) Internet
4 1 (0.57%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.75%) Data Warehouse
1 10 (5.75%) NoSQL
2 7 (4.02%) Amazon Athena
2 7 (4.02%) MongoDB
2 7 (4.02%) Redis
2 7 (4.02%) SQL Server
3 6 (3.45%) Aerospike
3 6 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (3.45%) Relational Database
4 5 (2.87%) Delta Lake
5 4 (2.30%) Data Lake
5 4 (2.30%) DynamoDB
5 4 (2.30%) SAP HANA
6 3 (1.72%) Big Data
6 3 (1.72%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
6 3 (1.72%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (1.15%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (1.15%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 42 (24.14%) Git
2 36 (20.69%) JIRA
3 33 (18.97%) GitLab
4 21 (12.07%) SonarQube
5 16 (9.20%) Visual Studio
6 15 (8.62%) JUnit
7 11 (6.32%) Jenkins
8 9 (5.17%) Eclipse
9 8 (4.60%) PVCS
9 8 (4.60%) Rational DOORS
10 6 (3.45%) Selenium
11 5 (2.87%) Gradle
11 5 (2.87%) Maven
11 5 (2.87%) MLflow
11 5 (2.87%) Mockito
11 5 (2.87%) NUnit
12 4 (2.30%) Cypress.io
12 4 (2.30%) JMeter
12 4 (2.30%) MSTest
12 4 (2.30%) XCTest
General
1 49 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 39 (22.41%) Finance
3 23 (13.22%) Public Sector
4 15 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (8.05%) Military
6 13 (7.47%) Banking
7 11 (6.32%) Electronics
8 8 (4.60%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (2.87%) Aerospace
10 4 (2.30%) Health Technology
10 4 (2.30%) Marketing
10 4 (2.30%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.72%) Law
11 3 (1.72%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.15%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.57%) Billing
13 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.57%) Legal
Job Titles
1 76 (43.68%) Developer
2 31 (17.82%) Software Engineer
3 30 (17.24%) Senior
4 20 (11.49%) Java Developer
5 16 (9.20%) Senior Developer
6 14 (8.05%) C++ Software Engineer
7 12 (6.90%) Consultant
7 12 (6.90%) Full-Stack Developer
8 10 (5.75%) .NET Developer
9 9 (5.17%) Data Engineer
10 8 (4.60%) Lead
11 7 (4.02%) Azure Developer
11 7 (4.02%) C Software Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Embedded C Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Embedded C++ Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (17.24%) RESTful
2 26 (14.94%) Web Services
3 24 (13.79%) REST
3 24 (13.79%) Spring
4 22 (12.64%) .NET
4 22 (12.64%) Node.js
5 21 (12.07%) React
6 19 (10.92%) AngularJS
7 17 (9.77%) Spring Boot
8 15 (8.62%) Jest
9 13 (7.47%) YAML
10 12 (6.90%) HTML
10 12 (6.90%) PySpark
11 11 (6.32%) CSS
11 11 (6.32%) Kafka
11 11 (6.32%) Quarkus
11 11 (6.32%) Swagger
12 10 (5.75%) .NET Core
13 9 (5.17%) JMS
14 8 (4.60%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.34%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.90%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (5.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 8 (4.60%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.30%) NHS
6 3 (1.72%) FPGA
6 3 (1.72%) IoT
6 3 (1.72%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.72%) PCIe
6 3 (1.72%) State Machine
6 3 (1.72%) Taxonomies
7 2 (1.15%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.15%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.57%) Contactless
8 1 (0.57%) Derivative
8 1 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.57%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.57%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 24 (13.79%) Windows
2 22 (12.64%) Linux
3 7 (4.02%) Android
4 5 (2.87%) Apple iOS
5 2 (1.15%) Unix
6 1 (0.57%) OpenVMS
6 1 (0.57%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (59.20%) Agile
2 92 (52.87%) CI/CD
3 63 (36.21%) Test Automation
4 57 (32.76%) DevOps
5 54 (31.03%) Problem-Solving
6 44 (25.29%) Software Engineering
7 38 (21.84%) TDD
8 34 (19.54%) Microservices
9 33 (18.97%) Scrum
10 31 (17.82%) Integration Testing
11 28 (16.09%) SDLC
12 27 (15.52%) Validation
13 25 (14.37%) Containerisation
14 24 (13.79%) Continuous Integration
15 23 (13.22%) Code Quality
15 23 (13.22%) Full-Stack Development
16 21 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
16 21 (12.07%) Data Modelling
17 18 (10.34%) Clean Code
17 18 (10.34%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 59 (33.91%) Java
2 46 (26.44%) SQL
3 40 (22.99%) C#
4 35 (20.11%) JavaScript
5 28 (16.09%) C++
6 23 (13.22%) Python
7 16 (9.20%) TypeScript
8 14 (8.05%) C
9 8 (4.60%) PL/SQL
10 7 (4.02%) ABAP
10 7 (4.02%) Embedded C
10 7 (4.02%) Embedded C++
10 7 (4.02%) Scala
11 5 (2.87%) PowerShell
11 5 (2.87%) Swift
12 4 (2.30%) Apex Code
12 4 (2.30%) Shell Script
13 2 (1.15%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.57%) Groovy
14 1 (0.57%) X++
Qualifications
1 40 (22.99%) Security Cleared
2 28 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (6.32%) Degree
5 5 (2.87%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.30%) ISTQB
6 4 (2.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.15%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.15%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (17.82%) QA
2 11 (6.32%) Accessibility
3 9 (5.17%) Data Quality
3 9 (5.17%) ISO 20022
3 9 (5.17%) PSD2
3 9 (5.17%) SEPA
4 7 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.87%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 4 (2.30%) HL7
7 2 (1.15%) SLA
8 1 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.57%) GDPR
System Software
1 28 (16.09%) Docker
2 9 (5.17%) Virtual Machines
2 9 (5.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.57%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 29 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 11 (6.32%) Argo
3 7 (4.02%) Terraform
4 5 (2.87%) Grafana
5 2 (1.15%) Control-M
5 2 (1.15%) HP ALM
5 2 (1.15%) Kibana
5 2 (1.15%) vRealize
6 1 (0.57%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.57%) Kustomize
6 1 (0.57%) Oozie
6 1 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.57%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.57%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 24 (13.79%) Oracle
2 23 (13.22%) Microsoft
3 12 (6.90%) Databricks
4 11 (6.32%) Red Hat
5 10 (5.75%) VMware
6 9 (5.17%) IBM
6 9 (5.17%) Salesforce
6 9 (5.17%) SAP
7 8 (4.60%) ANSYS
8 6 (3.45%) Veracode
9 5 (2.87%) Splunk
10 4 (2.30%) Brio
11 3 (1.72%) IFS
11 3 (1.72%) Pega
11 3 (1.72%) Perforce
12 2 (1.15%) Ab Initio
12 2 (1.15%) Google
12 2 (1.15%) NEC
12 2 (1.15%) Sybase
12 2 (1.15%) Workday