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 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 212 153
Rank change year-on-year -73 -59 +11
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 197 167 260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.72% 1.09% 1.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 1.23% 1.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 96 163
10th Percentile £313 £300 £375
25th Percentile £409 £375 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £525
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -11.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £547 £600
90th Percentile £686 £638 £660
UK median daily rate £500 £469 £526
% change year-on-year +6.61% -10.75% -7.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 19 47
10th Percentile £49.98 £61.25 -
25th Percentile £62.50 - £61.25
Median hourly rate £66.25 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.92% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - £67.00 -
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 22,271 13,627 15,207
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.46% 89.25% 83.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,022 8,218 9,110
10th Percentile £300 £241 £250
25th Percentile £406 £368 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,341 1,552
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.85 £13.76
25th Percentile £18.09 £17.00 £16.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%
75th Percentile £68.00 £44.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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
South East -15 73 £513 +12.02% 24
North of England -56 70 £463 +12.12% 58
North East -11 33 £510 -7.27% 12
North West -62 24 £463 -0.38% 41
East of England -20 18 £625 +33.33% 19
Midlands -58 17 £490 +6.52% 27
South West -34 15 £500 -9.09% 19
Yorkshire -42 13 £447 +14.62% 6
Scotland -28 12 £488 +3.39% 31
West Midlands -39 12 £490 +6.23% 15
East Midlands -21 5 £470 +11.90% 12
Wales -15 3 £700 +35.27% 4
Northern Ireland +8 2 £369 -32.95% 8
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 5 (2.54%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.51%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.51%) Camunda
2 1 (0.51%) IIS
2 1 (0.51%) JBoss
2 1 (0.51%) Mule
2 1 (0.51%) Mule ESB
2 1 (0.51%) SAS
2 1 (0.51%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (1.02%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.51%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 8 (4.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.03%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.52%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.52%) SAP HCM
4 2 (1.02%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (1.02%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.51%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.51%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.51%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.51%) SAP SD
5 1 (0.51%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.51%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 41 (20.81%) OpenShift
2 39 (19.80%) Azure
3 25 (12.69%) AWS
4 24 (12.18%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (9.14%) GitHub
6 16 (8.12%) Serverless
7 12 (6.09%) Power Platform
8 8 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (4.06%) Azure Functions
8 8 (4.06%) PowerApps
9 7 (3.55%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (3.55%) GCP
9 7 (3.55%) Power Automate
10 6 (3.05%) Azure Logic Apps
11 5 (2.54%) Amazon S3
11 5 (2.54%) Amazon SQS
12 4 (2.03%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 16 (8.12%) Ethernet
2 13 (6.60%) TCP/IP
3 3 (1.52%) Modbus
3 3 (1.52%) RS-232
3 3 (1.52%) RS-422
3 3 (1.52%) RS-485
4 1 (0.51%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 9 (4.57%) DynamoDB
4 7 (3.55%) NoSQL
4 7 (3.55%) Power BI
5 4 (2.03%) MongoDB
5 4 (2.03%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.52%) DocumentDB
6 3 (1.52%) MySQL
6 3 (1.52%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.52%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.02%) Aerospike
7 2 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (1.02%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (1.02%) Big Data
7 2 (1.02%) BigQuery
7 2 (1.02%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.02%) Metadata
7 2 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 49 (24.87%) Git
2 40 (20.30%) SonarQube
3 25 (12.69%) Visual Studio
4 19 (9.64%) GitLab
5 16 (8.12%) Eclipse
6 15 (7.61%) JUnit
7 13 (6.60%) Selenium
8 12 (6.09%) Jenkins
9 10 (5.08%) JIRA
10 7 (3.55%) Maven
10 7 (3.55%) NUnit
11 6 (3.05%) Cucumber
11 6 (3.05%) Gradle
12 5 (2.54%) MSTest
13 4 (2.03%) Bitbucket
13 4 (2.03%) Cypress.io
13 4 (2.03%) JMeter
14 3 (1.52%) Mockito
14 3 (1.52%) TeamCity
14 3 (1.52%) WebDriver
General
1 42 (21.32%) Social Skills
2 21 (10.66%) Finance
2 21 (10.66%) Public Sector
3 14 (7.11%) Military
4 12 (6.09%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (5.58%) Banking
6 9 (4.57%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (4.06%) Aerospace
8 4 (2.03%) Retail
9 3 (1.52%) Billing
9 3 (1.52%) Electronics
9 3 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (1.02%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.51%) Advertising
11 1 (0.51%) Aviation
11 1 (0.51%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.51%) Law
Job Titles
1 88 (44.67%) Developer
2 39 (19.80%) Software Engineer
3 26 (13.20%) Java Developer
4 23 (11.68%) Java Engineer
5 15 (7.61%) Senior
6 13 (6.60%) Consultant
6 13 (6.60%) Lead
7 11 (5.58%) C# Software Engineer
7 11 (5.58%) Java Software Engineer
8 10 (5.08%) .NET Developer
8 10 (5.08%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 9 (4.57%) C++ Software Engineer
10 8 (4.06%) Senior Developer
10 8 (4.06%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.05%) Analyst
11 6 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (3.05%) Full-Stack Developer
11 6 (3.05%) SAP Consultant
12 5 (2.54%) Data Engineer
12 5 (2.54%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (21.83%) AngularJS
2 39 (19.80%) Quarkus
3 33 (16.75%) .NET
4 25 (12.69%) Web Services
5 24 (12.18%) REST
6 21 (10.66%) Node.js
6 21 (10.66%) React
6 21 (10.66%) RESTful
7 19 (9.64%) Spring
8 14 (7.11%) Spring Boot
9 12 (6.09%) .NET Framework
9 12 (6.09%) HTML
9 12 (6.09%) Kafka
9 12 (6.09%) WinForms
10 11 (5.58%) Playwright
10 11 (5.58%) WPF
11 10 (5.08%) CSS
11 10 (5.08%) Entity Framework
11 10 (5.08%) Jest
12 9 (4.57%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 13 (6.60%) Cloud Native
1 13 (6.60%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (5.58%) Product Ownership
3 7 (3.55%) Data Structures
4 3 (1.52%) CMDB
4 3 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (1.52%) Management Information System
4 3 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
5 2 (1.02%) NHS
5 2 (1.02%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.51%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.51%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.51%) Embedded Systems
6 1 (0.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (0.51%) IoT
6 1 (0.51%) Low-Code
6 1 (0.51%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 24 (12.18%) Windows
2 16 (8.12%) Linux
3 1 (0.51%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (59.90%) Agile
2 81 (41.12%) Test Automation
3 76 (38.58%) CI/CD
4 73 (37.06%) Software Engineering
5 69 (35.03%) Scrum
6 59 (29.95%) DevOps
7 54 (27.41%) SDLC
8 44 (22.34%) Front End Development
9 42 (21.32%) Sprint Planning
10 40 (20.30%) DevSecOps
10 40 (20.30%) TDD
11 39 (19.80%) Sprint Review
12 37 (18.78%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (17.26%) User Acceptance Testing
14 28 (14.21%) Integration Testing
14 28 (14.21%) Microservices
15 27 (13.71%) Continuous Improvement
16 26 (13.20%) Continuous Integration
17 25 (12.69%) Validation
18 24 (12.18%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 69 (35.03%) Java
2 59 (29.95%) C#
3 53 (26.90%) SQL
4 43 (21.83%) JavaScript
5 24 (12.18%) C++
6 20 (10.15%) Python
7 17 (8.63%) TypeScript
8 9 (4.57%) C
9 7 (3.55%) Scala
10 6 (3.05%) ABAP
11 5 (2.54%) PL/SQL
12 4 (2.03%) PowerShell
12 4 (2.03%) X++
13 3 (1.52%) Go
13 3 (1.52%) T-SQL
14 2 (1.02%) Apex Code
14 2 (1.02%) Bash
14 2 (1.02%) SOQL
14 2 (1.02%) SOSL
14 2 (1.02%) VBA
Qualifications
1 72 (36.55%) Security Cleared
2 61 (30.96%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.09%) Degree
4 9 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.54%) ISTQB
5 5 (2.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (1.52%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.02%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.02%) PhD
8 1 (0.51%) ACCA
8 1 (0.51%) CIMA
8 1 (0.51%) CISA
8 1 (0.51%) CISSP
8 1 (0.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.51%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (23.86%) QA
2 9 (4.57%) Accessibility
3 6 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.03%) WCAG
5 3 (1.52%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 3 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.51%) GDPR
6 1 (0.51%) GRC
6 1 (0.51%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (10.66%) Docker
2 2 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
2 2 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 54 (27.41%) Kubernetes
2 39 (19.80%) Argo
3 12 (6.09%) Terraform
4 2 (1.02%) Ansible
5 1 (0.51%) Grafana
5 1 (0.51%) Istio
5 1 (0.51%) Kubeflow
5 1 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 37 (18.78%) Red Hat
2 29 (14.72%) Microsoft
3 16 (8.12%) Oracle
4 13 (6.60%) SAP
5 6 (3.05%) Avaloq
6 4 (2.03%) Databricks
6 4 (2.03%) ServiceNow
6 4 (2.03%) Splunk
7 3 (1.52%) Google
7 3 (1.52%) UiPath
8 2 (1.02%) Adobe
8 2 (1.02%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.02%) MuleSoft
8 2 (1.02%) Salesforce
8 2 (1.02%) VMware
9 1 (0.51%) IFS
9 1 (0.51%) JDA
9 1 (0.51%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.51%) Workday