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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 291 196 145
Rank change year-on-year -95 -51 +22
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 193 177 268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 1.15% 1.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.30% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 102 168
10th Percentile £297 £311 £375
25th Percentile £400 £381 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £525
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -11.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £563 £541 £612
90th Percentile £688 £638 £660
UK median daily rate £500 £478 £538
% change year-on-year +4.71% -11.16% -5.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 20 45
10th Percentile £38.25 £61.25 -
25th Percentile £62.50 - £61.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 - -
90th Percentile - £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.85% - -

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 22,336 13,666 15,079
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.12% 89.17% 82.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,033 8,246 9,036
10th Percentile £300 £239 £250
25th Percentile £406 £368 £388
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% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,454 1,363 1,488
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.92 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.16 £16.45
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -43.53% +17.65%
75th Percentile £68.00 £46.18 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.63 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.54% -38.57% -0.24%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -2 73 £513 +2.50% 12
North of England -47 69 £463 +7.25% 31
North East -8 34 £510 -7.27% 8
North West -60 22 £463 -1.39% 18
Midlands -64 21 £490 +5.95% 21
East of England -25 15 £619 +32.00% 10
West Midlands -51 15 £490 - 11
South West -32 14 £500 -9.09% 12
Yorkshire -39 13 £447 +14.62% 6
Scotland -38 9 £500 +1.21% 9
East Midlands -29 6 £470 +6.52% 10
Wales -19 3 £700 +35.27%
Northern Ireland +7 2 £369 -32.95% 2
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 (2.59%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.52%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.52%) Camunda
2 1 (0.52%) IIS
2 1 (0.52%) JBoss
2 1 (0.52%) Jupyter
2 1 (0.52%) Mule
2 1 (0.52%) Mule ESB
2 1 (0.52%) SAS
2 1 (0.52%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (1.04%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.52%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 10 (5.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.07%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.55%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.55%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.55%) SAP SD
4 2 (1.04%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (1.04%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (1.04%) SAP MM
4 2 (1.04%) SAP PP
5 1 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.52%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.52%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.52%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.52%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.52%) SAP LE
5 1 (0.52%) SAP QM
5 1 (0.52%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.52%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 40 (20.73%) OpenShift
2 39 (20.21%) Azure
3 26 (13.47%) AWS
4 25 (12.95%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (9.33%) GitHub
6 16 (8.29%) Serverless
7 14 (7.25%) Power Platform
8 9 (4.66%) PowerApps
9 8 (4.15%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (4.15%) Azure Functions
9 8 (4.15%) Power Automate
10 7 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
10 7 (3.63%) GCP
11 6 (3.11%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (2.59%) Amazon S3
12 5 (2.59%) Amazon SQS
13 4 (2.07%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (2.07%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.74%) Ethernet
1 13 (6.74%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.52%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.22%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 9 (4.66%) DynamoDB
3 9 (4.66%) NoSQL
4 8 (4.15%) Power BI
5 4 (2.07%) MongoDB
5 4 (2.07%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.55%) DocumentDB
6 3 (1.55%) MySQL
6 3 (1.55%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.55%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.04%) Aerospike
7 2 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (1.04%) Big Data
7 2 (1.04%) BigQuery
7 2 (1.04%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.04%) Metadata
7 2 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.52%) Looker
Development Applications
1 51 (26.42%) Git
2 40 (20.73%) SonarQube
3 24 (12.44%) Visual Studio
4 19 (9.84%) GitLab
5 16 (8.29%) Eclipse
5 16 (8.29%) JUnit
6 13 (6.74%) Selenium
7 12 (6.22%) Jenkins
8 11 (5.70%) JIRA
9 8 (4.15%) Maven
10 7 (3.63%) Gradle
11 6 (3.11%) Cucumber
11 6 (3.11%) NUnit
12 5 (2.59%) MSTest
13 4 (2.07%) Bitbucket
13 4 (2.07%) Cypress.io
13 4 (2.07%) JMeter
14 3 (1.55%) SpecFlow
14 3 (1.55%) TeamCity
14 3 (1.55%) WebDriver
General
1 47 (24.35%) Social Skills
2 21 (10.88%) Finance
2 21 (10.88%) Public Sector
3 15 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (7.25%) Military
5 10 (5.18%) Banking
6 9 (4.66%) Aerospace
6 9 (4.66%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (2.07%) Manufacturing
7 4 (2.07%) Retail
8 3 (1.55%) Billing
9 1 (0.52%) Advertising
9 1 (0.52%) Aviation
9 1 (0.52%) General Ledger
9 1 (0.52%) Law
9 1 (0.52%) Legal
Job Titles
1 86 (44.56%) Developer
2 37 (19.17%) Software Engineer
3 25 (12.95%) Java Developer
4 24 (12.44%) Java Engineer
5 15 (7.77%) Consultant
6 14 (7.25%) Senior
7 12 (6.22%) Java Software Engineer
7 12 (6.22%) Lead
8 11 (5.70%) C# Software Engineer
9 10 (5.18%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 9 (4.66%) .NET Developer
10 9 (4.66%) C++ Software Engineer
11 8 (4.15%) SAP Consultant
11 8 (4.15%) Software Developer
12 7 (3.63%) Senior Developer
13 6 (3.11%) Analyst
13 6 (3.11%) AWS Engineer
13 6 (3.11%) Microsoft Developer
13 6 (3.11%) Python Developer
14 5 (2.59%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (21.76%) AngularJS
2 38 (19.69%) Quarkus
3 32 (16.58%) .NET
4 27 (13.99%) Web Services
5 25 (12.95%) REST
6 21 (10.88%) Node.js
6 21 (10.88%) RESTful
7 20 (10.36%) React
7 20 (10.36%) Spring
8 15 (7.77%) Spring Boot
9 13 (6.74%) Kafka
10 12 (6.22%) HTML
10 12 (6.22%) Terraform
11 11 (5.70%) CSS
11 11 (5.70%) Playwright
11 11 (5.70%) WinForms
11 11 (5.70%) WPF
12 10 (5.18%) .NET Framework
13 9 (4.66%) Middleware
13 9 (4.66%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 14 (7.25%) Distributed Systems
2 13 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 11 (5.70%) Product Ownership
4 10 (5.18%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.55%) CMDB
5 3 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (1.55%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.04%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.04%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (1.04%) NHS
6 2 (1.04%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.52%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.52%) Low-Code
7 1 (0.52%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 20 (10.36%) Windows
2 16 (8.29%) Linux
3 1 (0.52%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (58.55%) Agile
2 77 (39.90%) Test Automation
3 76 (39.38%) CI/CD
4 68 (35.23%) Software Engineering
5 66 (34.20%) Scrum
6 57 (29.53%) DevOps
7 53 (27.46%) SDLC
8 44 (22.80%) Front End Development
9 40 (20.73%) Sprint Planning
10 39 (20.21%) DevSecOps
10 39 (20.21%) Problem-Solving
11 38 (19.69%) TDD
12 37 (19.17%) Sprint Review
12 37 (19.17%) User Acceptance Testing
13 31 (16.06%) Continuous Improvement
13 31 (16.06%) Integration Testing
14 28 (14.51%) Microservices
15 25 (12.95%) Code Quality
15 25 (12.95%) Validation
16 23 (11.92%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 67 (34.72%) Java
2 56 (29.02%) C#
3 54 (27.98%) SQL
4 44 (22.80%) JavaScript
5 20 (10.36%) Python
6 19 (9.84%) C++
7 16 (8.29%) TypeScript
8 7 (3.63%) Scala
9 6 (3.11%) ABAP
10 5 (2.59%) C
10 5 (2.59%) PL/SQL
11 4 (2.07%) PowerShell
11 4 (2.07%) X++
12 3 (1.55%) Go
12 3 (1.55%) T-SQL
13 2 (1.04%) Apex Code
13 2 (1.04%) Bash
13 2 (1.04%) SOQL
13 2 (1.04%) SOSL
13 2 (1.04%) VBA
Qualifications
1 69 (35.75%) Security Cleared
2 59 (30.57%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.22%) Degree
4 9 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.11%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (2.59%) ISTQB
6 5 (2.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.55%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.04%) PhD
9 1 (0.52%) ACCA
9 1 (0.52%) CIMA
9 1 (0.52%) CISA
9 1 (0.52%) CISSP
9 1 (0.52%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.52%) CREST Certified
9 1 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (23.83%) QA
2 9 (4.66%) Accessibility
3 6 (3.11%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.07%) WCAG
5 3 (1.55%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 3 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.52%) GDPR
6 1 (0.52%) GRC
6 1 (0.52%) HL7
6 1 (0.52%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (10.88%) Docker
2 2 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
2 2 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 54 (27.98%) Kubernetes
2 38 (19.69%) Argo
3 2 (1.04%) Ansible
4 1 (0.52%) Grafana
4 1 (0.52%) Istio
4 1 (0.52%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 36 (18.65%) Red Hat
2 30 (15.54%) Microsoft
3 15 (7.77%) Oracle
3 15 (7.77%) SAP
4 5 (2.59%) Splunk
5 4 (2.07%) Avaloq
5 4 (2.07%) Databricks
5 4 (2.07%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.07%) UiPath
6 3 (1.55%) Google
7 2 (1.04%) Adobe
7 2 (1.04%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.04%) MuleSoft
7 2 (1.04%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.04%) VMware
8 1 (0.52%) IFS
8 1 (0.52%) JDA
8 1 (0.52%) Sitecore
8 1 (0.52%) Workday