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 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 205 169
Rank change year-on-year -40 -36 +5
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 203 143 254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.92% 1.14% 1.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.11% 1.25% 1.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 97 165
10th Percentile £358 £274 £358
25th Percentile £402 £356 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £475 £506
Median % change year-on-year -0.53% -6.13% +1.20%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £663
90th Percentile £604 £643 £688
UK median daily rate £489 £538 £538
% change year-on-year -8.96% - -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 10 44
10th Percentile £56.72 £26.36 £61.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £48.44 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.64% -9.62% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 -
90th Percentile - £65.00 £81.63
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 18,261 11,405 17,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.69% 90.56% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,094 7,283 10,957
10th Percentile £273 £244 £235
25th Percentile £400 £378 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.89% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £576 £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 1,912 739 1,947
10th Percentile £14.47 £14.99 £12.40
25th Percentile £17.98 £19.00 £15.19
Median hourly rate £30.00 £31.52 £31.80
Median % change year-on-year -4.82% -0.88% -12.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.00
90th Percentile £75.75 £76.25 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.81% -1.54% -9.72%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 -35 57 £450 -5.26% 36
South East -40 49 £513 -18.00% 29
North West -26 34 £447 -8.31% 18
Midlands -49 31 £449 -3.03% 19
East of England -6 27 £613 - 2
Scotland -6 20 £432 -3.94% 6
North East +1 18 £513 +52.99% 10
South West -16 17 £500 -4.31% 13
East Midlands -31 16 £413 -0.90% 10
West Midlands -50 15 £550 +19.24% 9
Wales -13 9 £713 +249.69% 4
Yorkshire -47 7 £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 (7.88%) Confluence
2 9 (4.43%) Apache Spark
3 5 (2.46%) Apache
4 4 (1.97%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.48%) NetWeaver
5 3 (1.48%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.99%) 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 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.99%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.49%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 5 (2.46%) SAP Payroll
1 5 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.97%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.48%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG
3 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-F
3 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-M
3 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-S
4 2 (0.99%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle 11i
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle Cash Management
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.99%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.99%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.49%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 48 (23.65%) Azure
2 39 (19.21%) AWS
3 28 (13.79%) Azure DevOps
4 24 (11.82%) GitHub
4 24 (11.82%) OpenShift
5 19 (9.36%) Serverless
6 14 (6.90%) Amazon S3
7 11 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (5.42%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (4.43%) AWS Step Functions
8 9 (4.43%) Dynamics 365
8 9 (4.43%) Power Platform
9 8 (3.94%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (3.94%) Azure Functions
9 8 (3.94%) GCP
10 7 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (3.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (2.46%) Azure Logic Apps
12 4 (1.97%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 4 (1.97%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 22 (10.84%) TCP/IP
2 17 (8.37%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.48%) Modbus
3 3 (1.48%) RS-232
3 3 (1.48%) RS-422
3 3 (1.48%) RS-485
4 1 (0.49%) DNS
4 1 (0.49%) Internet
4 1 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 11 (5.42%) NoSQL
2 11 (5.42%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (4.43%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (4.43%) Relational Database
4 8 (3.94%) Aerospike
4 8 (3.94%) DynamoDB
5 7 (3.45%) Amazon Athena
5 7 (3.45%) MongoDB
5 7 (3.45%) Redis
6 5 (2.46%) Data Lake
6 5 (2.46%) Delta Lake
6 5 (2.46%) SAP HANA
7 3 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (1.48%) Big Data
7 3 (1.48%) BigQuery
7 3 (1.48%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.48%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.48%) SAP Data Services
8 2 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 43 (21.18%) Git
2 39 (19.21%) GitLab
3 34 (16.75%) JIRA
4 31 (15.27%) Visual Studio
5 29 (14.29%) SonarQube
6 16 (7.88%) JUnit
7 15 (7.39%) Eclipse
7 15 (7.39%) Jenkins
8 9 (4.43%) Selenium
9 8 (3.94%) PVCS
9 8 (3.94%) Rational DOORS
10 7 (3.45%) JMeter
10 7 (3.45%) MSTest
11 6 (2.96%) NUnit
12 5 (2.46%) Gradle
12 5 (2.46%) Maven
12 5 (2.46%) MLflow
12 5 (2.46%) Mockito
13 4 (1.97%) Cucumber
13 4 (1.97%) XCTest
General
1 51 (25.12%) Social Skills
2 38 (18.72%) Finance
3 26 (12.81%) Public Sector
4 19 (9.36%) Military
5 16 (7.88%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (6.40%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (5.42%) Banking
7 11 (5.42%) Electronics
8 4 (1.97%) Health Technology
8 4 (1.97%) Law
9 3 (1.48%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.99%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.99%) Marketing
10 2 (0.99%) Retail
10 2 (0.99%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.49%) Advertising
11 1 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.49%) Legal
Job Titles
1 91 (44.83%) Developer
2 38 (18.72%) Software Engineer
3 33 (16.26%) Senior
4 24 (11.82%) Java Developer
5 16 (7.88%) Full-Stack Developer
5 16 (7.88%) Senior Developer
6 14 (6.90%) C++ Software Engineer
7 12 (5.91%) .NET Developer
7 12 (5.91%) Java Engineer
8 11 (5.42%) C# Software Engineer
9 10 (4.93%) Consultant
10 9 (4.43%) Data Engineer
10 9 (4.43%) Lead
11 8 (3.94%) Azure Developer
11 8 (3.94%) Integration Engineer
12 7 (3.45%) C Software Engineer
12 7 (3.45%) C# Developer
12 7 (3.45%) Embedded C Engineer
12 7 (3.45%) Embedded C Software Engineer
12 7 (3.45%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (16.26%) RESTful
2 30 (14.78%) .NET
2 30 (14.78%) AngularJS
2 30 (14.78%) Web Services
3 26 (12.81%) Node.js
4 23 (11.33%) React
5 22 (10.84%) Quarkus
6 21 (10.34%) REST
6 21 (10.34%) Spring
7 15 (7.39%) Jest
8 14 (6.90%) Kafka
8 14 (6.90%) Spring Boot
9 13 (6.40%) .NET Framework
10 12 (5.91%) PySpark
10 12 (5.91%) YAML
11 11 (5.42%) CSS
11 11 (5.42%) Swagger
12 10 (4.93%) .NET Core
12 10 (4.93%) HTML
12 10 (4.93%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 20 (9.85%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.37%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (4.93%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 4 (1.97%) NHS
6 3 (1.48%) IoT
7 2 (0.99%) Algorithms
7 2 (0.99%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.99%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.49%) Contactless
8 1 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.49%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.49%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.49%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.49%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 30 (14.78%) Windows
2 26 (12.81%) Linux
3 7 (3.45%) Android
4 4 (1.97%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.48%) Unix
6 1 (0.49%) OpenVMS
6 1 (0.49%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (64.04%) Agile
2 95 (46.80%) CI/CD
3 73 (35.96%) Test Automation
4 60 (29.56%) Software Engineering
5 59 (29.06%) Problem-Solving
6 58 (28.57%) DevOps
7 51 (25.12%) Scrum
8 47 (23.15%) TDD
9 40 (19.70%) Microservices
10 39 (19.21%) SDLC
11 33 (16.26%) Validation
12 31 (15.27%) Continuous Integration
12 31 (15.27%) Integration Testing
13 29 (14.29%) Data Modelling
14 26 (12.81%) Front End Development
14 26 (12.81%) Full-Stack Development
15 24 (11.82%) Code Quality
15 24 (11.82%) Sprint Planning
16 23 (11.33%) Containerisation
17 22 (10.84%) Verification and Validation
Programming Languages
1 72 (35.47%) Java
2 56 (27.59%) SQL
3 51 (25.12%) C#
4 43 (21.18%) JavaScript
5 35 (17.24%) C++
6 31 (15.27%) Python
7 21 (10.34%) TypeScript
8 18 (8.87%) C
9 10 (4.93%) PL/SQL
10 9 (4.43%) PowerShell
11 8 (3.94%) ABAP
11 8 (3.94%) Scala
12 7 (3.45%) Embedded C
12 7 (3.45%) Embedded C++
13 6 (2.96%) Apex Code
14 5 (2.46%) Shell Script
15 4 (1.97%) Swift
16 3 (1.48%) SOQL
16 3 (1.48%) SOSL
17 2 (0.99%) Bash
Qualifications
1 62 (30.54%) Security Cleared
2 49 (24.14%) SC Cleared
3 13 (6.40%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (5.91%) Degree
5 8 (3.94%) ISTQB
5 8 (3.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (1.97%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.49%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (17.24%) QA
2 12 (5.91%) Data Quality
3 10 (4.93%) Accessibility
4 9 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (3.94%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 5 (2.46%) ISO 20022
6 5 (2.46%) PSD2
6 5 (2.46%) SEPA
7 4 (1.97%) HL7
8 2 (0.99%) SLA
9 1 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.49%) GDPR
System Software
1 30 (14.78%) Docker
2 9 (4.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.94%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 38 (18.72%) Kubernetes
2 22 (10.84%) Argo
3 6 (2.96%) Terraform
4 4 (1.97%) Grafana
5 2 (0.99%) HP ALM
5 2 (0.99%) Kibana
5 2 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.99%) vRealize
6 1 (0.49%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.49%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 29 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 21 (10.34%) Oracle
3 20 (9.85%) Red Hat
4 16 (7.88%) Databricks
5 11 (5.42%) Salesforce
6 10 (4.93%) SAP
6 10 (4.93%) VMware
7 9 (4.43%) IBM
8 8 (3.94%) ANSYS
9 6 (2.96%) Veracode
10 5 (2.46%) Splunk
11 4 (1.97%) Brio
12 3 (1.48%) Google
13 2 (0.99%) Ab Initio
13 2 (0.99%) Avaloq
13 2 (0.99%) Dynatrace
13 2 (0.99%) HP
13 2 (0.99%) IFS
13 2 (0.99%) NEC
13 2 (0.99%) Workday