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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 189 164
Rank change year-on-year -55 -25 +4
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 174 164 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.85% 1.25% 1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.01% 1.39% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 93 107 176
10th Percentile £358 £300 £391
25th Percentile £402 £358 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £560
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -15.18% +6.67%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £675
90th Percentile £604 £663 £706
UK median daily rate £488 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -11.36% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 7 49
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 -
90th Percentile £77.95 £64.25 £85.24
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 17,152 11,827 18,010
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 83.99% 89.79% 86.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,435 7,113 11,130
10th Percentile £251 £231 £250
25th Percentile £393 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -1.40% -
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 1,828 652 1,798
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.24 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £71.65 £75.00 £71.78
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £33.00 £34.00
% change year-on-year -21.91% -2.94% -2.86%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -40 56 £447 -5.89% 28
North West -13 39 £439 -9.95% 15
South East -43 33 £509 -18.56% 29
Midlands -54 29 £450 -10.00% 15
East of England 0 27 £600 - 10
Scotland -10 19 £432 +2.92% 6
West Midlands -46 16 £600 -15.79% 6
East Midlands -33 13 £402 -3.42% 9
North East -8 12 £494 +47.39% 6
South West -12 12 £500 -4.31% 28
Wales -7 7 £725 +255.83% 4
Yorkshire -51 7 £500 -16.67% 7
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 10 (5.75%) 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 41 (23.56%) Azure
2 34 (19.54%) AWS
3 24 (13.79%) Azure DevOps
4 19 (10.92%) GitHub
5 18 (10.34%) Serverless
6 12 (6.90%) OpenShift
7 11 (6.32%) Amazon S3
7 11 (6.32%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (6.32%) Dynamics 365
7 11 (6.32%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (5.75%) AWS Step Functions
8 10 (5.75%) Power Platform
9 8 (4.60%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (4.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 6 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
11 6 (3.45%) Azure Functions
11 6 (3.45%) Azure Logic Apps
11 6 (3.45%) GCP
12 5 (2.87%) Azure Service Bus
13 4 (2.30%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 16 (9.20%) TCP/IP
2 11 (6.32%) 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
2 9 (5.17%) NoSQL
3 8 (4.60%) SQL Server
4 7 (4.02%) Aerospike
4 7 (4.02%) Amazon Athena
4 7 (4.02%) MongoDB
4 7 (4.02%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (3.45%) Redis
5 6 (3.45%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.87%) Delta Lake
7 4 (2.30%) Data Lake
7 4 (2.30%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.30%) SAP HANA
8 3 (1.72%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.72%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (1.72%) SAP Data Services
9 2 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.15%) Crystal Reports
9 2 (1.15%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 39 (22.41%) Git
2 34 (19.54%) GitLab
3 32 (18.39%) JIRA
4 20 (11.49%) SonarQube
5 16 (9.20%) Visual Studio
6 15 (8.62%) JUnit
7 11 (6.32%) Jenkins
8 8 (4.60%) Eclipse
8 8 (4.60%) PVCS
8 8 (4.60%) Rational DOORS
9 6 (3.45%) Selenium
10 5 (2.87%) Gradle
10 5 (2.87%) Maven
10 5 (2.87%) MLflow
10 5 (2.87%) Mockito
10 5 (2.87%) NUnit
11 4 (2.30%) JMeter
11 4 (2.30%) MSTest
11 4 (2.30%) XCTest
12 3 (1.72%) Xcode
General
1 50 (28.74%) Social Skills
2 37 (21.26%) Finance
3 24 (13.79%) Public Sector
4 15 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (7.47%) Military
6 11 (6.32%) Electronics
7 10 (5.75%) Banking
8 8 (4.60%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (2.30%) Aerospace
9 4 (2.30%) Health Technology
9 4 (2.30%) Marketing
9 4 (2.30%) Telecoms
10 3 (1.72%) Law
11 2 (1.15%) General Ledger
11 2 (1.15%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.57%) Billing
12 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.57%) Legal
Job Titles
1 77 (44.25%) Developer
2 30 (17.24%) Senior
2 30 (17.24%) Software Engineer
3 19 (10.92%) Java Developer
4 16 (9.20%) Senior Developer
5 12 (6.90%) C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (6.90%) Consultant
5 12 (6.90%) Full-Stack Developer
6 10 (5.75%) .NET Developer
7 9 (5.17%) Data Engineer
7 9 (5.17%) Lead
8 7 (4.02%) AWS Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) Azure Developer
8 7 (4.02%) C Software Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Software Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) Embedded C Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
8 7 (4.02%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (18.39%) RESTful
2 26 (14.94%) .NET
3 25 (14.37%) Web Services
4 21 (12.07%) Node.js
4 21 (12.07%) React
5 20 (11.49%) Spring
6 19 (10.92%) AngularJS
6 19 (10.92%) REST
7 14 (8.05%) Jest
8 13 (7.47%) PySpark
8 13 (7.47%) Spring Boot
8 13 (7.47%) YAML
9 11 (6.32%) HTML
9 11 (6.32%) Kafka
9 11 (6.32%) Quarkus
9 11 (6.32%) Swagger
10 10 (5.75%) .NET Core
10 10 (5.75%) CSS
11 9 (5.17%) pytest
12 8 (4.60%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 17 (9.77%) Cloud Native
2 15 (8.62%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (5.17%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.87%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 4 (2.30%) NHS
6 3 (1.72%) IoT
6 3 (1.72%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.72%) Taxonomies
7 2 (1.15%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.15%) FPGA
7 2 (1.15%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.15%) PCIe
7 2 (1.15%) State Machine
8 1 (0.57%) Contactless
8 1 (0.57%) Derivative
8 1 (0.57%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.57%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 23 (13.22%) Windows
2 20 (11.49%) 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
1 102 (58.62%) Agile
2 89 (51.15%) CI/CD
3 61 (35.06%) Test Automation
4 52 (29.89%) DevOps
4 52 (29.89%) Problem-Solving
5 43 (24.71%) Software Engineering
6 37 (21.26%) TDD
7 35 (20.11%) Microservices
8 34 (19.54%) Scrum
9 28 (16.09%) Integration Testing
9 28 (16.09%) SDLC
10 25 (14.37%) Validation
11 24 (13.79%) Code Quality
12 23 (13.22%) Continuous Integration
12 23 (13.22%) Full-Stack Development
13 22 (12.64%) Data Modelling
14 21 (12.07%) Containerisation
14 21 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
15 19 (10.92%) Clean Code
16 17 (9.77%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 56 (32.18%) Java
2 42 (24.14%) SQL
3 41 (23.56%) C#
4 34 (19.54%) JavaScript
5 27 (15.52%) C++
6 25 (14.37%) Python
7 17 (9.77%) TypeScript
8 15 (8.62%) 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%) Go
13 2 (1.15%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.57%) X++
Qualifications
1 45 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 32 (18.39%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (5.75%) 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
8 1 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (16.09%) QA
2 10 (5.75%) Accessibility
3 9 (5.17%) Data Quality
4 7 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.87%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 5 (2.87%) ISO 20022
5 5 (2.87%) PSD2
5 5 (2.87%) SEPA
6 4 (2.30%) HL7
7 2 (1.15%) SLA
8 1 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.57%) GDPR
System Software
1 25 (14.37%) Docker
2 9 (5.17%) Virtual Machines
2 9 (5.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.57%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 25 (14.37%) Kubernetes
2 11 (6.32%) Argo
3 7 (4.02%) Terraform
4 4 (2.30%) 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%) Oozie
6 1 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.57%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.57%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 22 (12.64%) Microsoft
2 20 (11.49%) Oracle
3 13 (7.47%) 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%) Google
11 3 (1.72%) IFS
11 3 (1.72%) Pega
12 2 (1.15%) Avaloq
12 2 (1.15%) Dynatrace
12 2 (1.15%) NEC
12 2 (1.15%) Perforce
12 2 (1.15%) Workday