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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 288 201 139
Rank change year-on-year -87 -62 +13
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 200 198 280
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 1.24% 1.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.39% 1.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 104 102 169
10th Percentile £323 £346 £363
25th Percentile £397 £381 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £463 £526
Median % change year-on-year +2.16% -11.99% -8.61%
75th Percentile £550 £541 £638
90th Percentile £672 £637 £663
UK median daily rate £490 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +3.16% -13.64% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 25 33
10th Percentile £38.25 - £61.25
25th Percentile £63.75 - -
Median hourly rate £69.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.92% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £69.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +6.92% - -

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 23,151 14,229 14,475
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.23% 89.19% 83.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,813 8,570 8,197
10th Percentile £300 £225 £243
25th Percentile £407 £368 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,966 1,558 1,009
10th Percentile £13.48 £14.11 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £17.14 £18.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%
75th Percentile £65.22 £38.96 £66.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £66.15 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -57 81 £460 +9.20% 25
South East -36 54 £530 +21.14% 11
North East -6 34 £413 -25.00% 9
Midlands -52 33 £500 +8.11% 11
North West -66 32 £460 +0.11% 13
West Midlands -34 30 £500 -3.66% 7
East of England -37 19 £619 +26.92% 6
Scotland -35 17 £438 -12.50% 4
Yorkshire -38 15 £475 +21.79% 5
South West -31 12 £500 -9.09% 10
East Midlands -25 3 £568 +35.12% 4
Northern Ireland - 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 6 (3.00%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.50%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.00%) Apache
3 2 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.50%) Confluence
4 1 (0.50%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.50%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (5.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.50%) SAP HCM
2 3 (1.50%) SAP Payroll
2 3 (1.50%) SAP SD
3 2 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.00%) SAP EWM
3 2 (1.00%) SAP MM
3 2 (1.00%) SAP PP
4 1 (0.50%) Maximo
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.50%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.50%) SAP LE
4 1 (0.50%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.50%) SAP Travel Management
4 1 (0.50%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.50%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 52 (26.00%) Azure
2 36 (18.00%) AWS
3 33 (16.50%) OpenShift
4 31 (15.50%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (11.00%) Power Platform
6 19 (9.50%) GitHub
7 16 (8.00%) Serverless
8 15 (7.50%) PowerApps
9 12 (6.00%) GCP
10 11 (5.50%) Dynamics 365
10 11 (5.50%) Power Automate
11 8 (4.00%) Azure Functions
12 7 (3.50%) Amazon ECS
12 7 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (3.00%) Amazon S3
13 6 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
14 5 (2.50%) Azure Logic Apps
15 4 (2.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 4 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
15 4 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.00%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.00%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.50%) HTTP
2 1 (0.50%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.00%) NoSQL
1 10 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (5.00%) SQL Server
2 9 (4.50%) MongoDB
3 8 (4.00%) Power BI
4 7 (3.50%) Data Lake
5 5 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (2.00%) DynamoDB
6 4 (2.00%) MySQL
6 4 (2.00%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.50%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (1.50%) Chroma
7 3 (1.50%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.50%) Pinecone
7 3 (1.50%) SAP HANA
8 2 (1.00%) Delta Lake
8 2 (1.00%) DocumentDB
8 2 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 55 (27.50%) Git
2 33 (16.50%) SonarQube
3 18 (9.00%) JUnit
3 18 (9.00%) Visual Studio
4 16 (8.00%) GitLab
5 15 (7.50%) Selenium
6 14 (7.00%) Jenkins
7 13 (6.50%) Eclipse
8 11 (5.50%) Maven
8 11 (5.50%) NUnit
9 9 (4.50%) Cucumber
9 9 (4.50%) MSTest
10 8 (4.00%) JIRA
11 7 (3.50%) Gatling
11 7 (3.50%) Gradle
12 6 (3.00%) Cypress.io
13 5 (2.50%) TeamCity
14 4 (2.00%) CppUnit
14 4 (2.00%) Mockito
14 4 (2.00%) Rational DOORS
General
1 65 (32.50%) Social Skills
2 31 (15.50%) Public Sector
3 26 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (12.00%) Finance
5 17 (8.50%) Banking
6 12 (6.00%) Military
7 8 (4.00%) Aerospace
8 7 (3.50%) Manufacturing
9 6 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (3.00%) Retail
10 5 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.50%) Billing
12 2 (1.00%) Aviation
12 2 (1.00%) Law
13 1 (0.50%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.50%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.50%) Legal
13 1 (0.50%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 90 (45.00%) Developer
2 30 (15.00%) Software Engineer
3 25 (12.50%) Java Developer
4 18 (9.00%) Java Engineer
5 17 (8.50%) Consultant
6 16 (8.00%) Lead
6 16 (8.00%) Senior
7 10 (5.00%) .NET Developer
7 10 (5.00%) SAP Consultant
7 10 (5.00%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 9 (4.50%) C# Software Engineer
9 8 (4.00%) C# Developer
9 8 (4.00%) Java Software Engineer
10 7 (3.50%) C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (3.50%) Lead Developer
10 7 (3.50%) Senior Developer
10 7 (3.50%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.00%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
11 6 (3.00%) Quality Engineer
11 6 (3.00%) ServiceNow Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (19.50%) .NET
2 37 (18.50%) AngularJS
2 37 (18.50%) REST
3 28 (14.00%) Quarkus
4 27 (13.50%) RESTful
4 27 (13.50%) Web Services
5 24 (12.00%) Spring
6 23 (11.50%) Node.js
6 23 (11.50%) React
7 19 (9.50%) Spring Boot
8 15 (7.50%) Playwright
9 14 (7.00%) SOAP
10 13 (6.50%) HTML
11 12 (6.00%) .NET Framework
11 12 (6.00%) Kafka
11 12 (6.00%) Middleware
11 12 (6.00%) Terraform
12 10 (5.00%) .NET Core
12 10 (5.00%) CSS
12 10 (5.00%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 17 (8.50%) Product Ownership
2 16 (8.00%) Cloud Native
3 13 (6.50%) Data Structures
4 10 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (5.00%) Enterprise Software
5 7 (3.50%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.00%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.50%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.50%) AS400
7 3 (1.50%) CMDB
8 2 (1.00%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.00%) NHS
9 1 (0.50%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.50%) Housing Association
9 1 (0.50%) LIMS
9 1 (0.50%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.50%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.50%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.50%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.50%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 20 (10.00%) Windows
2 14 (7.00%) Linux
3 1 (0.50%) Android
3 1 (0.50%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.50%) Unix
3 1 (0.50%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (56.00%) Agile
2 87 (43.50%) CI/CD
3 86 (43.00%) Test Automation
4 68 (34.00%) DevOps
5 66 (33.00%) Software Engineering
6 63 (31.50%) Scrum
7 49 (24.50%) Integration Testing
8 47 (23.50%) SDLC
9 46 (23.00%) Problem-Solving
10 45 (22.50%) User Acceptance Testing
11 41 (20.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 41 (20.50%) Sprint Planning
11 41 (20.50%) TDD
12 38 (19.00%) Front End Development
13 32 (16.00%) DevSecOps
14 31 (15.50%) Code Quality
14 31 (15.50%) Sprint Review
15 27 (13.50%) Microservices
15 27 (13.50%) Validation
16 25 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 65 (32.50%) Java
2 58 (29.00%) JavaScript
3 53 (26.50%) C#
4 50 (25.00%) SQL
5 19 (9.50%) TypeScript
6 18 (9.00%) Python
7 17 (8.50%) C++
8 6 (3.00%) Scala
9 5 (2.50%) ABAP
9 5 (2.50%) C
10 4 (2.00%) Embedded C
10 4 (2.00%) XAML
11 3 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.50%) X++
12 2 (1.00%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.00%) Shell Script
12 2 (1.00%) VBA
13 1 (0.50%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.50%) Bash
13 1 (0.50%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 65 (32.50%) Security Cleared
2 53 (26.50%) SC Cleared
3 11 (5.50%) BPSS Clearance
3 11 (5.50%) Degree
4 5 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (2.00%) DV Cleared
5 4 (2.00%) Master's Degree
5 4 (2.00%) PhD
6 1 (0.50%) ACCA
6 1 (0.50%) CIMA
6 1 (0.50%) CISA
6 1 (0.50%) CISSP
6 1 (0.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.50%) CREST Certified
6 1 (0.50%) ISTQB
6 1 (0.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 1 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (25.50%) QA
2 13 (6.50%) Accessibility
3 9 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 9 (4.50%) WCAG
4 5 (2.50%) GDPR
5 2 (1.00%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.50%) GMP
6 1 (0.50%) GRC
6 1 (0.50%) GxP
6 1 (0.50%) HL7
6 1 (0.50%) IEC 62304
6 1 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 24 (12.00%) Docker
2 4 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.50%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 56 (28.00%) Kubernetes
2 30 (15.00%) Argo
3 2 (1.00%) Ansible
3 2 (1.00%) Grafana
3 2 (1.00%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.50%) Istio
4 1 (0.50%) Kibana
4 1 (0.50%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 35 (17.50%) Microsoft
2 30 (15.00%) Red Hat
3 19 (9.50%) Oracle
3 19 (9.50%) SAP
4 9 (4.50%) ServiceNow
5 6 (3.00%) Databricks
5 6 (3.00%) Google
5 6 (3.00%) Splunk
6 5 (2.50%) UiPath
7 4 (2.00%) Avaloq
7 4 (2.00%) VMware
8 2 (1.00%) Adobe
8 2 (1.00%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.00%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.50%) AppDynamics
9 1 (0.50%) Cloudera
9 1 (0.50%) IFS
9 1 (0.50%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.50%) Talend
9 1 (0.50%) Workday