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 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 295 202 139
Rank change year-on-year -93 -63 +21
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 179 182 273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.64% 1.17% 1.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 1.31% 1.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 97 165
10th Percentile £322 £348 £375
25th Percentile £405 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £463 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.95% -15.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £581 £526 £638
90th Percentile £688 £641 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% -7.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 24 36
10th Percentile £38.25 - £61.25
25th Percentile £62.50 - £64.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 22,687 13,861 14,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.70% 89.35% 83.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,753 8,345 8,338
10th Percentile £300 £227 £239
25th Percentile £410 £363 £381
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% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,766 1,501 1,125
10th Percentile £13.49 £14.08 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.75 £17.14 £18.16
Median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%
75th Percentile £66.00 £41.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £74.44
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -1.16%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 -66 65 £461 +9.50% 48
South East -30 49 £528 +27.11% 35
Midlands -42 31 £500 +8.11% 31
North East -11 29 £425 -22.73% 9
West Midlands -29 28 £500 -2.91% 16
North West -78 25 £463 +0.65% 32
East of England -29 19 £619 +26.92% 27
Scotland -40 15 £438 -12.50% 22
South West -31 12 £500 -9.09% 28
Yorkshire -42 11 £447 +14.62% 7
East Midlands -30 3 £568 +28.61% 15
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 14
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 3 (1.68%) Apache Spark
1 3 (1.68%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.12%) Apache
2 2 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.56%) JBoss
3 1 (0.56%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.56%) Mule
3 1 (0.56%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.56%) SAS
3 1 (0.56%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (5.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.68%) SAP HCM
2 3 (1.68%) SAP Payroll
2 3 (1.68%) SAP SD
3 2 (1.12%) SAP MM
3 2 (1.12%) SAP PP
4 1 (0.56%) Maximo
4 1 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.56%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.56%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.56%) SAP LE
4 1 (0.56%) SAP QM
4 1 (0.56%) SAP Travel Management
4 1 (0.56%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 37 (20.67%) Azure
2 31 (17.32%) AWS
3 29 (16.20%) OpenShift
4 22 (12.29%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (8.38%) Power Platform
6 12 (6.70%) GitHub
6 12 (6.70%) Serverless
7 9 (5.03%) PowerApps
8 8 (4.47%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (4.47%) Power Automate
9 6 (3.35%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (3.35%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (3.35%) GCP
10 5 (2.79%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.79%) Azure Functions
10 5 (2.79%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (2.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.23%) Amazon SQS
12 3 (1.68%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.70%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.70%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.56%) HTTP
2 1 (0.56%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (5.03%) SQL Server
2 8 (4.47%) MongoDB
2 8 (4.47%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.47%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (4.47%) Power BI
3 5 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (2.23%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.23%) MySQL
5 3 (1.68%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.68%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.68%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.68%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.12%) Chroma
6 2 (1.12%) Delta Lake
6 2 (1.12%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.12%) Pinecone
6 2 (1.12%) SAP HANA
6 2 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.56%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 45 (25.14%) Git
2 29 (16.20%) SonarQube
3 19 (10.61%) GitLab
4 18 (10.06%) JUnit
5 16 (8.94%) Visual Studio
6 14 (7.82%) Eclipse
7 12 (6.70%) Selenium
8 11 (6.15%) Jenkins
8 11 (6.15%) Maven
9 9 (5.03%) Cucumber
10 8 (4.47%) Gradle
10 8 (4.47%) NUnit
11 7 (3.91%) JIRA
12 6 (3.35%) Gatling
12 6 (3.35%) MSTest
13 4 (2.23%) CppUnit
13 4 (2.23%) Cypress.io
13 4 (2.23%) Mockito
13 4 (2.23%) Rational DOORS
13 4 (2.23%) TeamCity
General
1 55 (30.73%) Social Skills
2 27 (15.08%) Public Sector
3 23 (12.85%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (11.17%) Finance
5 14 (7.82%) Banking
6 12 (6.70%) Military
7 8 (4.47%) Aerospace
8 6 (3.35%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (2.79%) Manufacturing
10 4 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.68%) Billing
12 2 (1.12%) Aviation
12 2 (1.12%) Law
12 2 (1.12%) Retail
13 1 (0.56%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.56%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.56%) Legal
Job Titles
1 82 (45.81%) Developer
2 26 (14.53%) Software Engineer
3 23 (12.85%) Java Developer
4 18 (10.06%) Java Engineer
5 15 (8.38%) Consultant
6 14 (7.82%) Lead
7 12 (6.70%) Senior
8 9 (5.03%) .NET Developer
8 9 (5.03%) C# Software Engineer
8 9 (5.03%) SAP Consultant
9 8 (4.47%) C# Developer
9 8 (4.47%) Java Software Engineer
9 8 (4.47%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 7 (3.91%) C++ Software Engineer
11 6 (3.35%) Lead Developer
11 6 (3.35%) ServiceNow Developer
11 6 (3.35%) Software Developer
12 5 (2.79%) C# .NET Developer
12 5 (2.79%) Data Engineer
12 5 (2.79%) Quality Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (17.88%) .NET
1 32 (17.88%) AngularJS
2 30 (16.76%) REST
3 26 (14.53%) Quarkus
3 26 (14.53%) Web Services
4 24 (13.41%) Spring
5 21 (11.73%) RESTful
6 19 (10.61%) React
7 18 (10.06%) Node.js
7 18 (10.06%) Spring Boot
8 13 (7.26%) HTML
8 13 (7.26%) WPF
9 12 (6.70%) SOAP
10 11 (6.15%) .NET Framework
10 11 (6.15%) Kafka
10 11 (6.15%) Playwright
11 10 (5.59%) CSS
11 10 (5.59%) Terraform
12 9 (5.03%) Middleware
13 8 (4.47%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 11 (6.15%) Cloud Native
1 11 (6.15%) Data Structures
1 11 (6.15%) Product Ownership
2 10 (5.59%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
4 5 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.68%) CMDB
7 2 (1.12%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.12%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.56%) LIMS
8 1 (0.56%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.56%) NHS
8 1 (0.56%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.56%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 20 (11.17%) Windows
2 14 (7.82%) Linux
3 1 (0.56%) Android
3 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.56%) Unix
3 1 (0.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (53.07%) Agile
2 76 (42.46%) CI/CD
3 70 (39.11%) Test Automation
4 57 (31.84%) Software Engineering
5 53 (29.61%) Scrum
6 52 (29.05%) DevOps
7 44 (24.58%) SDLC
8 42 (23.46%) Integration Testing
8 42 (23.46%) Problem-Solving
9 41 (22.91%) User Acceptance Testing
10 39 (21.79%) TDD
11 36 (20.11%) Sprint Planning
12 33 (18.44%) Continuous Improvement
13 32 (17.88%) Front End Development
14 27 (15.08%) Code Quality
14 27 (15.08%) DevSecOps
14 27 (15.08%) Sprint Review
15 25 (13.97%) Microservices
16 23 (12.85%) Validation
17 21 (11.73%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 60 (33.52%) Java
2 49 (27.37%) C#
2 49 (27.37%) JavaScript
3 44 (24.58%) SQL
4 16 (8.94%) C++
5 13 (7.26%) Python
6 12 (6.70%) TypeScript
7 6 (3.35%) Scala
8 5 (2.79%) ABAP
9 4 (2.23%) C
9 4 (2.23%) XAML
10 3 (1.68%) Embedded C
10 3 (1.68%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.68%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.68%) X++
11 2 (1.12%) Go
11 2 (1.12%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.12%) VBA
12 1 (0.56%) Bash
12 1 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 61 (34.08%) Security Cleared
2 50 (27.93%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.70%) Degree
4 9 (5.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.23%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.23%) PhD
7 3 (1.68%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.56%) ACCA
8 1 (0.56%) CIMA
8 1 (0.56%) CISA
8 1 (0.56%) CISSP
8 1 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.56%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.56%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (23.46%) QA
2 11 (6.15%) Accessibility
3 7 (3.91%) Data Quality
3 7 (3.91%) WCAG
4 3 (1.68%) GDPR
5 1 (0.56%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 1 (0.56%) GMP
5 1 (0.56%) GRC
5 1 (0.56%) GxP
5 1 (0.56%) HL7
5 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.56%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (11.73%) Docker
2 4 (2.23%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.56%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 47 (26.26%) Kubernetes
2 26 (14.53%) Argo
3 2 (1.12%) Ansible
3 2 (1.12%) Grafana
4 1 (0.56%) Istio
4 1 (0.56%) Kibana
4 1 (0.56%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.56%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 29 (16.20%) Microsoft
2 26 (14.53%) Red Hat
3 18 (10.06%) Oracle
4 16 (8.94%) SAP
5 9 (5.03%) ServiceNow
6 6 (3.35%) Splunk
7 5 (2.79%) Google
8 4 (2.23%) Avaloq
8 4 (2.23%) UiPath
8 4 (2.23%) VMware
9 3 (1.68%) Databricks
10 2 (1.12%) Adobe
10 2 (1.12%) Dynatrace
10 2 (1.12%) MuleSoft
11 1 (0.56%) Cloudera
11 1 (0.56%) Informatica
11 1 (0.56%) JDA
11 1 (0.56%) Pega
11 1 (0.56%) Sitecore
11 1 (0.56%) Talend