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 25 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 227 160 161
Rank change year-on-year -67 +1 +10
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 184 201 303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.98% 1.46% 1.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 1.65% 1.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 119 182
10th Percentile £358 £313 £401
25th Percentile £400 £420 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -13.04% +9.52%
75th Percentile £515 £638 £663
90th Percentile £600 £665 £704
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -9.09% -8.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 56
10th Percentile £55.00 £26.22 £48.32
25th Percentile £60.00 £47.50 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £68.38 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £70.00 - £84.36
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +10.64% -9.62% -

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 15,955 12,169 17,741
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.65% 88.48% 86.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,777 7,126 11,140
10th Percentile £230 £232 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £594 £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 1,721 678 1,583
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.12 £16.25
Median hourly rate £24.55 £30.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.38% -18.80% +44.23%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.01 £62.50
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.13 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.33
% change year-on-year -22.62% -10.55% +16.41%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 -17 69 £447 -4.64% 32
North West +3 51 £447 -8.31% 21
Midlands -38 32 £480 -8.35% 19
South East -53 29 £500 -21.57% 54
East of England -8 28 £469 - 19
West Midlands -30 23 £520 -27.02% 4
Scotland -11 17 £415 -7.78% 10
South West -10 11 £500 - 21
North East -8 10 £494 +47.39% 3
Yorkshire -40 10 £475 - 8
East Midlands -33 9 £398 -22.06% 15
Wales -9 7 £725 +255.83% 5
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 17 (9.24%) Confluence
2 10 (5.43%) Apache Spark
3 7 (3.80%) Apache
4 6 (3.26%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.17%) OpenStack
6 3 (1.63%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.54%) IIS
7 1 (0.54%) JBoss
7 1 (0.54%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.54%) Mule
7 1 (0.54%) Mule ESB
7 1 (0.54%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.54%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 4 (2.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.63%) SAP MDG
2 3 (1.63%) SAP MDG-F
2 3 (1.63%) SAP MDG-M
2 3 (1.63%) SAP MDG-S
3 2 (1.09%) NEC Housing
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (1.09%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (1.09%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.54%) SAP HCM
4 1 (0.54%) SAP Payroll
4 1 (0.54%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.54%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 44 (23.91%) Azure
2 38 (20.65%) AWS
3 27 (14.67%) Azure DevOps
4 19 (10.33%) GitHub
5 18 (9.78%) Serverless
6 12 (6.52%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (5.98%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (5.43%) Amazon S3
8 10 (5.43%) AWS Step Functions
8 10 (5.43%) Dynamics 365
8 10 (5.43%) OpenShift
8 10 (5.43%) Power Platform
9 8 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (3.80%) Azure AKS
10 7 (3.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 6 (3.26%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (2.72%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 5 (2.72%) Azure Functions
12 5 (2.72%) GCP
12 5 (2.72%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 20 (10.87%) TCP/IP
2 12 (6.52%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.54%) DNS
3 1 (0.54%) Internet
3 1 (0.54%) SSL
3 1 (0.54%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
1 9 (4.89%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.35%) Redis
3 7 (3.80%) Amazon Athena
4 6 (3.26%) Aerospike
4 6 (3.26%) Relational Database
4 6 (3.26%) SQL Server
5 5 (2.72%) Delta Lake
5 5 (2.72%) MongoDB
5 5 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (2.17%) Big Data
6 4 (2.17%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.63%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.63%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.63%) SAP Data Services
8 2 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (1.09%) Apache Hive
8 2 (1.09%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 49 (26.63%) Git
2 39 (21.20%) JIRA
3 33 (17.93%) GitLab
4 19 (10.33%) JUnit
4 19 (10.33%) SonarQube
5 18 (9.78%) Visual Studio
6 16 (8.70%) Jenkins
7 12 (6.52%) Eclipse
8 10 (5.43%) Postman
9 9 (4.89%) Gradle
10 8 (4.35%) PVCS
10 8 (4.35%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (3.80%) Selenium
12 6 (3.26%) Maven
12 6 (3.26%) Xcode
13 5 (2.72%) MLflow
13 5 (2.72%) Mockito
13 5 (2.72%) MSTest
14 4 (2.17%) Artifactory
14 4 (2.17%) Cypress.io
General
1 59 (32.07%) Social Skills
2 41 (22.28%) Finance
3 29 (15.76%) Public Sector
4 20 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (10.33%) Banking
6 17 (9.24%) Military
7 11 (5.98%) Presentation Skills
8 9 (4.89%) Electronics
9 8 (4.35%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.72%) Marketing
11 4 (2.17%) Aerospace
11 4 (2.17%) Health Technology
11 4 (2.17%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.63%) Law
13 2 (1.09%) General Ledger
14 1 (0.54%) Billing
14 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.54%) Legal
Job Titles
1 78 (42.39%) Developer
2 34 (18.48%) Software Engineer
3 32 (17.39%) Senior
4 24 (13.04%) Java Developer
5 19 (10.33%) Senior Developer
6 17 (9.24%) C++ Software Engineer
7 10 (5.43%) C# Software Engineer
8 9 (4.89%) Data Engineer
8 9 (4.89%) Senior Java Developer
9 8 (4.35%) Full-Stack Developer
9 8 (4.35%) Lead
10 7 (3.80%) .NET Developer
10 7 (3.80%) C Software Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded C Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded C++ Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (17.39%) RESTful
2 31 (16.85%) Spring
3 28 (15.22%) Web Services
4 27 (14.67%) React
5 26 (14.13%) Node.js
5 26 (14.13%) REST
6 23 (12.50%) Spring Boot
7 19 (10.33%) .NET
7 19 (10.33%) AngularJS
8 16 (8.70%) HTML
9 15 (8.15%) CSS
10 14 (7.61%) Jest
11 12 (6.52%) JSON
11 12 (6.52%) Kafka
11 12 (6.52%) PySpark
11 12 (6.52%) YAML
12 10 (5.43%) Swagger
13 9 (4.89%) JMS
14 8 (4.35%) .NET Core
14 8 (4.35%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.33%) Cloud Native
2 18 (9.78%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.89%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 7 (3.80%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.72%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.17%) NHS
7 3 (1.63%) FPGA
7 3 (1.63%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.63%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.63%) PCIe
7 3 (1.63%) State Machine
7 3 (1.63%) Taxonomies
8 2 (1.09%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.09%) IoT
9 1 (0.54%) Derivative
9 1 (0.54%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.54%) PKI
9 1 (0.54%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.54%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 33 (17.93%) Linux
2 32 (17.39%) Windows
3 10 (5.43%) Android
4 9 (4.89%) Unix
5 7 (3.80%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.54%) OpenVMS
6 1 (0.54%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (56.52%) Agile
2 98 (53.26%) CI/CD
3 62 (33.70%) Problem-Solving
4 58 (31.52%) Test Automation
5 56 (30.43%) DevOps
6 44 (23.91%) Software Engineering
7 43 (23.37%) TDD
8 39 (21.20%) Microservices
9 32 (17.39%) Validation
10 30 (16.30%) Containerisation
10 30 (16.30%) Integration Testing
11 29 (15.76%) Scrum
12 25 (13.59%) Code Quality
13 23 (12.50%) Full-Stack Development
14 22 (11.96%) Continuous Integration
15 21 (11.41%) SDLC
16 20 (10.87%) Data Modelling
16 20 (10.87%) Verification and Validation
17 19 (10.33%) Continuous Delivery
17 19 (10.33%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 63 (34.24%) Java
2 43 (23.37%) JavaScript
3 42 (22.83%) SQL
4 38 (20.65%) C#
5 33 (17.93%) Python
6 30 (16.30%) C++
7 15 (8.15%) C
8 14 (7.61%) TypeScript
9 13 (7.07%) PowerShell
10 10 (5.43%) Scala
11 7 (3.80%) Embedded C
11 7 (3.80%) Embedded C++
11 7 (3.80%) PL/SQL
11 7 (3.80%) Swift
12 5 (2.72%) ABAP
12 5 (2.72%) Objective-C
12 5 (2.72%) Shell Script
13 4 (2.17%) Kotlin
14 3 (1.63%) Apex Code
14 3 (1.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 39 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 28 (15.22%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.52%) Degree
4 11 (5.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.72%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.17%) ISTQB
6 4 (2.17%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (15.76%) QA
2 16 (8.70%) Accessibility
3 9 (4.89%) Data Quality
3 9 (4.89%) ISO 20022
3 9 (4.89%) PSD2
3 9 (4.89%) SEPA
4 7 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.72%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 5 (2.72%) SLA
6 4 (2.17%) HL7
7 1 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.54%) GDPR
7 1 (0.54%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.54%) IEC 62304
7 1 (0.54%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.54%) WCAG
System Software
1 31 (16.85%) Docker
2 9 (4.89%) Virtual Machines
2 9 (4.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.54%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 31 (16.85%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.35%) Terraform
3 7 (3.80%) Argo
4 5 (2.72%) Grafana
5 2 (1.09%) Control-M
5 2 (1.09%) HP ALM
5 2 (1.09%) Kibana
5 2 (1.09%) vRealize
6 1 (0.54%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.54%) Kustomize
6 1 (0.54%) Oozie
6 1 (0.54%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.54%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.54%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 27 (14.67%) Microsoft
2 21 (11.41%) Oracle
3 12 (6.52%) Databricks
4 10 (5.43%) VMware
5 9 (4.89%) IBM
6 8 (4.35%) ANSYS
6 8 (4.35%) BeyondTrust
6 8 (4.35%) CyberArk
6 8 (4.35%) Salesforce
7 7 (3.80%) Red Hat
7 7 (3.80%) SAP
8 6 (3.26%) Splunk
8 6 (3.26%) Veracode
9 4 (2.17%) Brio
10 3 (1.63%) Pega
10 3 (1.63%) Perforce
11 2 (1.09%) Ab Initio
11 2 (1.09%) Dynatrace
11 2 (1.09%) IFS
11 2 (1.09%) Workday