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 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 246 227 159
Rank change year-on-year -19 -68 +3
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 190 109 265
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.79% 0.86% 1.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.97% 0.95% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 70 169
10th Percentile £351 £299 £375
25th Percentile £402 £357 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £463 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.65% -11.90% -
75th Percentile £563 £575 £638
90th Percentile £678 £638 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £519 £535
% change year-on-year -8.43% -3.04% -6.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 9 49
10th Percentile £60.00 £50.50 -
25th Percentile £62.50 £52.50 £61.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -

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 19,496 11,513 17,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.10% 90.45% 84.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,734 7,198 10,233
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £400 £375 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £479 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £581 £600
90th Percentile £681 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £505 £516 £525
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,051 824 2,051
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £12.30
25th Percentile £18.87 £17.30 £15.24
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +8.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
% change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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
South East -22 63 £515 -12.34% 15
North of England -32 59 £450 +2.86% 12
North West -15 34 £447 -3.35% 4
East of England -14 20 £625 +28.21% 11
Midlands -50 20 £449 -3.03% 18
North East -2 19 £513 +52.99% 5
South West -23 17 £500 -18.37% 9
East Midlands -26 15 £430 -7.08% 11
Scotland -10 13 £455 +27.81% 1
Yorkshire -45 8 £500 -16.67% 3
West Midlands -55 5 £519 +12.59% 7
Wales -9 4 £700 +109.72% 3
Northern Ireland +4 2 £369 -32.95%
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 13 (6.84%) Confluence
2 7 (3.68%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.11%) OpenStack
4 3 (1.58%) Apache
4 3 (1.58%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.05%) IIS
5 2 (1.05%) Mule
5 2 (1.05%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.53%) Camunda
6 1 (0.53%) JBoss
6 1 (0.53%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.53%) SAS
6 1 (0.53%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (1.05%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.53%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 5 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.11%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.58%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.58%) SAP HCM
4 2 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (1.05%) NEC Housing
4 2 (1.05%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.53%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.53%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.53%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.53%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.53%) SAP MDG-F
5 1 (0.53%) SAP MDG-M
5 1 (0.53%) SAP MDG-S
5 1 (0.53%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.53%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 39 (20.53%) Azure
2 31 (16.32%) AWS
3 28 (14.74%) OpenShift
4 22 (11.58%) GitHub
5 20 (10.53%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (8.42%) Serverless
7 11 (5.79%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (5.26%) Amazon S3
9 9 (4.74%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (4.21%) Azure Functions
11 6 (3.16%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (2.63%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (2.63%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (2.63%) GCP
12 5 (2.63%) Power Platform
13 4 (2.11%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (2.11%) OCI
13 4 (2.11%) Power Automate
13 4 (2.11%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (10.53%) TCP/IP
2 16 (8.42%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.58%) Modbus
3 3 (1.58%) RS-232
3 3 (1.58%) RS-422
3 3 (1.58%) RS-485
4 1 (0.53%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (6.84%) SQL Server
2 11 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (5.26%) DynamoDB
4 9 (4.74%) NoSQL
5 8 (4.21%) Aerospike
5 8 (4.21%) Relational Database
6 7 (3.68%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (2.63%) Data Lake
7 5 (2.63%) MongoDB
7 5 (2.63%) Redis
8 4 (2.11%) SAP HANA
9 3 (1.58%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.58%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (1.58%) Big Data
9 3 (1.58%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.58%) Delta Lake
9 3 (1.58%) Oracle Database
10 2 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (1.05%) DocumentDB
10 2 (1.05%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 47 (24.74%) Git
2 45 (23.68%) GitLab
3 32 (16.84%) SonarQube
4 30 (15.79%) JIRA
5 26 (13.68%) Visual Studio
6 17 (8.95%) Jenkins
7 16 (8.42%) JUnit
8 15 (7.89%) Eclipse
9 7 (3.68%) NUnit
9 7 (3.68%) Selenium
10 6 (3.16%) Gradle
10 6 (3.16%) Maven
10 6 (3.16%) PVCS
10 6 (3.16%) Rational DOORS
11 5 (2.63%) MSTest
12 4 (2.11%) Bitbucket
12 4 (2.11%) Mockito
12 4 (2.11%) XCTest
13 3 (1.58%) fastlane
13 3 (1.58%) MLflow
General
1 36 (18.95%) Social Skills
2 29 (15.26%) Finance
3 17 (8.95%) Military
3 17 (8.95%) Public Sector
4 15 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (5.79%) Banking
6 10 (5.26%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (4.74%) Electronics
8 3 (1.58%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.58%) Retail
9 2 (1.05%) Health Technology
9 2 (1.05%) Law
10 1 (0.53%) Advertising
10 1 (0.53%) General Ledger
10 1 (0.53%) Legal
10 1 (0.53%) Marketing
10 1 (0.53%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 84 (44.21%) Developer
2 43 (22.63%) Software Engineer
3 24 (12.63%) Java Developer
4 18 (9.47%) Senior
5 17 (8.95%) Java Engineer
6 14 (7.37%) C++ Software Engineer
6 14 (7.37%) Full-Stack Developer
7 11 (5.79%) C# Software Engineer
8 9 (4.74%) .NET Developer
8 9 (4.74%) Consultant
8 9 (4.74%) Java Software Engineer
8 9 (4.74%) Senior Developer
9 8 (4.21%) Data Engineer
9 8 (4.21%) Integration Engineer
10 7 (3.68%) Lead
10 7 (3.68%) Salesforce Developer
10 7 (3.68%) SC Cleared Java Developer
11 6 (3.16%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
11 6 (3.16%) C/C++ Software Engineer
11 6 (3.16%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (15.79%) AngularJS
2 29 (15.26%) RESTful
3 28 (14.74%) .NET
4 26 (13.68%) Quarkus
5 25 (13.16%) Node.js
6 22 (11.58%) REST
7 21 (11.05%) React
7 21 (11.05%) Web Services
8 18 (9.47%) Spring
9 16 (8.42%) Jest
10 15 (7.89%) Kafka
11 12 (6.32%) .NET Framework
11 12 (6.32%) CSS
11 12 (6.32%) HTML
11 12 (6.32%) Swagger
11 12 (6.32%) WinForms
12 11 (5.79%) YAML
13 10 (5.26%) OpenAPI
13 10 (5.26%) pytest
13 10 (5.26%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 17 (8.95%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (8.42%) Cloud Native
3 9 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.63%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 3 (1.58%) IoT
5 3 (1.58%) NHS
5 3 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.05%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.05%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.05%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.53%) Derivative
7 1 (0.53%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.53%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.53%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 29 (15.26%) Windows
2 22 (11.58%) Linux
3 4 (2.11%) Android
3 4 (2.11%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.05%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (61.58%) Agile
2 82 (43.16%) CI/CD
3 69 (36.32%) Test Automation
4 67 (35.26%) Software Engineering
5 54 (28.42%) Scrum
6 51 (26.84%) DevOps
7 49 (25.79%) Problem-Solving
8 45 (23.68%) SDLC
9 43 (22.63%) TDD
10 33 (17.37%) Validation
11 31 (16.32%) Front End Development
12 30 (15.79%) Microservices
13 28 (14.74%) Sprint Planning
14 26 (13.68%) Continuous Integration
14 26 (13.68%) DevSecOps
14 26 (13.68%) Sprint Review
15 25 (13.16%) Code Quality
15 25 (13.16%) Integration Testing
16 22 (11.58%) Data Modelling
16 22 (11.58%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 76 (40.00%) Java
2 59 (31.05%) C#
3 50 (26.32%) SQL
4 37 (19.47%) JavaScript
5 31 (16.32%) C++
6 25 (13.16%) Python
7 21 (11.05%) TypeScript
8 14 (7.37%) C
9 8 (4.21%) PL/SQL
10 7 (3.68%) PowerShell
11 6 (3.16%) Apex Code
11 6 (3.16%) Embedded C
11 6 (3.16%) Embedded C++
12 5 (2.63%) ABAP
13 4 (2.11%) Shell Script
13 4 (2.11%) Swift
14 3 (1.58%) Go
14 3 (1.58%) SOQL
14 3 (1.58%) SOSL
15 2 (1.05%) Scala
Qualifications
1 65 (34.21%) Security Cleared
2 55 (28.95%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.32%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (4.74%) Degree
5 4 (2.11%) ISTQB
5 4 (2.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.53%) ACCA
6 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.53%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.53%) CIMA
6 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (17.89%) QA
2 8 (4.21%) Accessibility
3 7 (3.68%) Data Quality
4 5 (2.63%) ISO 20022
4 5 (2.63%) PSD2
4 5 (2.63%) SEPA
5 4 (2.11%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.05%) GDPR
6 2 (1.05%) HL7
7 1 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.53%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (13.16%) Docker
2 6 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
2 6 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 40 (21.05%) Kubernetes
2 26 (13.68%) Argo
3 7 (3.68%) Terraform
4 3 (1.58%) Grafana
5 2 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.53%) Kibana
6 1 (0.53%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 27 (14.21%) Microsoft
2 24 (12.63%) Red Hat
3 18 (9.47%) Oracle
4 13 (6.84%) Databricks
5 11 (5.79%) Salesforce
6 9 (4.74%) SAP
7 6 (3.16%) ANSYS
7 6 (3.16%) IBM
7 6 (3.16%) Veracode
7 6 (3.16%) VMware
8 4 (2.11%) Splunk
9 3 (1.58%) Google
10 2 (1.05%) Avaloq
10 2 (1.05%) Brio
10 2 (1.05%) IFS
10 2 (1.05%) NEC
11 1 (0.53%) Adobe
11 1 (0.53%) Dynatrace
11 1 (0.53%) ServiceNow
11 1 (0.53%) Workday