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 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 200 148 149
Rank change year-on-year -52 +1 +29
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 203 236 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.12% 1.57% 1.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.30% 1.81% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 145 189
10th Percentile £360 £352 £405
25th Percentile £402 £425 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £585
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -10.26% +11.43%
75th Percentile £528 £650 £650
90th Percentile £621 £663 £706
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -9.09% -8.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 16 60
10th Percentile £56.03 £37.00 £48.32
25th Percentile - £53.13 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £67.00 - -
90th Percentile £70.00 - £84.80
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Process and 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 15,617 13,041 17,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 86.01% 86.97% 88.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,535 7,668 11,224
10th Percentile £220 £235 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.60% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,767 762 1,227
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.03 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%
75th Percentile £48.75 £64.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
% change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%

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 19 December 2025.

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 19 December 2025.

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 19 December 2025. 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 -5 71 £450 -10.00% 78
North West +1 47 £450 -10.00% 41
Midlands -35 37 £471 -11.92% 46
East of England -7 36 £469 +28.42% 42
West Midlands -21 24 £520 -15.03% 20
South East -78 24 £505 -20.86% 73
Scotland -19 22 £447 -0.67% 18
Yorkshire -25 19 £400 - 26
East Midlands -22 13 £420 -16.00% 23
Wales +3 12 £520 +155.21% 6
North East -3 7 £494 - 11
South West -11 7 £500 +11.11% 35
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 12 (5.91%) Apache Spark
2 9 (4.43%) Apache
3 8 (3.94%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.96%) Confluence
5 3 (1.48%) Mule
5 3 (1.48%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.49%) CMS
6 1 (0.49%) JBoss
6 1 (0.49%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.49%) Mule ESB
6 1 (0.49%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.49%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.49%) InVision
1 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.49%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.49%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 4 (1.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG
2 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-F
2 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-M
2 3 (1.48%) SAP MDG-S
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.99%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (0.99%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.49%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.49%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.49%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.49%) SAP HCM
4 1 (0.49%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.49%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 49 (24.14%) Azure
2 40 (19.70%) AWS
3 30 (14.78%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (10.34%) Serverless
5 15 (7.39%) AWS Lambda
6 13 (6.40%) GitHub
7 12 (5.91%) OpenShift
8 11 (5.42%) Amazon S3
9 10 (4.93%) AWS Step Functions
9 10 (4.93%) Power Platform
10 9 (4.43%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (4.43%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (3.94%) Dynamics 365
11 8 (3.94%) GCP
12 7 (3.45%) Azure AKS
12 7 (3.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 6 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (2.96%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 6 (2.96%) npm
14 5 (2.46%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 20 (9.85%) TCP/IP
2 17 (8.37%) Ethernet
3 1 (0.49%) DNS
3 1 (0.49%) Internet
3 1 (0.49%) SSL
3 1 (0.49%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (7.88%) NoSQL
2 12 (5.91%) MongoDB
3 10 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (4.43%) Redis
5 7 (3.45%) Amazon Athena
5 7 (3.45%) Big Data
6 6 (2.96%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.96%) SQL Server
7 5 (2.46%) Delta Lake
7 5 (2.46%) Hadoop
7 5 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (1.97%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.48%) Aerospike
9 3 (1.48%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.48%) DocumentDB
9 3 (1.48%) HBase
9 3 (1.48%) Metadata
9 3 (1.48%) MySQL
9 3 (1.48%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.99%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 67 (33.00%) Git
2 31 (15.27%) JIRA
3 22 (10.84%) Visual Studio
4 20 (9.85%) GitLab
5 19 (9.36%) Jenkins
6 17 (8.37%) Eclipse
7 15 (7.39%) SonarQube
8 13 (6.40%) Postman
9 10 (4.93%) JUnit
10 9 (4.43%) Cypress.io
10 9 (4.43%) Rational DOORS
11 8 (3.94%) Selenium
12 6 (2.96%) PVCS
12 6 (2.96%) Xcode
13 5 (2.46%) Artifactory
13 5 (2.46%) Bitbucket
13 5 (2.46%) Gradle
13 5 (2.46%) MLflow
13 5 (2.46%) MSTest
13 5 (2.46%) NUnit
General
1 71 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 35 (17.24%) Finance
2 35 (17.24%) Public Sector
3 21 (10.34%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (9.85%) Military
5 18 (8.87%) Banking
6 16 (7.88%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (5.42%) Telecoms
8 9 (4.43%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (3.45%) Aerospace
9 7 (3.45%) Electronics
9 7 (3.45%) Manufacturing
10 5 (2.46%) Marketing
11 4 (1.97%) Health Technology
12 3 (1.48%) Law
13 2 (0.99%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.99%) Legal
14 1 (0.49%) Billing
14 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (36.45%) Developer
2 47 (23.15%) Software Engineer
3 32 (15.76%) Senior
4 23 (11.33%) C++ Software Engineer
5 21 (10.34%) Java Developer
6 18 (8.87%) Senior Developer
7 15 (7.39%) C# Software Engineer
8 12 (5.91%) Lead
9 10 (4.93%) Data Engineer
10 9 (4.43%) AWS Engineer
10 9 (4.43%) Senior Java Developer
11 7 (3.45%) Analyst
11 7 (3.45%) Android Developer
11 7 (3.45%) Consultant
11 7 (3.45%) iOS Developer
12 6 (2.96%) .NET Developer
12 6 (2.96%) .NET Software Engineer
12 6 (2.96%) Automation Tester
12 6 (2.96%) Help Desk Analyst
12 6 (2.96%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (16.75%) React
2 32 (15.76%) Web Services
3 31 (15.27%) Spring
4 30 (14.78%) RESTful
5 29 (14.29%) Node.js
6 28 (13.79%) REST
7 26 (12.81%) Spring Boot
8 23 (11.33%) .NET
9 19 (9.36%) AngularJS
10 18 (8.87%) Kafka
11 15 (7.39%) HTML
12 14 (6.90%) CSS
13 13 (6.40%) .NET Core
13 13 (6.40%) Jest
14 12 (5.91%) PySpark
15 11 (5.42%) JSON
16 8 (3.94%) JMS
17 7 (3.45%) Redux
18 6 (2.96%) Android Jetpack
18 6 (2.96%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 18 (8.87%) Cloud Native
2 12 (5.91%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (5.91%) Mobile App
3 8 (3.94%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 6 (2.96%) FPGA
4 6 (2.96%) Onboarding
4 6 (2.96%) PCIe
4 6 (2.96%) State Machine
5 5 (2.46%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.97%) Client/Server
6 4 (1.97%) NHS
7 3 (1.48%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.48%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.48%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.48%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.48%) Taxonomies
8 2 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.99%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.99%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 39 (19.21%) Linux
2 36 (17.73%) Windows
3 13 (6.40%) Android
4 10 (4.93%) Unix
5 9 (4.43%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.99%) VMS
7 1 (0.49%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.49%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (56.16%) Agile
2 111 (54.68%) CI/CD
3 65 (32.02%) DevOps
4 60 (29.56%) Software Engineering
5 58 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
6 57 (28.08%) Test Automation
7 41 (20.20%) Microservices
7 41 (20.20%) TDD
8 36 (17.73%) Containerisation
9 35 (17.24%) Validation
10 33 (16.26%) Scrum
11 32 (15.76%) Integration Testing
12 31 (15.27%) Continuous Integration
13 29 (14.29%) Code Quality
14 27 (13.30%) Continuous Delivery
14 27 (13.30%) Mentoring
15 25 (12.32%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (10.84%) Front End Development
17 21 (10.34%) Full-Stack Development
17 21 (10.34%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 51 (25.12%) Java
2 48 (23.65%) SQL
3 46 (22.66%) JavaScript
4 45 (22.17%) C#
5 39 (19.21%) C++
5 39 (19.21%) Python
6 17 (8.37%) TypeScript
7 14 (6.90%) C
8 12 (5.91%) Scala
9 11 (5.42%) PowerShell
10 9 (4.43%) Kotlin
10 9 (4.43%) Swift
11 7 (3.45%) PL/SQL
12 5 (2.46%) ABAP
12 5 (2.46%) Embedded C
12 5 (2.46%) Embedded C++
12 5 (2.46%) Objective-C
12 5 (2.46%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.97%) Bicep
14 3 (1.48%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 39 (19.21%) Security Cleared
2 27 (13.30%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.90%) Degree
4 9 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.46%) AWS Certification
5 5 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (1.97%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.49%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.49%) ISEB
8 1 (0.49%) ISEB Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (15.27%) QA
2 21 (10.34%) Accessibility
3 11 (5.42%) Data Quality
4 8 (3.94%) ISO 20022
4 8 (3.94%) PSD2
4 8 (3.94%) SEPA
4 8 (3.94%) SLA
5 6 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (2.46%) WCAG
7 4 (1.97%) HL7
7 4 (1.97%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.49%) GDPR
9 1 (0.49%) IEC 61508
9 1 (0.49%) IEC 62304
9 1 (0.49%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 35 (17.24%) Docker
2 7 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
2 7 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.48%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 35 (17.24%) Kubernetes
2 9 (4.43%) Grafana
2 9 (4.43%) Terraform
3 5 (2.46%) Ansible
4 4 (1.97%) Argo
5 3 (1.48%) Hadoop YARN
5 3 (1.48%) Kustomize
5 3 (1.48%) Oozie
5 3 (1.48%) Podman
5 3 (1.48%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.48%) SELinux
6 2 (0.99%) Cilium
6 2 (0.99%) Control-M
6 2 (0.99%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.99%) Kibana
6 2 (0.99%) Rsyslog
6 2 (0.99%) SCOM
6 2 (0.99%) vRealize
7 1 (0.49%) Tivoli
7 1 (0.49%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 32 (15.76%) Microsoft
2 19 (9.36%) Oracle
3 10 (4.93%) SAP
4 9 (4.43%) Databricks
5 8 (3.94%) BeyondTrust
5 8 (3.94%) CyberArk
5 8 (3.94%) VMware
6 7 (3.45%) IBM
7 6 (2.96%) ANSYS
7 6 (2.96%) Google
8 4 (1.97%) Brio
8 4 (1.97%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.48%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.48%) HP
9 3 (1.48%) Pega
9 3 (1.48%) Perforce
9 3 (1.48%) Splunk
10 2 (0.99%) Ab Initio
10 2 (0.99%) Adobe
10 2 (0.99%) Atlassian