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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 227 169
Rank change year-on-year -15 -58 -13
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 201 111 262
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.83% 0.86% 1.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.02% 0.95% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 71 166
10th Percentile £354 £300 £375
25th Percentile £402 £358 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £470 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -10.48% -
75th Percentile £563 £591 £647
90th Percentile £675 £638 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -9.52% -1.87% -6.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 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 19,754 11,646 17,301
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.27% 90.50% 84.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,939 7,296 10,312
10th Percentile £298 £235 £250
25th Percentile £400 £375 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £479 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £585 £600
90th Percentile £677 £661 £688
UK median daily rate £501 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,076 833 2,057
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £12.32
25th Percentile £18.87 £17.44 £15.17
Median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £67.50 £64.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -34 64 £515 -14.17% 16
North of England -17 60 £450 +2.86% 18
North West -18 34 £447 -3.35% 7
East of England -12 25 £625 +28.21% 13
Midlands -60 21 £447 -3.35% 15
North East 0 20 £513 +52.99% 7
South West -28 17 £500 -18.37% 11
Scotland -10 16 £432 +21.42% 1
East Midlands -32 15 £430 -7.08% 9
Yorkshire -49 8 £500 -16.67% 4
West Midlands -55 6 £489 +5.94% 6
Wales -8 4 £700 +109.72% 3
Northern Ireland +3 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 (6.47%) Confluence
2 9 (4.48%) Apache Spark
3 5 (2.49%) Apache
4 4 (1.99%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.49%) NetWeaver
5 3 (1.49%) SharePoint
6 2 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.00%) IIS
6 2 (1.00%) Mule
6 2 (1.00%) Mule ESB
7 1 (0.50%) Camunda
7 1 (0.50%) JBoss
7 1 (0.50%) SAS
7 1 (0.50%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (1.00%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.50%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 7 (3.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.99%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.49%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (1.49%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.49%) SAP MDG
3 3 (1.49%) SAP MDG-F
3 3 (1.49%) SAP MDG-M
3 3 (1.49%) SAP MDG-S
4 2 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (1.00%) NEC Housing
4 2 (1.00%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.50%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.50%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.50%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.50%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 38 (18.91%) Azure
2 35 (17.41%) AWS
3 29 (14.43%) OpenShift
4 22 (10.95%) GitHub
5 20 (9.95%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (9.95%) Serverless
6 14 (6.97%) Amazon S3
7 13 (6.47%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (4.48%) AWS Step Functions
10 8 (3.98%) AWS CloudFormation
10 8 (3.98%) Azure Functions
11 7 (3.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
13 5 (2.49%) Azure Logic Apps
13 5 (2.49%) Dynamics 365
13 5 (2.49%) GCP
14 4 (1.99%) Amazon SageMaker
14 4 (1.99%) OCI
14 4 (1.99%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (11.44%) TCP/IP
2 19 (9.45%) Ethernet
3 3 (1.49%) Modbus
3 3 (1.49%) RS-232
3 3 (1.49%) RS-422
3 3 (1.49%) RS-485
4 1 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.97%) SQL Server
2 11 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.98%) DynamoDB
4 9 (4.48%) NoSQL
5 8 (3.98%) Aerospike
5 8 (3.98%) Relational Database
6 7 (3.48%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (2.99%) MongoDB
8 5 (2.49%) Data Lake
8 5 (2.49%) Delta Lake
8 5 (2.49%) Redis
9 4 (1.99%) SAP HANA
10 3 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (1.49%) Big Data
10 3 (1.49%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.49%) Oracle Database
10 3 (1.49%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 50 (24.88%) Git
2 49 (24.38%) GitLab
3 33 (16.42%) SonarQube
4 32 (15.92%) JIRA
5 29 (14.43%) Visual Studio
6 18 (8.96%) Eclipse
7 17 (8.46%) Jenkins
8 16 (7.96%) JUnit
9 8 (3.98%) PVCS
9 8 (3.98%) Rational DOORS
10 7 (3.48%) NUnit
10 7 (3.48%) Selenium
11 6 (2.99%) Gradle
11 6 (2.99%) Maven
12 5 (2.49%) MLflow
12 5 (2.49%) MSTest
13 4 (1.99%) Bitbucket
13 4 (1.99%) Mockito
13 4 (1.99%) XCTest
14 3 (1.49%) SpecFlow
General
1 39 (19.40%) Social Skills
2 34 (16.92%) Finance
3 20 (9.95%) Military
4 17 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 15 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (6.47%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (5.47%) Banking
7 11 (5.47%) Electronics
8 4 (1.99%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.99%) Law
9 3 (1.49%) Retail
10 2 (1.00%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.50%) Advertising
11 1 (0.50%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.50%) Legal
11 1 (0.50%) Marketing
11 1 (0.50%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 83 (41.29%) Developer
2 48 (23.88%) Software Engineer
3 24 (11.94%) Java Developer
4 20 (9.95%) Senior
5 18 (8.96%) Java Engineer
6 16 (7.96%) C++ Software Engineer
7 14 (6.97%) Full-Stack Developer
8 13 (6.47%) C# Software Engineer
9 10 (4.98%) Data Engineer
10 9 (4.48%) .NET Developer
10 9 (4.48%) Consultant
10 9 (4.48%) Java Software Engineer
10 9 (4.48%) Lead
10 9 (4.48%) Senior Developer
11 8 (3.98%) AWS Engineer
11 8 (3.98%) Integration Engineer
12 7 (3.48%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
12 7 (3.48%) C/C++ Software Engineer
12 7 (3.48%) Embedded Engineer
12 7 (3.48%) SC Cleared Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (15.42%) AngularJS
2 30 (14.93%) RESTful
3 28 (13.93%) Node.js
4 27 (13.43%) .NET
4 27 (13.43%) Quarkus
5 26 (12.94%) Web Services
6 21 (10.45%) React
6 21 (10.45%) REST
7 19 (9.45%) Spring
8 16 (7.96%) Jest
9 15 (7.46%) Kafka
10 13 (6.47%) Swagger
11 12 (5.97%) .NET Framework
11 12 (5.97%) CSS
11 12 (5.97%) PySpark
11 12 (5.97%) WinForms
12 11 (5.47%) HTML
12 11 (5.47%) Spring Boot
12 11 (5.47%) YAML
13 10 (4.98%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 18 (8.96%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.46%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (4.98%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 3 (1.49%) IoT
5 3 (1.49%) NHS
6 2 (1.00%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.00%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.00%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.00%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.50%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.50%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.50%) Derivative
7 1 (0.50%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.50%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.50%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.50%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 32 (15.92%) Windows
2 25 (12.44%) Linux
3 4 (1.99%) Android
3 4 (1.99%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (60.20%) Agile
2 88 (43.78%) CI/CD
3 72 (35.82%) Software Engineering
3 72 (35.82%) Test Automation
4 56 (27.86%) Scrum
5 50 (24.88%) DevOps
6 49 (24.38%) Problem-Solving
7 46 (22.89%) TDD
8 45 (22.39%) SDLC
9 38 (18.91%) Validation
10 32 (15.92%) Front End Development
11 31 (15.42%) Microservices
12 29 (14.43%) Continuous Integration
12 29 (14.43%) Sprint Planning
13 27 (13.43%) DevSecOps
13 27 (13.43%) Sprint Review
14 26 (12.94%) Code Quality
15 25 (12.44%) Integration Testing
16 24 (11.94%) Data Modelling
17 23 (11.44%) Verification and Validation
Programming Languages
1 78 (38.81%) Java
2 61 (30.35%) C#
3 52 (25.87%) SQL
4 39 (19.40%) JavaScript
5 36 (17.91%) C++
6 29 (14.43%) Python
7 21 (10.45%) TypeScript
8 16 (7.96%) C
9 8 (3.98%) PL/SQL
10 7 (3.48%) ABAP
10 7 (3.48%) Embedded C
10 7 (3.48%) Embedded C++
10 7 (3.48%) PowerShell
11 6 (2.99%) Apex Code
12 5 (2.49%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.99%) Swift
14 3 (1.49%) Go
14 3 (1.49%) SOQL
14 3 (1.49%) SOSL
15 2 (1.00%) Scala
Qualifications
1 65 (32.34%) Security Cleared
2 55 (27.36%) SC Cleared
3 12 (5.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (4.48%) Degree
5 4 (1.99%) AWS Certification
5 4 (1.99%) ISTQB
5 4 (1.99%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (0.50%) ACCA
6 1 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.50%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.50%) CIMA
6 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (17.41%) QA
2 11 (5.47%) Data Quality
3 8 (3.98%) Accessibility
4 5 (2.49%) ISO 20022
4 5 (2.49%) PSD2
4 5 (2.49%) SEPA
5 4 (1.99%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.00%) GDPR
6 2 (1.00%) HL7
7 1 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.50%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (12.44%) Docker
2 8 (3.98%) Virtual Machines
2 8 (3.98%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 42 (20.90%) Kubernetes
2 27 (13.43%) Argo
3 7 (3.48%) Terraform
4 3 (1.49%) Grafana
5 2 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.50%) Kibana
6 1 (0.50%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 30 (14.93%) Microsoft
2 25 (12.44%) Red Hat
3 18 (8.96%) Oracle
4 16 (7.96%) Databricks
5 11 (5.47%) Salesforce
5 11 (5.47%) SAP
6 8 (3.98%) ANSYS
6 8 (3.98%) IBM
6 8 (3.98%) VMware
7 6 (2.99%) Veracode
8 4 (1.99%) Splunk
9 3 (1.49%) Google
10 2 (1.00%) Avaloq
10 2 (1.00%) Brio
10 2 (1.00%) IFS
10 2 (1.00%) NEC
11 1 (0.50%) Adobe
11 1 (0.50%) Dynatrace
11 1 (0.50%) ServiceNow
11 1 (0.50%) Workday