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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 300 197 142
Rank change year-on-year -103 -55 +17
Contract jobs citing Unit Testing 184 182 268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.65% 1.18% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 1.32% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 94 97 164
10th Percentile £313 £348 £375
25th Percentile £402 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £463 £550
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% -15.91% -
75th Percentile £594 £525 £638
90th Percentile £688 £633 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 25 38
10th Percentile £38.25 - £61.25
25th Percentile £62.50 - £62.50
Median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.92% - -

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 22,821 13,800 14,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.98% 89.21% 83.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,053 8,307 8,521
10th Percentile £300 £235 £242
25th Percentile £409 £368 £388
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 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,677 1,435 1,212
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.10 £14.51
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.21 £17.94
Median hourly rate £41.71 £22.63 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +84.31% -47.37% +5.81%
75th Percentile £67.70 £42.50 £66.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -71 71 £460 +10.18% 67
South East -36 56 £513 +12.02% 58
North East -8 35 £468 -15.00% 12
Midlands -48 29 £500 +8.11% 47
West Midlands -36 27 £500 - 27
North West -65 24 £461 +1.99% 47
East of England -39 17 £619 +26.92% 43
South West -37 12 £500 -9.09% 36
Scotland -40 12 £460 -7.95% 40
Yorkshire -47 12 £447 +14.62% 8
East Midlands -23 2 £335 -24.08% 20
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 (1.63%) Apache Spark
1 3 (1.63%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.09%) Apache
2 2 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.54%) Camunda
3 1 (0.54%) JBoss
3 1 (0.54%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.54%) Mule
3 1 (0.54%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.54%) SAS
3 1 (0.54%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (5.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.17%) SAP Payroll
3 3 (1.63%) SAP HCM
3 3 (1.63%) SAP SD
4 2 (1.09%) SAP MM
4 2 (1.09%) SAP PP
5 1 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.54%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.54%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.54%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.54%) SAP LE
5 1 (0.54%) SAP QM
5 1 (0.54%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.54%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 39 (21.20%) OpenShift
2 31 (16.85%) Azure
3 28 (15.22%) AWS
4 19 (10.33%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (8.15%) Power Platform
5 15 (8.15%) Serverless
6 11 (5.98%) GitHub
7 9 (4.89%) AWS Lambda
7 9 (4.89%) PowerApps
8 8 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (4.35%) Power Automate
9 6 (3.26%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.26%) Azure Functions
9 6 (3.26%) Azure Logic Apps
10 5 (2.72%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.72%) Amazon SQS
10 5 (2.72%) GCP
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon Kinesis
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.52%) Ethernet
1 12 (6.52%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.54%) HTTP
2 1 (0.54%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.89%) Power BI
1 9 (4.89%) SQL Server
2 8 (4.35%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (3.26%) MongoDB
4 5 (2.72%) DynamoDB
5 4 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (2.17%) MySQL
5 4 (2.17%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.63%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.63%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.63%) Oracle Database
7 2 (1.09%) Delta Lake
7 2 (1.09%) DocumentDB
7 2 (1.09%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.54%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.54%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.54%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 1 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 43 (23.37%) Git
2 39 (21.20%) SonarQube
3 20 (10.87%) GitLab
4 17 (9.24%) JUnit
5 14 (7.61%) Eclipse
5 14 (7.61%) Visual Studio
6 13 (7.07%) Selenium
7 10 (5.43%) JIRA
7 10 (5.43%) Maven
8 9 (4.89%) Jenkins
9 8 (4.35%) Gradle
10 7 (3.80%) Cucumber
11 6 (3.26%) NUnit
12 4 (2.17%) Bitbucket
12 4 (2.17%) CppUnit
12 4 (2.17%) Cypress.io
12 4 (2.17%) Gatling
12 4 (2.17%) PVCS
12 4 (2.17%) Rational DOORS
13 3 (1.63%) REST Assured
General
1 53 (28.80%) Social Skills
2 25 (13.59%) Public Sector
3 22 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (10.87%) Finance
5 12 (6.52%) Banking
5 12 (6.52%) Military
6 10 (5.43%) Aerospace
7 6 (3.26%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (2.72%) Manufacturing
9 4 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.63%) Billing
11 2 (1.09%) Law
11 2 (1.09%) Retail
12 1 (0.54%) Advertising
12 1 (0.54%) Aviation
12 1 (0.54%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.54%) Legal
Job Titles
1 83 (45.11%) Developer
2 32 (17.39%) Software Engineer
3 28 (15.22%) Java Developer
4 21 (11.41%) Java Engineer
5 15 (8.15%) Consultant
6 13 (7.07%) Lead
7 11 (5.98%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 10 (5.43%) Java Software Engineer
8 10 (5.43%) Senior
9 9 (4.89%) C# Software Engineer
9 9 (4.89%) SAP Consultant
10 7 (3.80%) .NET Developer
10 7 (3.80%) C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.26%) C# Developer
11 6 (3.26%) Microsoft Developer
11 6 (3.26%) ServiceNow Developer
12 5 (2.72%) Data Engineer
12 5 (2.72%) Lead Developer
12 5 (2.72%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (23.37%) AngularJS
2 36 (19.57%) Quarkus
3 30 (16.30%) REST
4 29 (15.76%) .NET
5 24 (13.04%) Spring
5 24 (13.04%) Web Services
6 20 (10.87%) React
7 18 (9.78%) Node.js
7 18 (9.78%) RESTful
8 17 (9.24%) Spring Boot
9 14 (7.61%) HTML
10 13 (7.07%) Kafka
10 13 (7.07%) Playwright
11 12 (6.52%) SOAP
12 11 (5.98%) Terraform
12 11 (5.98%) WPF
13 10 (5.43%) CSS
13 10 (5.43%) Middleware
14 9 (4.89%) JSON
14 9 (4.89%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 11 (5.98%) Cloud Native
1 11 (5.98%) Data Structures
2 10 (5.43%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.17%) Management Information System
5 4 (2.17%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.63%) CMDB
7 2 (1.09%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.09%) NHS
8 1 (0.54%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.54%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (0.54%) LIMS
8 1 (0.54%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.54%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (9.24%) Windows
2 14 (7.61%) Linux
3 1 (0.54%) Unix
3 1 (0.54%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (57.61%) Agile
2 75 (40.76%) Test Automation
3 73 (39.67%) CI/CD
4 64 (34.78%) Software Engineering
5 59 (32.07%) Scrum
6 52 (28.26%) DevOps
7 51 (27.72%) SDLC
8 43 (23.37%) Problem-Solving
8 43 (23.37%) Sprint Planning
9 42 (22.83%) Front End Development
10 40 (21.74%) User Acceptance Testing
11 37 (20.11%) DevSecOps
12 36 (19.57%) TDD
13 33 (17.93%) Integration Testing
13 33 (17.93%) Sprint Review
14 32 (17.39%) Continuous Improvement
15 24 (13.04%) Code Quality
15 24 (13.04%) Microservices
16 21 (11.41%) Continuous Integration
17 20 (10.87%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 66 (35.87%) Java
2 48 (26.09%) C#
3 47 (25.54%) JavaScript
4 45 (24.46%) SQL
5 16 (8.70%) C++
6 13 (7.07%) Python
6 13 (7.07%) TypeScript
7 5 (2.72%) ABAP
7 5 (2.72%) Scala
8 4 (2.17%) C
8 4 (2.17%) X++
9 3 (1.63%) Embedded C
10 2 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 2 (1.09%) Shell Script
10 2 (1.09%) T-SQL
10 2 (1.09%) VBA
10 2 (1.09%) XAML
11 1 (0.54%) Bicep
11 1 (0.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.54%) Go
Qualifications
1 68 (36.96%) Security Cleared
2 58 (31.52%) SC Cleared
3 11 (5.98%) Degree
4 9 (4.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (1.63%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.09%) ISTQB
7 2 (1.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.09%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.09%) PhD
8 1 (0.54%) ACCA
8 1 (0.54%) CIMA
8 1 (0.54%) CISA
8 1 (0.54%) CISSP
8 1 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.54%) CREST Certified
8 1 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (25.54%) QA
2 10 (5.43%) Accessibility
3 6 (3.26%) WCAG
4 5 (2.72%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.09%) GDPR
6 1 (0.54%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.54%) GMP
6 1 (0.54%) GRC
6 1 (0.54%) GxP
6 1 (0.54%) HL7
6 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.54%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 20 (10.87%) Docker
2 4 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.54%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 54 (29.35%) Kubernetes
2 36 (19.57%) Argo
3 2 (1.09%) Ansible
3 2 (1.09%) Grafana
4 1 (0.54%) Istio
4 1 (0.54%) Kubeflow
4 1 (0.54%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 34 (18.48%) Red Hat
2 29 (15.76%) Microsoft
3 17 (9.24%) Oracle
4 16 (8.70%) SAP
5 9 (4.89%) ServiceNow
6 6 (3.26%) Splunk
7 4 (2.17%) Avaloq
7 4 (2.17%) UiPath
7 4 (2.17%) VMware
8 3 (1.63%) Google
9 2 (1.09%) Adobe
9 2 (1.09%) Databricks
9 2 (1.09%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.09%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.54%) IFS
10 1 (0.54%) Informatica
10 1 (0.54%) JDA
10 1 (0.54%) Pega
10 1 (0.54%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.54%) Workday