MSTest Contract Job Trends

Microsoft MSTest
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring MSTest skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 665 542 547
Rank change year-on-year -123 +5 +114
Contract jobs citing MSTest 14 12 12
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.026% 0.037% 0.031%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.23% 0.24% 0.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 8 8
10th Percentile £212 £358 £381
25th Percentile £456 £434 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £528 £563
Median % change year-on-year -5.21% -6.22% +7.14%
75th Percentile £534 £591 £659
90th Percentile £728 £600 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £214 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -62.78% +4.55% +10.00%

All Development Application Skills
UK

MSTest falls under the Development Applications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring development application skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for development application skills 6,134 4,940 5,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.41% 15.10% 13.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,932 3,326 3,277
10th Percentile £356 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £623
90th Percentile £694 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 113 183
10th Percentile £35.63 £28.53 £28.65
25th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% - -
75th Percentile £73.19 £73.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £87.92 £84.80 £71.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.62% - -

MSTest
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing MSTest relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

MSTest job vacancy trend in the UK

MSTest
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MSTest.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MSTest

MSTest
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MSTest over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for MSTest in the UK

MSTest
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MSTest.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MSTest

MSTest
Top 7 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing MSTest within the UK over the 6 months to 28 August 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
England -100 10 £481 +1.32% 5
London -88 6 £500 - 3
UK excluding London -98 6 £214 -62.78% 2
Work from Home -64 4 £525 -4.98% 4
Wales - 3 £700 -
South East -57 2 £206 +2.49%
East of England - 1 - -

MSTest
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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:

Cloud Services
1 10 (71.43%) Azure
2 8 (57.14%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (42.86%) GitHub
4 4 (28.57%) AWS
4 4 (28.57%) Serverless
5 3 (21.43%) Amazon EC2
5 3 (21.43%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (21.43%) Amazon SQS
5 3 (21.43%) AWS Lambda
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (28.57%) SQL Server
2 2 (14.29%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (57.14%) Selenium
2 6 (42.86%) JMeter
3 4 (28.57%) Visual Studio
4 3 (21.43%) Cucumber
4 3 (21.43%) Git
4 3 (21.43%) Mocha
4 3 (21.43%) SpecFlow
4 3 (21.43%) tSQLt
5 2 (14.29%) Bitbucket
5 2 (14.29%) Jenkins
5 2 (14.29%) NUnit
5 2 (14.29%) TeamCity
5 2 (14.29%) WebDriver
6 1 (7.14%) Jasmine
6 1 (7.14%) JIRA
6 1 (7.14%) Karma Test Runner
6 1 (7.14%) Ranorex
General
1 3 (21.43%) Finance
2 1 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (7.14%) Banking
2 1 (7.14%) Military
2 1 (7.14%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 8 (57.14%) Senior
2 6 (42.86%) Test Engineer
3 4 (28.57%) Test Automation Engineer
4 3 (21.43%) .NET Software Engineer
4 3 (21.43%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
4 3 (21.43%) Senior Software Engineer
4 3 (21.43%) Senior Test Engineer
4 3 (21.43%) Software Engineer
5 2 (14.29%) .NET Developer
5 2 (14.29%) Automation Tester
5 2 (14.29%) Developer
5 2 (14.29%) Senior Automation Tester
5 2 (14.29%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
5 2 (14.29%) Senior Tester
5 2 (14.29%) Tester
6 1 (7.14%) C# .NET Developer
6 1 (7.14%) Full-Stack .NET Developer
6 1 (7.14%) Full-Stack C# Developer
6 1 (7.14%) Full-Stack Developer
6 1 (7.14%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (42.86%) .NET
2 4 (28.57%) AngularJS
2 4 (28.57%) CSS
2 4 (28.57%) HTML
2 4 (28.57%) Web Services
3 3 (21.43%) RESTful
4 2 (14.29%) Spring Boot
5 1 (7.14%) .NET Framework
5 1 (7.14%) ASP.NET Web API
5 1 (7.14%) ASP.NET Web Forms
5 1 (7.14%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 2 (14.29%) Equities
1 2 (14.29%) Fixed Income
2 1 (7.14%) Greenfield Project
2 1 (7.14%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (7.14%) Self-Motivation
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (71.43%) Test Automation
2 9 (64.29%) DevOps
2 9 (64.29%) Unit Testing
3 8 (57.14%) Agile
3 8 (57.14%) CI/CD
4 7 (50.00%) Design Patterns
5 6 (42.86%) Architectural Design
5 6 (42.86%) Data Modelling
5 6 (42.86%) Non-Functional Testing
6 5 (35.71%) BDD
7 4 (28.57%) Microservices
7 4 (28.57%) Performance Tuning
8 3 (21.43%) Acceptance Criteria
8 3 (21.43%) Collaborative Working
8 3 (21.43%) Continuous Deployment
8 3 (21.43%) Performance Optimisation
8 3 (21.43%) Project Delivery
8 3 (21.43%) SOLID
8 3 (21.43%) Test Strategy
8 3 (21.43%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 14 (100.00%) C#
2 12 (85.71%) SQL
3 10 (71.43%) JavaScript
4 7 (50.00%) Python
5 4 (28.57%) Java
6 3 (21.43%) T-SQL
7 2 (14.29%) TypeScript
8 1 (7.14%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 6 (42.86%) ISTQB
1 6 (42.86%) Security Cleared
2 4 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 3 (21.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 1 (7.14%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (35.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 5 (35.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (21.43%) QA
System Software
1 5 (35.71%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (7.14%) HP ALM
1 1 (7.14%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 2 (14.29%) Microsoft
1 2 (14.29%) Sybase
2 1 (7.14%) HP
2 1 (7.14%) Oracle
2 1 (7.14%) Siemens
2 1 (7.14%) Telerik