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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 670 547 553
Rank change year-on-year -123 +6 +64
Contract jobs citing MSTest 15 11 9
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.028% 0.033% 0.024%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.24% 0.22% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 7 6
10th Percentile £214 £343 £503
25th Percentile £319 £475 £534
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £330 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year -37.74% -7.83% +43.75%
75th Percentile £500 £594 £803
90th Percentile £525 £600 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £322 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -44.00% +4.55% +63.57%

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 6,382 5,112 5,070
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.71% 15.41% 13.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,089 3,463 3,166
10th Percentile £352 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year - -4.31% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 110 173
10th Percentile £22.68 £16.84 £27.04
25th Percentile £50.00 £43.81 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £64.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% -1.15% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.45 £75.25 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 9 October 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 9 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 9 October 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 -103 12 £488 -2.50% 13
UK excluding London -88 10 £322 -44.00% 8
London -91 4 £500 -4.76% 4
Scotland -24 3 £322 -45.19%
North of England - 3 £330 - 2
North West - 3 £330 - 2
South East -59 2 £206 +2.49% 3
Work from Home -71 2 £370 -33.12% 5
East of England - 2 - -

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 11 (73.33%) Azure
2 10 (66.67%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (33.33%) AWS
4 4 (26.67%) Dynamics 365
4 4 (26.67%) GitHub
4 4 (26.67%) GitHub Actions
4 4 (26.67%) Power Automate
4 4 (26.67%) Power Platform
4 4 (26.67%) PowerApps
4 4 (26.67%) Serverless
5 3 (20.00%) Amazon EC2
5 3 (20.00%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (20.00%) Amazon SQS
5 3 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Event Grid
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Functions
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Logic Apps
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Service Bus
6 1 (6.67%) Copilot Studio
6 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Copilot
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (20.00%) SQL Server
2 2 (13.33%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (53.33%) NUnit
2 6 (40.00%) Git
3 5 (33.33%) Jenkins
3 5 (33.33%) TeamCity
4 3 (20.00%) Cucumber
4 3 (20.00%) Mocha
4 3 (20.00%) tSQLt
5 2 (13.33%) Bitbucket
5 2 (13.33%) Ranorex
5 2 (13.33%) Selenium
5 2 (13.33%) SpecFlow
5 2 (13.33%) Visual Studio
5 2 (13.33%) Visual Studio Code
5 2 (13.33%) WebDriver
6 1 (6.67%) JIRA
General
1 4 (26.67%) Analytical Skills
1 4 (26.67%) Social Skills
2 3 (20.00%) Finance
3 1 (6.67%) Banking
Job Titles
1 4 (26.67%) Developer
1 4 (26.67%) Software Engineer
1 4 (26.67%) Test Engineer
2 3 (20.00%) .NET Software Engineer
2 3 (20.00%) Dynamics 365 Developer
2 3 (20.00%) Senior
2 3 (20.00%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
2 3 (20.00%) Senior Software Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Lead
3 2 (13.33%) Lead Test Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Software Test Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Test Automation Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Test Leader
4 1 (6.67%) .NET Developer
4 1 (6.67%) Hardware Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Hardware Test Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Java Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Platform Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Power Platform Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (60.00%) .NET
2 4 (26.67%) OAuth
2 4 (26.67%) RESTful
3 3 (20.00%) .NET Core
3 3 (20.00%) .NET Framework
3 3 (20.00%) AngularJS
3 3 (20.00%) CSS
3 3 (20.00%) HTML
3 3 (20.00%) REST
3 3 (20.00%) WPF
4 2 (13.33%) Spring Boot
5 1 (6.67%) ASP.NET Web API
5 1 (6.67%) ASP.NET Web Forms
5 1 (6.67%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 3 (20.00%) Product Ownership
2 2 (13.33%) Equities
2 2 (13.33%) Fixed Income
3 1 (6.67%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (6.67%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (20.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (80.00%) CI/CD
1 12 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 10 (66.67%) DevOps
2 10 (66.67%) Unit Testing
3 6 (40.00%) Code Quality
4 5 (33.33%) Agile
4 5 (33.33%) BDD
4 5 (33.33%) Integration Testing
4 5 (33.33%) Software Engineering
4 5 (33.33%) Software Testing
4 5 (33.33%) Validation
5 4 (26.67%) Customer Service
5 4 (26.67%) End-to-End Testing
5 4 (26.67%) TDD
5 4 (26.67%) Workflow
6 3 (20.00%) Data Modelling
6 3 (20.00%) Microservices
6 3 (20.00%) Regression Testing
6 3 (20.00%) SDET
6 3 (20.00%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 15 (100.00%) C#
2 7 (46.67%) JavaScript
3 5 (33.33%) SQL
4 4 (26.67%) Java
4 4 (26.67%) TypeScript
5 3 (20.00%) T-SQL
6 2 (13.33%) PowerShell
6 2 (13.33%) Python
Qualifications
1 2 (13.33%) Degree
1 2 (13.33%) ISTQB
1 2 (13.33%) Security Cleared
2 1 (6.67%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (53.33%) QA
Systems Management
1 2 (13.33%) HP ALM
1 2 (13.33%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 4 (26.67%) Microsoft
2 2 (13.33%) HP
2 2 (13.33%) Siemens
2 2 (13.33%) Sybase
3 1 (6.67%) Telerik