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 13 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 575 528 586
Rank change year-on-year -47 +58 +115
Contract jobs citing MSTest 33 4 10
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.077% 0.014% 0.022%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.57% 0.099% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 4 7
10th Percentile £334 £366 £202
25th Percentile £425 £404 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £488 £463
Median % change year-on-year +12.82% +5.41% -28.85%
75th Percentile £725 £541 £519
90th Percentile £750 £546 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £675 £525 £210
% change year-on-year +28.57% +150.00% -49.09%

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 5,780 4,049 5,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.50% 13.74% 11.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,886 2,671 3,586
10th Percentile £342 £330 £357
25th Percentile £405 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £627
90th Percentile £688 £725 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 69 202
10th Percentile £33.58 £24.17 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £47.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.63%
75th Percentile £76.94 £71.25 £70.94
90th Percentile £88.00 £80.00 £82.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.63%

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 13 March 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 13 March 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 -72 17 £550 +35.80% 3
Work from Home -9 16 £563 +2.27% 6
UK excluding London -79 14 £675 +28.57% 7
London -35 12 £506 +25.00% 1
Wales - 10 £700 - 5
East of England - 2 - -
Scotland +8 1 £425 -19.05%
West Midlands - 1 £550 -
Midlands - 1 £550 -

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 25 (75.76%) Azure
2 23 (69.70%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (60.61%) GitHub
4 12 (36.36%) Power Platform
5 8 (24.24%) Dynamics 365
6 5 (15.15%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (15.15%) Serverless
7 4 (12.12%) Cloud Functions
7 4 (12.12%) Cloud Run
7 4 (12.12%) GCP
8 3 (9.09%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (9.09%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (9.09%) Amazon SQS
8 3 (9.09%) AWS
8 3 (9.09%) AWS Lambda
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (15.15%) SQL Server
2 4 (12.12%) BigQuery
2 4 (12.12%) Power BI
3 1 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 16 (48.48%) JMeter
1 16 (48.48%) Selenium
2 11 (33.33%) Visual Studio
3 7 (21.21%) NUnit
4 4 (12.12%) Jenkins
4 4 (12.12%) Postman
5 3 (9.09%) Cucumber
5 3 (9.09%) Mocha
5 3 (9.09%) SpecFlow
5 3 (9.09%) tSQLt
6 2 (6.06%) Git
6 2 (6.06%) Jasmine
6 2 (6.06%) JIRA
6 2 (6.06%) Karma Test Runner
6 2 (6.06%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (3.03%) Appium
General
1 4 (12.12%) Finance
2 3 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (9.09%) Public Sector
3 2 (6.06%) Banking
4 1 (3.03%) Military
4 1 (3.03%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 16 (48.48%) Senior
2 11 (33.33%) Automation Tester
2 11 (33.33%) Tester
3 10 (30.30%) Senior Automation Tester
3 10 (30.30%) Senior Tester
4 8 (24.24%) .NET Developer
4 8 (24.24%) Developer
5 5 (15.15%) Software Engineer
5 5 (15.15%) Test Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) C# Software Engineer
6 3 (9.09%) Cloud Developer
6 3 (9.09%) GCP Developer
6 3 (9.09%) Senior Test Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) .NET Software Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) AWS Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) Full-Stack .NET Developer
7 2 (6.06%) Full-Stack C# Developer
7 2 (6.06%) Senior C# Software Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) Senior Test Automation Engineer
7 2 (6.06%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (45.45%) .NET
2 12 (36.36%) Web Services
3 9 (27.27%) RESTful
4 7 (21.21%) .NET Framework
5 6 (18.18%) REST
6 5 (15.15%) AngularJS
6 5 (15.15%) CSS
6 5 (15.15%) HTML
6 5 (15.15%) JSON
6 5 (15.15%) XML
7 4 (12.12%) ASP.NET
7 4 (12.12%) pytest
7 4 (12.12%) Swagger
8 1 (3.03%) .NET Core
8 1 (3.03%) ASP.NET MVC
8 1 (3.03%) ASP.NET Web API
8 1 (3.03%) OpenAPI
8 1 (3.03%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 4 (12.12%) Product Ownership
2 1 (3.03%) Equities
2 1 (3.03%) Fixed Income
2 1 (3.03%) Greenfield Project
2 1 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 2 (6.06%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (84.85%) DevOps
2 25 (75.76%) Agile
3 24 (72.73%) Test Automation
4 17 (51.52%) Non-Functional Testing
5 16 (48.48%) Unit Testing
6 14 (42.42%) Design Patterns
7 13 (39.39%) CI/CD
8 12 (36.36%) Architectural Design
9 11 (33.33%) Data Modelling
10 10 (30.30%) Test Strategy
11 9 (27.27%) AI
12 7 (21.21%) Software Engineering
13 6 (18.18%) Acceptance Criteria
13 6 (18.18%) Continuous Improvement
13 6 (18.18%) Machine Learning
14 5 (15.15%) Code Quality
14 5 (15.15%) Microservices
14 5 (15.15%) Performance Tuning
14 5 (15.15%) Project Delivery
14 5 (15.15%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 32 (96.97%) C#
2 20 (60.61%) SQL
3 18 (54.55%) JavaScript
3 18 (54.55%) Python
4 4 (12.12%) PowerShell
5 3 (9.09%) T-SQL
5 3 (9.09%) TypeScript
6 1 (3.03%) C
6 1 (3.03%) Java
Qualifications
1 18 (54.55%) Security Cleared
2 16 (48.48%) SC Cleared
3 15 (45.45%) ISTQB
4 11 (33.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (15.15%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (36.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 12 (36.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (12.12%) QA
System Software
1 17 (51.52%) Docker
2 2 (6.06%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (12.12%) Terraform
2 2 (6.06%) HP ALM
2 2 (6.06%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 6 (18.18%) Oracle
2 5 (15.15%) Microsoft
3 4 (12.12%) Google
4 2 (6.06%) HP
4 2 (6.06%) Siemens
5 1 (3.03%) Sybase