MSTest Contract Job Trends

Microsoft MSTest
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring MSTest skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 546 552 627
Rank change year-on-year +6 +75 +182
Contract jobs citing MSTest 11 10 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.033% 0.026% 0.010%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.22% 0.20% 0.075%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 7 4
10th Percentile £343 £389 £417
25th Percentile £475 £503 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £469
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +22.67% -10.71%
75th Percentile £594 £731 £500
90th Percentile £600 £875 £523
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £550 £475
% change year-on-year +4.55% +15.79% -

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 4,998 5,118 6,677
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.17% 13.28% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,359 3,268 4,627
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £406 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £723 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -0.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 176 244
10th Percentile £30.75 £28.62 £45.97
25th Percentile £50.50 £51.19 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - - +8.33%
75th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £77.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £72.81 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +4.00%

MSTest
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing MSTest as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for MSTest 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 19 September 2025.

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 6 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 19 September 2025. 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
Work from Home +28 8 £553 +121.00% 12
England +1 4 £500 -13.04% 11
UK excluding London +12 3 £575 +4.55% 10
London -1 3 £525 -8.70% 7
Scotland - 2 £588 -
South East +19 1 £201 -63.45% 5

MSTest
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 10 (90.91%) Azure
2 5 (45.45%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (9.09%) AWS
3 1 (9.09%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (36.36%) SQL Server
2 1 (9.09%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 9 (81.82%) NUnit
2 5 (45.45%) Postman
2 5 (45.45%) Selenium
3 4 (36.36%) JUnit
3 4 (36.36%) Ranorex
3 4 (36.36%) Team Foundation Server
3 4 (36.36%) Visual Studio
4 2 (18.18%) Git
5 1 (9.09%) Bitbucket
5 1 (9.09%) Jenkins
5 1 (9.09%) JIRA
5 1 (9.09%) SpecFlow
5 1 (9.09%) TeamCity
5 1 (9.09%) WebDriver
General
1 9 (81.82%) Social Skills
2 4 (36.36%) Finance
3 3 (27.27%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (9.09%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 5 (45.45%) .NET Developer
1 5 (45.45%) Developer
2 4 (36.36%) Azure Developer
2 4 (36.36%) Lead
2 4 (36.36%) QA Leader
2 4 (36.36%) Senior
2 4 (36.36%) Senior .NET Developer
2 4 (36.36%) Senior Developer
3 3 (27.27%) QA Engineer
4 2 (18.18%) QA Manager
5 1 (9.09%) Full-Stack .NET Developer
5 1 (9.09%) Full-Stack Developer
5 1 (9.09%) QA Test Manager
5 1 (9.09%) Quality Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Software Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Test Automation Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Test Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Test Leader
5 1 (9.09%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (63.64%) .NET
2 5 (45.45%) REST
3 4 (36.36%) ADO
3 4 (36.36%) Playwright
3 4 (36.36%) WCF
3 4 (36.36%) Web Services
4 2 (18.18%) .NET Framework
4 2 (18.18%) JSON
4 2 (18.18%) XML
5 1 (9.09%) Entity Framework
5 1 (9.09%) pytest
5 1 (9.09%) RESTful
5 1 (9.09%) SOAP
5 1 (9.09%) Swagger
5 1 (9.09%) Vitest
5 1 (9.09%) Vue
5 1 (9.09%) WebSockets
5 1 (9.09%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (36.36%) Legacy Systems
1 4 (36.36%) Self-Motivation
2 2 (18.18%) Product Ownership
3 1 (9.09%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (9.09%) Data Structures
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (81.82%) Agile
2 8 (72.73%) SDLC
3 6 (54.55%) Continuous Improvement
3 6 (54.55%) Test Automation
4 5 (45.45%) CI/CD
4 5 (45.45%) DevOps
4 5 (45.45%) Scrum
5 4 (36.36%) Code Quality
5 4 (36.36%) ETRM
5 4 (36.36%) High Availability
5 4 (36.36%) Kanban
5 4 (36.36%) OO
5 4 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
5 4 (36.36%) Risk Management
5 4 (36.36%) Software Architecture
5 4 (36.36%) User Experience
6 3 (27.27%) Artificial Intelligence
6 3 (27.27%) Test Management
7 2 (18.18%) Regression Testing
7 2 (18.18%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 8 (72.73%) C#
2 4 (36.36%) SQL
3 2 (18.18%) Java
3 2 (18.18%) PowerShell
4 1 (9.09%) JavaScript
4 1 (9.09%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (9.09%) SC Cleared
1 1 (9.09%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (36.36%) QA
System Software
1 1 (9.09%) Docker
Vendors
1 1 (9.09%) Oracle