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 5 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 575 525 589
Rank change year-on-year -50 +64 +131
Contract jobs citing MSTest 22 1 9
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.056% 0.003% 0.020%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.40% 0.024% 0.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 0 6
10th Percentile £420 - £200
25th Percentile £425 - £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 - £336
Median % change year-on-year - - -47.25%
75th Percentile £725 - £511
90th Percentile £750 - £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £675 - £210
% change year-on-year - - -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 5,504 4,247 5,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.06% 13.64% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,773 2,666 3,743
10th Percentile £343 £335 £363
25th Percentile £406 £409 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £631
90th Percentile £695 £725 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 67 210
10th Percentile £35.43 £26.40 £41.13
25th Percentile £52.50 £47.50 £50.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +5.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £75.25
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.75 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -

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 5 February 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 5 February 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
Work from Home +5 15 £540 - 5
England -58 10 £550 - 5
UK excluding London - 10 £675 - 4
London -30 7 £550 - 3
Wales - 7 £700 -
East of England - 2 - -
Scotland - 1 £425 -

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 18 (81.82%) Azure
2 17 (77.27%) Azure DevOps
3 14 (63.64%) GitHub
4 12 (54.55%) Power Platform
5 8 (36.36%) Dynamics 365
6 5 (22.73%) GCP
6 5 (22.73%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (18.18%) Cloud Functions
7 4 (18.18%) Cloud Run
8 2 (9.09%) AWS
9 1 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (4.55%) Amazon EKS
9 1 (4.55%) Amazon SQS
9 1 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (4.55%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (18.18%) BigQuery
1 4 (18.18%) Power BI
2 1 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (4.55%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (45.45%) JMeter
1 10 (45.45%) Selenium
2 7 (31.82%) Visual Studio
3 5 (22.73%) NUnit
4 4 (18.18%) Jenkins
5 3 (13.64%) Postman
6 2 (9.09%) JIRA
6 2 (9.09%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (4.55%) Appium
7 1 (4.55%) Cucumber
7 1 (4.55%) Mocha
7 1 (4.55%) SpecFlow
7 1 (4.55%) tSQLt
General
1 3 (13.64%) Public Sector
2 2 (9.09%) Social Skills
3 1 (4.55%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (4.55%) Finance
Job Titles
1 10 (45.45%) Senior
2 9 (40.91%) Automation Tester
2 9 (40.91%) Tester
3 8 (36.36%) Senior Automation Tester
3 8 (36.36%) Senior Tester
4 5 (22.73%) .NET Developer
4 5 (22.73%) Developer
5 4 (18.18%) Software Engineer
6 3 (13.64%) Cloud Developer
6 3 (13.64%) GCP Developer
7 2 (9.09%) Software Test Engineer
7 2 (9.09%) Test Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) .NET Software Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) C# Software Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) Consultant
8 1 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) Full-Stack .NET Developer
8 1 (4.55%) Senior C# Software Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) Senior Software Engineer
8 1 (4.55%) Test Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (45.45%) .NET
2 8 (36.36%) Web Services
3 7 (31.82%) RESTful
4 5 (22.73%) pytest
5 4 (18.18%) .NET Framework
6 3 (13.64%) JSON
6 3 (13.64%) Swagger
6 3 (13.64%) XML
7 2 (9.09%) REST
8 1 (4.55%) .NET Core
8 1 (4.55%) AngularJS
8 1 (4.55%) ASP.NET
8 1 (4.55%) CSS
8 1 (4.55%) Entity Framework
8 1 (4.55%) HTML
8 1 (4.55%) Spring Boot
8 1 (4.55%) Vitest
8 1 (4.55%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 4 (18.18%) Product Ownership
2 1 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (4.55%) Equities
2 1 (4.55%) Fixed Income
2 1 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (4.55%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 2 (9.09%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (86.36%) Test Automation
2 18 (81.82%) DevOps
3 17 (77.27%) Agile
4 11 (50.00%) Non-Functional Testing
5 8 (36.36%) AI
6 7 (31.82%) CI/CD
6 7 (31.82%) Test Strategy
6 7 (31.82%) Unit Testing
7 6 (27.27%) Architectural Design
7 6 (27.27%) Data Modelling
7 6 (27.27%) Design Patterns
8 5 (22.73%) Machine Learning
9 4 (18.18%) Business Intelligence
9 4 (18.18%) Code Quality
9 4 (18.18%) Continuous Improvement
9 4 (18.18%) Data Governance
9 4 (18.18%) ETL
9 4 (18.18%) Release Automation
9 4 (18.18%) Secrets Management
9 4 (18.18%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 21 (95.45%) C#
2 13 (59.09%) Python
3 12 (54.55%) SQL
4 8 (36.36%) JavaScript
5 3 (13.64%) PowerShell
6 1 (4.55%) C
6 1 (4.55%) Java
6 1 (4.55%) T-SQL
6 1 (4.55%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 12 (54.55%) Security Cleared
2 11 (50.00%) SC Cleared
3 10 (45.45%) ISTQB
4 8 (36.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (22.73%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (31.82%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 7 (31.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (18.18%) QA
System Software
1 11 (50.00%) Docker
2 2 (9.09%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (18.18%) Terraform
2 2 (9.09%) HP ALM
2 2 (9.09%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 4 (18.18%) Google
2 3 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 3 (13.64%) Oracle
3 2 (9.09%) HP
3 2 (9.09%) Siemens
4 1 (4.55%) Sybase