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 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 565 517 588
Rank change year-on-year -48 +71 +128
Contract jobs citing MSTest 19 2 9
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.050% 0.006% 0.020%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.35% 0.047% 0.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 1 6
10th Percentile £416 - £200
25th Percentile £459 £825 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £850 £336
Median % change year-on-year -27.94% +152.79% -41.52%
75th Percentile £734 £875 £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 5,480 4,266 5,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.42% 13.49% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,767 2,682 3,767
10th Percentile £344 £331 £363
25th Percentile £406 £410 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -5.36%
75th Percentile £589 £625 £634
90th Percentile £697 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 73 212
10th Percentile £39.00 £26.70 £41.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.25 £50.00
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 £76.53
90th Percentile £82.30 £76.05 £89.88
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 24 January 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 8 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 24 January 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 -11 13 £550 - 7
UK excluding London - 11 £675 - 6
England -53 10 £550 -35.29% 5
Wales - 7 £700 - 1
London -9 6 £625 -26.47% 2
East of England - 2 - -
Scotland - 1 £425 -
South East - 1 £201 - 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 16 (84.21%) Azure
2 15 (78.95%) Azure DevOps
3 11 (57.89%) GitHub
4 9 (47.37%) Power Platform
5 8 (42.11%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (10.53%) GCP
6 2 (10.53%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (5.26%) AWS
7 1 (5.26%) Cloud Functions
7 1 (5.26%) Cloud Run
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.26%) BigQuery
1 1 (5.26%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 11 (57.89%) Selenium
2 10 (52.63%) JMeter
3 7 (36.84%) Visual Studio
4 3 (15.79%) JIRA
4 3 (15.79%) NUnit
4 3 (15.79%) Postman
5 2 (10.53%) Jenkins
5 2 (10.53%) SpecFlow
5 2 (10.53%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (5.26%) Appium
6 1 (5.26%) Bitbucket
6 1 (5.26%) Git
6 1 (5.26%) TeamCity
6 1 (5.26%) WebDriver
General
1 3 (15.79%) Public Sector
2 1 (5.26%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (47.37%) Automation Tester
1 9 (47.37%) Senior
1 9 (47.37%) Tester
2 8 (42.11%) Senior Automation Tester
2 8 (42.11%) Senior Tester
3 3 (15.79%) Software Engineer
3 3 (15.79%) Test Engineer
4 2 (10.53%) .NET Developer
4 2 (10.53%) Developer
4 2 (10.53%) Software Test Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) .NET Software Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Automation Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Azure Consultant
5 1 (5.26%) Cloud Developer
5 1 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Full-Stack Developer
5 1 (5.26%) Senior Automation Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Test Automation Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Test Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (42.11%) Web Services
2 6 (31.58%) .NET
3 4 (21.05%) .NET Framework
4 3 (15.79%) JSON
4 3 (15.79%) RESTful
4 3 (15.79%) Swagger
4 3 (15.79%) XML
5 2 (10.53%) pytest
6 1 (5.26%) .NET Core
6 1 (5.26%) ASP.NET
6 1 (5.26%) Entity Framework
6 1 (5.26%) REST
6 1 (5.26%) Vitest
6 1 (5.26%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 1 (5.26%) Data Protection Act
1 1 (5.26%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (10.53%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (89.47%) Test Automation
2 15 (78.95%) DevOps
3 13 (68.42%) Agile
4 11 (57.89%) Non-Functional Testing
5 8 (42.11%) AI
6 7 (36.84%) Test Strategy
6 7 (36.84%) Unit Testing
7 6 (31.58%) Architectural Design
7 6 (31.58%) Data Modelling
7 6 (31.58%) Design Patterns
8 5 (26.32%) Machine Learning
9 4 (21.05%) API Testing
9 4 (21.05%) CI/CD
9 4 (21.05%) Code Quality
10 3 (15.79%) Acceptance Criteria
10 3 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
10 3 (15.79%) Requirements Gathering
10 3 (15.79%) Software Engineering
10 3 (15.79%) Test Management
10 3 (15.79%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 18 (94.74%) C#
2 13 (68.42%) SQL
3 9 (47.37%) Python
4 7 (36.84%) JavaScript
5 3 (15.79%) PowerShell
6 1 (5.26%) C
6 1 (5.26%) Java
6 1 (5.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 10 (52.63%) ISTQB
1 10 (52.63%) Security Cleared
2 9 (47.37%) SC Cleared
3 8 (42.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 5 (26.32%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (36.84%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 7 (36.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (15.79%) QA
System Software
1 11 (57.89%) Docker
2 2 (10.53%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (10.53%) HP ALM
1 2 (10.53%) HP Quality Center
2 1 (5.26%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (15.79%) Microsoft
1 3 (15.79%) Oracle
2 2 (10.53%) HP
2 2 (10.53%) Siemens
3 1 (5.26%) Google