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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 550 550 624
Rank change year-on-year 0 +74 +184
Contract jobs citing MSTest 20 8 9
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.058% 0.022% 0.019%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.37% 0.17% 0.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 5 6
10th Percentile £473 £514 £200
25th Percentile £525 £563 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £336
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +71.00% -35.95%
75th Percentile £731 £875 £511
90th Percentile £750 - £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £675 - £210
% change year-on-year - - -60.00%

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 5,345 4,801 6,062
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.46% 13.15% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,672 3,011 4,213
10th Percentile £328 £348 £363
25th Percentile £406 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £544
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -4.41% -1.98%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £681 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £507
% change year-on-year -2.56% -3.89% -3.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 137 237
10th Percentile £20.03 £25.12 £45.37
25th Percentile £48.75 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - - +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £76.53
90th Percentile £78.00 £74.00 £87.94
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 5 November 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 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 November 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 +13 15 £588 - 8
UK excluding London - 10 £675 - 15
England -4 8 £550 -4.35% 15
Wales - 7 £700 -
London +10 6 £625 +8.70% 2
Scotland - 2 £588 -
South East - 1 £201 - 7

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 17 (85.00%) Azure
2 14 (70.00%) Azure DevOps
3 9 (45.00%) GitHub
4 8 (40.00%) Dynamics 365
4 8 (40.00%) Power Platform
5 1 (5.00%) AWS
5 1 (5.00%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (10.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 14 (70.00%) Selenium
2 10 (50.00%) JMeter
3 9 (45.00%) Visual Studio
4 6 (30.00%) NUnit
4 6 (30.00%) Postman
5 3 (15.00%) JUnit
5 3 (15.00%) Ranorex
6 2 (10.00%) SpecFlow
6 2 (10.00%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (5.00%) Bitbucket
7 1 (5.00%) Git
7 1 (5.00%) Jenkins
7 1 (5.00%) JIRA
7 1 (5.00%) TeamCity
7 1 (5.00%) WebDriver
General
1 6 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 3 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (15.00%) Public Sector
3 2 (10.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 11 (55.00%) Senior
2 9 (45.00%) Automation Tester
2 9 (45.00%) Tester
3 8 (40.00%) Senior Automation Tester
3 8 (40.00%) Senior Tester
4 3 (15.00%) .NET Developer
4 3 (15.00%) Developer
4 3 (15.00%) Lead
4 3 (15.00%) QA Leader
4 3 (15.00%) Software Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) Azure Developer
5 2 (10.00%) QA Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) QA Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Senior .NET Developer
5 2 (10.00%) Senior Developer
6 1 (5.00%) .NET Software Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) QA Test Manager
6 1 (5.00%) Test Automation Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (50.00%) Web Services
2 6 (30.00%) .NET
3 4 (20.00%) .NET Framework
4 3 (15.00%) JSON
4 3 (15.00%) Playwright
4 3 (15.00%) Swagger
4 3 (15.00%) XML
5 2 (10.00%) ADO
5 2 (10.00%) REST
5 2 (10.00%) WCF
6 1 (5.00%) ASP.NET
6 1 (5.00%) Entity Framework
6 1 (5.00%) pytest
6 1 (5.00%) RESTful
6 1 (5.00%) Vitest
6 1 (5.00%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 2 (10.00%) Legacy Systems
1 2 (10.00%) Self-Motivation
2 1 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (5.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (80.00%) Test Automation
2 15 (75.00%) Agile
3 14 (70.00%) DevOps
4 11 (55.00%) AI
5 9 (45.00%) Non-Functional Testing
6 7 (35.00%) Test Strategy
6 7 (35.00%) Unit Testing
7 6 (30.00%) Architectural Design
7 6 (30.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 6 (30.00%) Data Modelling
7 6 (30.00%) Design Patterns
8 5 (25.00%) CI/CD
8 5 (25.00%) Machine Learning
8 5 (25.00%) SDLC
9 4 (20.00%) Code Quality
9 4 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (20.00%) Scrum
9 4 (20.00%) Test Management
10 3 (15.00%) Acceptance Criteria
10 3 (15.00%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 16 (80.00%) C#
2 13 (65.00%) SQL
3 8 (40.00%) Python
4 7 (35.00%) JavaScript
5 3 (15.00%) PowerShell
6 1 (5.00%) C
6 1 (5.00%) Java
6 1 (5.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 10 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 9 (45.00%) SC Cleared
3 8 (40.00%) ISTQB
3 8 (40.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 5 (25.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (35.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 7 (35.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (20.00%) QA
System Software
1 11 (55.00%) Docker
Vendors
1 3 (15.00%) Oracle
2 1 (5.00%) Microsoft