MSTest Contracts

Microsoft MSTest
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring MSTest skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited MSTest over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 513 578 687
Rank change year-on-year +65 +109 +126
Contract jobs citing MSTest 7 4 31
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.024% 0.009% 0.052%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.17% 0.077% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 3 23
10th Percentile £374 £288 £406
25th Percentile £425 £344 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £600
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -20.83% +39.94%
75th Percentile £538 £544 £700
90th Percentile £545 £563 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £431
% change year-on-year -4.55% +27.54% +5.83%

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 4,103 5,181 9,016
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.02% 11.89% 15.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,744 3,477 6,339
10th Percentile £340 £356 £385
25th Percentile £413 £425 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £663
90th Percentile £717 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.40% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 197 246
10th Percentile £26.92 £32.48 £45.00
25th Percentile £51.53 £46.25 £53.75
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £61.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +5.69% +21.78%
75th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £86.15 £81.60 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £61.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +5.69% +12.84%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing MSTest.

Daily rate trend for MSTest in the UK

MSTest
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MSTest over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for MSTest in the UK

MSTest
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing MSTest.

Hourly rate trend for MSTest in the UK

MSTest
Top 5 Contract 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 1 May 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
England +56 3 £450 -5.26% 7
Work from Home +41 3 £550 +51.72% 3
London +39 3 £450 -5.26%
UK excluding London +63 1 £525 -4.55% 7
Scotland - 1 £525 -

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 7 (100.00%) Azure
2 3 (42.86%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (28.57%) AWS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (42.86%) Relational Database
2 2 (28.57%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (100.00%) NUnit
2 5 (71.43%) Git
2 5 (71.43%) Selenium
3 3 (42.86%) JUnit
3 3 (42.86%) Postman
3 3 (42.86%) Ranorex
4 2 (28.57%) Bitbucket
4 2 (28.57%) NSubstitute
4 2 (28.57%) Team Foundation Server
4 2 (28.57%) Visual Studio
4 2 (28.57%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 7 (100.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (28.57%) Finance
Job Titles
1 3 (42.86%) QA Engineer
2 2 (28.57%) .NET Developer
2 2 (28.57%) Azure Developer
2 2 (28.57%) Developer
2 2 (28.57%) Quality Engineer
2 2 (28.57%) Senior
2 2 (28.57%) Senior .NET Developer
2 2 (28.57%) Senior Developer
2 2 (28.57%) Test Automation Engineer
2 2 (28.57%) Test Engineer
3 1 (14.29%) DevOps Automation Engineer
3 1 (14.29%) DevOps Engineer
3 1 (14.29%) Lead
3 1 (14.29%) QA Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (100.00%) .NET
2 5 (71.43%) REST
3 3 (42.86%) JSON
3 3 (42.86%) Playwright
3 3 (42.86%) SOAP
3 3 (42.86%) WebSockets
3 3 (42.86%) XML
4 2 (28.57%) ADO
4 2 (28.57%) GraphQL
4 2 (28.57%) Jest
4 2 (28.57%) React
4 2 (28.57%) WCF
4 2 (28.57%) Web Services
4 2 (28.57%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (42.86%) Data Structures
2 2 (28.57%) Legacy Systems
2 2 (28.57%) Product Ownership
2 2 (28.57%) Self-Motivation
2 2 (28.57%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (85.71%) Continuous Improvement
2 5 (71.43%) Agile
2 5 (71.43%) DevOps
2 5 (71.43%) SDLC
2 5 (71.43%) Test Automation
3 4 (57.14%) CI/CD
4 3 (42.86%) ETRM
4 3 (42.86%) Kanban
4 3 (42.86%) Manual Testing
4 3 (42.86%) Risk Management
4 3 (42.86%) Scrum
4 3 (42.86%) Software Testing
5 2 (28.57%) Continuous Delivery
5 2 (28.57%) High Availability
5 2 (28.57%) Process Improvement
5 2 (28.57%) Root Cause Analysis
5 2 (28.57%) Software Architecture
5 2 (28.57%) System Testing
5 2 (28.57%) Test Strategy
5 2 (28.57%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 5 (71.43%) C#
1 5 (71.43%) Java
2 3 (42.86%) JavaScript
2 3 (42.86%) PowerShell
2 3 (42.86%) SQL
3 2 (28.57%) Python
3 2 (28.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (14.29%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (14.29%) Degree
1 1 (14.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (71.43%) QA