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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 582 517 581
Rank change year-on-year -65 +64 +144
Contract jobs citing MSTest 26 3 8
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.062% 0.010% 0.018%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.45% 0.072% 0.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 3 6
10th Percentile £300 £375 £200
25th Percentile £425 £426 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £336
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +56.13% -45.10%
75th Percentile £716 £544 £511
90th Percentile £750 £548 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £675 £525 £210
% change year-on-year +28.57% +150.00% -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 5,771 4,153 5,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.86% 13.57% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,945 2,677 3,724
10th Percentile £344 £330 £363
25th Percentile £405 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £619 £630
90th Percentile £688 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -0.99% -4.05% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 65 218
10th Percentile £34.53 £26.12 £37.50
25th Percentile £52.81 £51.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.63%
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.25 £73.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £79.39 £84.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +5.69%

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 28 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 9 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 28 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 -2 14 £550 - 3
England -74 14 £550 +52.78% 4
UK excluding London -81 11 £675 +28.57% 2
London -29 9 £563 +56.25% 2
Wales - 7 £700 -
East of England - 2 - -
Scotland +9 1 £425 -19.05%
West Midlands - 1 £550 -
Midlands - 1 £550 -

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 (69.23%) Azure
2 17 (65.38%) Azure DevOps
3 14 (53.85%) GitHub
4 12 (46.15%) Power Platform
5 8 (30.77%) Dynamics 365
6 5 (19.23%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (15.38%) Cloud Functions
7 4 (15.38%) Cloud Run
7 4 (15.38%) GCP
7 4 (15.38%) Serverless
8 3 (11.54%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (11.54%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (11.54%) Amazon SQS
8 3 (11.54%) AWS
8 3 (11.54%) AWS Lambda
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (15.38%) BigQuery
1 4 (15.38%) Power BI
1 4 (15.38%) SQL Server
2 1 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 10 (38.46%) JMeter
1 10 (38.46%) Selenium
2 7 (26.92%) Visual Studio
3 6 (23.08%) NUnit
4 4 (15.38%) Jenkins
4 4 (15.38%) Postman
5 3 (11.54%) Cucumber
5 3 (11.54%) Mocha
5 3 (11.54%) tSQLt
6 2 (7.69%) JIRA
6 2 (7.69%) SpecFlow
6 2 (7.69%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (3.85%) Appium
7 1 (3.85%) Git
7 1 (3.85%) Jasmine
7 1 (3.85%) Karma Test Runner
General
1 3 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
1 3 (11.54%) Finance
1 3 (11.54%) Public Sector
2 1 (3.85%) Banking
2 1 (3.85%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (42.31%) Senior
2 9 (34.62%) Automation Tester
2 9 (34.62%) Tester
3 8 (30.77%) Senior Automation Tester
3 8 (30.77%) Senior Tester
4 7 (26.92%) .NET Developer
4 7 (26.92%) Developer
5 5 (19.23%) Software Engineer
6 3 (11.54%) C# Software Engineer
6 3 (11.54%) Cloud Developer
6 3 (11.54%) GCP Developer
7 2 (7.69%) .NET Software Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) AWS Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) AWS Software Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) Senior C# Software Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) Senior Software Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) Software Test Engineer
7 2 (7.69%) Test Engineer
8 1 (3.85%) SQL Developer
8 1 (3.85%) SQL Server Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (53.85%) .NET
2 9 (34.62%) RESTful
3 8 (30.77%) Web Services
4 6 (23.08%) .NET Framework
5 5 (19.23%) JSON
5 5 (19.23%) REST
5 5 (19.23%) XML
6 4 (15.38%) AngularJS
6 4 (15.38%) ASP.NET
6 4 (15.38%) CSS
6 4 (15.38%) HTML
6 4 (15.38%) pytest
6 4 (15.38%) Swagger
7 1 (3.85%) .NET Core
7 1 (3.85%) ASP.NET MVC
7 1 (3.85%) ASP.NET Web API
7 1 (3.85%) OpenAPI
7 1 (3.85%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 4 (15.38%) Product Ownership
2 1 (3.85%) Equities
2 1 (3.85%) Fixed Income
2 1 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (3.85%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 2 (7.69%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (80.77%) DevOps
2 19 (73.08%) Agile
3 18 (69.23%) Test Automation
4 11 (42.31%) Non-Functional Testing
5 10 (38.46%) CI/CD
5 10 (38.46%) Unit Testing
6 8 (30.77%) AI
7 7 (26.92%) Design Patterns
7 7 (26.92%) Software Engineering
7 7 (26.92%) Test Strategy
8 6 (23.08%) Architectural Design
8 6 (23.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 6 (23.08%) Data Modelling
9 5 (19.23%) Code Quality
9 5 (19.23%) Machine Learning
9 5 (19.23%) Requirements Gathering
10 4 (15.38%) Backlog Refinement
10 4 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
10 4 (15.38%) Secrets Management
10 4 (15.38%) Sprint Backlog
Programming Languages
1 25 (96.15%) C#
2 13 (50.00%) Python
2 13 (50.00%) SQL
3 11 (42.31%) JavaScript
4 4 (15.38%) PowerShell
5 3 (11.54%) T-SQL
6 1 (3.85%) C
6 1 (3.85%) Java
6 1 (3.85%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 12 (46.15%) SC Cleared
3 10 (38.46%) ISTQB
4 8 (30.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (19.23%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (26.92%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 7 (26.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (15.38%) QA
System Software
1 12 (46.15%) Docker
2 2 (7.69%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (15.38%) Terraform
2 2 (7.69%) HP ALM
2 2 (7.69%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 5 (19.23%) Oracle
2 4 (15.38%) Google
3 3 (11.54%) Microsoft
4 2 (7.69%) HP
4 2 (7.69%) Siemens
5 1 (3.85%) Sybase