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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 614 514 585
Rank change year-on-year -100 +71 +86
Contract jobs citing MSTest 26 12 5
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.052% 0.041% 0.011%
As % of the Development Applications category 0.44% 0.28% 0.095%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 8 4
10th Percentile £291 £400 £306
25th Percentile £384 £491 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £538 £481
Median % change year-on-year -13.95% +11.69% -25.96%
75th Percentile £541 £591 £528
90th Percentile £601 £600 £556
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -26.09% +4.55% +15.79%

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 5,916 4,302 5,267
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.86% 14.65% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,826 2,879 3,517
10th Percentile £350 £330 £355
25th Percentile £410 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £686 £694 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 80 232
10th Percentile £34.85 £20.74 £31.30
25th Percentile £56.40 £45.82 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £58.38 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.35% -10.19% +5.26%
75th Percentile £75.00 £74.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £83.04 £77.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £60.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +11.67% -7.69% +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 11 June 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 10 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 11 June 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
England -95 17 £463 +2.78% 3
London -65 11 £463 +2.78% 1
UK excluding London -91 9 £425 -26.09% 2
Work from Home -48 8 £450 -21.74% 3
Wales - 3 £700 -
East of England - 2 - -
South East - 2 £206 - 1
Scotland -14 1 £425 -26.09%
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 17 (65.38%) Azure
2 15 (57.69%) Azure DevOps
3 11 (42.31%) GitHub
4 8 (30.77%) Serverless
5 7 (26.92%) AWS
6 6 (23.08%) Amazon EC2
6 6 (23.08%) Amazon EKS
6 6 (23.08%) Amazon SQS
6 6 (23.08%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (19.23%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (15.38%) Cloud Functions
8 4 (15.38%) Cloud Run
8 4 (15.38%) GCP
8 4 (15.38%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (30.77%) SQL Server
2 4 (15.38%) BigQuery
2 4 (15.38%) Power BI
3 3 (11.54%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (30.77%) NUnit
1 8 (30.77%) Selenium
2 6 (23.08%) Cucumber
2 6 (23.08%) Jenkins
2 6 (23.08%) JMeter
2 6 (23.08%) Mocha
2 6 (23.08%) tSQLt
3 4 (15.38%) Git
3 4 (15.38%) SpecFlow
3 4 (15.38%) Visual Studio
4 3 (11.54%) JIRA
5 2 (7.69%) Bitbucket
5 2 (7.69%) Jasmine
5 2 (7.69%) Karma Test Runner
5 2 (7.69%) Postman
5 2 (7.69%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (7.69%) TeamCity
5 2 (7.69%) WebDriver
6 1 (3.85%) Appium
General
1 6 (23.08%) Finance
2 4 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (7.69%) Banking
3 2 (7.69%) Social Skills
4 1 (3.85%) Military
4 1 (3.85%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 10 (38.46%) Senior
2 8 (30.77%) .NET Developer
2 8 (30.77%) Developer
3 7 (26.92%) Test Engineer
4 6 (23.08%) Software Engineer
5 5 (19.23%) Senior Software Engineer
6 4 (15.38%) .NET Software Engineer
6 4 (15.38%) Test Automation Engineer
7 3 (11.54%) C# Software Engineer
7 3 (11.54%) Cloud Developer
7 3 (11.54%) GCP Developer
7 3 (11.54%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
7 3 (11.54%) Senior Test Engineer
8 2 (7.69%) Automation Tester
8 2 (7.69%) C# Developer
8 2 (7.69%) Senior Automation Tester
8 2 (7.69%) Senior C# Software Engineer
8 2 (7.69%) Senior Tester
8 2 (7.69%) Software Test Engineer
8 2 (7.69%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (61.54%) .NET
2 12 (46.15%) RESTful
3 8 (30.77%) AngularJS
3 8 (30.77%) CSS
3 8 (30.77%) HTML
4 6 (23.08%) REST
5 5 (19.23%) .NET Framework
6 4 (15.38%) pytest
6 4 (15.38%) Web Services
7 3 (11.54%) ASP.NET
7 3 (11.54%) JSON
7 3 (11.54%) Spring Boot
7 3 (11.54%) XML
8 2 (7.69%) Swagger
9 1 (3.85%) .NET Core
9 1 (3.85%) ASP.NET MVC
9 1 (3.85%) ASP.NET Web API
9 1 (3.85%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 4 (15.38%) Product Ownership
2 3 (11.54%) Equities
2 3 (11.54%) Fixed Income
3 2 (7.69%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (7.69%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (3.85%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 2 (7.69%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (76.92%) DevOps
2 18 (69.23%) Agile
3 17 (65.38%) CI/CD
4 16 (61.54%) Test Automation
5 14 (53.85%) Unit Testing
6 8 (30.77%) BDD
6 8 (30.77%) Design Patterns
6 8 (30.77%) Microservices
6 8 (30.77%) Non-Functional Testing
6 8 (30.77%) Performance Tuning
6 8 (30.77%) Software Engineering
7 6 (23.08%) Architectural Design
7 6 (23.08%) Data Modelling
8 5 (19.23%) Clean Code
8 5 (19.23%) Continuous Improvement
9 4 (15.38%) Backlog Refinement
9 4 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
9 4 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (15.38%) Secrets Management
9 4 (15.38%) Sprint Backlog
Programming Languages
1 26 (100.00%) C#
2 14 (53.85%) JavaScript
2 14 (53.85%) SQL
3 12 (46.15%) Python
4 6 (23.08%) T-SQL
5 5 (19.23%) Java
6 3 (11.54%) TypeScript
7 2 (7.69%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 10 (38.46%) Security Cleared
2 8 (30.77%) SC Cleared
3 7 (26.92%) ISTQB
4 3 (11.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (19.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 5 (19.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 5 (19.23%) QA
System Software
1 7 (26.92%) 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 4 (15.38%) Google
1 4 (15.38%) Microsoft
1 4 (15.38%) Oracle
2 3 (11.54%) Sybase
3 2 (7.69%) HP
3 2 (7.69%) Siemens