Senior Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Senior Test Engineer
UK

The median Senior Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 547 494 572
Rank change year-on-year -53 +78 +183
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Test Engineer 39 41 31
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.12% 0.071%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.12% 0.13% 0.076%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 26 27
10th Percentile £389 £390 £402
25th Percentile £435 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £538
90th Percentile £650 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £525 £450
% change year-on-year -12.86% +16.67% -6.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £28.50 - £58.75
Median hourly rate £29.00 - £60.00
75th Percentile £29.50 - £61.25
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 - £60.00

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,430 31,506 40,926
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.01% 92.78% 93.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,135 19,373 27,542
10th Percentile £291 £300 £285
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,981 981 1,444
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.53 £15.04
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.05 £19.11
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -26.67% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.71 £72.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.16% +83.52%

Senior Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior Test Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Senior Test Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Test Engineer over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Test Engineer in the UK

Senior Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Test Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Test Engineer
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Test Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 21 December 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 -28 35 £519 -1.19% 9
UK excluding London -26 22 £458 -12.86% 13
North of England -26 15 £500 +31.93%
Yorkshire -31 14 £468 +23.35%
London -7 12 £600 +41.18% 2
Work from Home -19 8 £450 -14.29% 11
South West -23 3 £375 -30.23% 1
West Midlands - 2 £480 - 1
Midlands - 2 £480 - 1
North West -30 1 £600 -
East of England - 1 - - 5
Scotland - 1 £70 - 5

Senior Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 December 2025, Senior Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior Test Engineer in the job title.

1 35 (89.74%) Test Automation
2 18 (46.15%) CI/CD
3 16 (41.03%) AWS
3 16 (41.03%) Playwright
4 15 (38.46%) QA
4 15 (38.46%) Test Strategy
5 14 (35.90%) Agile
5 14 (35.90%) GitLab
6 13 (33.33%) Software Testing
6 13 (33.33%) TypeScript
7 12 (30.77%) Accessibility
7 12 (30.77%) Python
7 12 (30.77%) Security Cleared
8 11 (28.21%) SC Cleared
8 11 (28.21%) Test Planning
9 10 (25.64%) Azure
9 10 (25.64%) Cypress.io
9 10 (25.64%) Docker
9 10 (25.64%) Java
10 9 (23.08%) API Testing
10 9 (23.08%) BDD
10 9 (23.08%) Jenkins
10 9 (23.08%) Kubernetes
10 9 (23.08%) Performance Testing
11 8 (20.51%) Cucumber
11 8 (20.51%) Manual Testing
11 8 (20.51%) Non-Functional Testing
12 7 (17.95%) Observability
12 7 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
12 7 (17.95%) Selenium

Senior Test Engineer Skill Set
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:

Application Platforms
1 3 (7.69%) Confluence
2 1 (2.56%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (2.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (2.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (2.56%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (2.56%) Aladdin
1 1 (2.56%) CODA-Financials
Cloud Services
1 16 (41.03%) AWS
2 10 (25.64%) Azure
3 5 (12.82%) GCP
4 3 (7.69%) Serverless
5 2 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (5.13%) GitHub
5 2 (5.13%) Tricentis Tosca
6 1 (2.56%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (2.56%) AWS CodePipeline
6 1 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.56%) Azure Pipelines
6 1 (2.56%) Azure Service Bus
6 1 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
6 1 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.56%) OpenShift
6 1 (2.56%) Power Platform
6 1 (2.56%) PowerApps
6 1 (2.56%) Snowflake
6 1 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (10.26%) Ethernet
1 4 (10.26%) SD-WAN
1 4 (10.26%) Wireshark
2 1 (2.56%) Firewall
2 1 (2.56%) SSL
2 1 (2.56%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (15.38%) MongoDB
2 1 (2.56%) Amazon QuickSight
2 1 (2.56%) Electronic Patient Records
2 1 (2.56%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 14 (35.90%) GitLab
2 10 (25.64%) Cypress.io
3 9 (23.08%) Jenkins
4 8 (20.51%) Cucumber
5 7 (17.95%) Selenium
6 5 (12.82%) Gatling
6 5 (12.82%) JIRA
6 5 (12.82%) JMeter
6 5 (12.82%) Postman
7 3 (7.69%) Git
8 2 (5.13%) REST Assured
8 2 (5.13%) SpecFlow
9 1 (2.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (2.56%) JUnit
9 1 (2.56%) Serenity BDD
General
1 13 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 9 (23.08%) Public Sector
3 5 (12.82%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (12.82%) Military
4 3 (7.69%) Finance
5 1 (2.56%) Aerospace
5 1 (2.56%) Automotive
5 1 (2.56%) Electronics
5 1 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (2.56%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (41.03%) Playwright
2 6 (15.38%) Kafka
2 6 (15.38%) Middleware
2 6 (15.38%) REST
3 5 (12.82%) gRPC
3 5 (12.82%) JMS
3 5 (12.82%) Node.js
3 5 (12.82%) RabbitMQ
3 5 (12.82%) WebSockets
4 1 (2.56%) FHIR
4 1 (2.56%) OAuth
4 1 (2.56%) OAuth2
4 1 (2.56%) OpenID
4 1 (2.56%) Oracle Fusion
4 1 (2.56%) pytest
4 1 (2.56%) SAML
4 1 (2.56%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 8 (20.51%) Cloud Native
2 1 (2.56%) Algorithms
2 1 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (2.56%) Greenfield Project
2 1 (2.56%) PKI
2 1 (2.56%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.56%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (89.74%) Test Automation
2 18 (46.15%) CI/CD
3 15 (38.46%) Test Strategy
4 14 (35.90%) Agile
5 13 (33.33%) Software Testing
6 11 (28.21%) Test Planning
7 9 (23.08%) API Testing
7 9 (23.08%) BDD
7 9 (23.08%) Performance Testing
8 8 (20.51%) Manual Testing
8 8 (20.51%) Non-Functional Testing
9 7 (17.95%) Observability
9 7 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
9 7 (17.95%) Test Scripting
10 6 (15.38%) DevOps
10 6 (15.38%) Functional Testing
10 6 (15.38%) Scrum
11 5 (12.82%) Mentoring
11 5 (12.82%) Microservices
11 5 (12.82%) Performance Engineering
Programming Languages
1 13 (33.33%) TypeScript
2 12 (30.77%) Python
3 10 (25.64%) Java
4 5 (12.82%) Bash
4 5 (12.82%) JavaScript
5 2 (5.13%) C#
6 1 (2.56%) PowerShell
6 1 (2.56%) SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (30.77%) Security Cleared
2 11 (28.21%) SC Cleared
3 4 (10.26%) ISTQB
4 1 (2.56%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.56%) Degree
4 1 (2.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (38.46%) QA
2 12 (30.77%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.56%) HL7
3 1 (2.56%) SNOMED CT
3 1 (2.56%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (25.64%) Docker
2 1 (2.56%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.56%) Squid
Systems Management
1 9 (23.08%) Kubernetes
2 6 (15.38%) Grafana
3 4 (10.26%) Ansible
4 1 (2.56%) HP ALM
4 1 (2.56%) Prometheus
4 1 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (2.56%) Terraform
Vendors
1 6 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 5 (12.82%) Cisco
2 5 (12.82%) Splunk
3 4 (10.26%) Juniper
3 4 (10.26%) Meraki
3 4 (10.26%) Nokia
4 1 (2.56%) Cerner
4 1 (2.56%) Charles River
4 1 (2.56%) CODA
4 1 (2.56%) Databricks
4 1 (2.56%) HP
4 1 (2.56%) MEDITECH
4 1 (2.56%) Oracle
4 1 (2.56%) Salesforce
4 1 (2.56%) SAP