Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 June 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 330 324
Rank change year-on-year +63 -6 +60
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 462 204 284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.93% 0.69% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.00% 0.75% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 131 192
10th Percentile £303 £280 £300
25th Percentile £363 £353 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £420 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £484 £538
90th Percentile £612 £600 £589
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £391 £450
% change year-on-year +4.86% -13.11% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 20 32
10th Percentile £26.46 £34.75 £27.06
25th Percentile £28.25 £48.73 £35.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.94 £43.64
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% +25.90% -16.88%
75th Percentile £61.50 £62.50 £61.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £64.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.94 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.44% +29.26% -19.05%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 46,065 27,116 40,535
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.32% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,032 17,461 26,079
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% -4.76% -2.60%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,078 1,132 2,932
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.70 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.23% -26.13% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -5.88%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Test Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Engineer 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 +35 389 £428 +1.18% 154
UK excluding London +62 331 £410 +4.86% 166
North of England -12 97 £430 +4.88% 37
London -61 91 £435 +2.35% 12
Work from Home -17 79 £400 +3.69% 33
Midlands -14 62 £525 +26.74% 22
South East -42 59 £405 +9.83% 31
West Midlands -8 57 £525 +16.67% 19
East of England +12 50 £350 -6.67% 28
North West -14 40 £400 - 19
South West +10 39 £450 -18.18% 28
Yorkshire -29 35 £500 +18.34% 11
North East -7 28 £325 -14.75% 8
Scotland +6 25 £313 -33.93% 16
Wales -10 7 £300 -6.71% 4
East Midlands -27 5 £400 +2.30% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 11 June 2026, 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 Test Engineer in the job title.

1 240 (51.95%) Test Automation
2 139 (30.09%) CI/CD
2 139 (30.09%) Security Cleared
3 110 (23.81%) SC Cleared
4 95 (20.56%) Agile
5 90 (19.48%) DevOps
5 90 (19.48%) Java
6 87 (18.83%) API Testing
7 83 (17.97%) Selenium
8 80 (17.32%) Playwright
9 77 (16.67%) Azure
10 74 (16.02%) Python
11 73 (15.80%) Validation
12 72 (15.58%) AWS
13 68 (14.72%) Software Testing
14 67 (14.50%) Test Strategy
15 65 (14.07%) QA
16 59 (12.77%) BDD
17 58 (12.55%) Jenkins
18 57 (12.34%) REST Assured
19 56 (12.12%) JIRA
20 53 (11.47%) Cucumber
21 52 (11.26%) GitHub
21 52 (11.26%) Performance Testing
22 51 (11.04%) JavaScript
22 51 (11.04%) Microservices
23 50 (10.82%) Postman
24 49 (10.61%) Test Scripting
25 48 (10.39%) Azure DevOps
26 47 (10.17%) GitLab

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 7 (1.52%) Confluence
2 3 (0.65%) Apache
2 3 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (0.65%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.65%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.22%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.22%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.73%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.65%) Findur
3 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 77 (16.67%) Azure
2 72 (15.58%) AWS
3 52 (11.26%) GitHub
4 48 (10.39%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (5.41%) GCP
6 21 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (2.38%) BrowserStack
8 8 (1.73%) Power Platform
9 6 (1.30%) Entra ID
10 4 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (0.87%) BlazeMeter
10 4 (0.87%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (0.87%) PowerApps
10 4 (0.87%) SaaS
11 3 (0.65%) Amazon EMR
11 3 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (0.65%) Power Automate
11 3 (0.65%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 3 (0.65%) Serverless
12 2 (0.43%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 15 (3.25%) LAN
2 12 (2.60%) Firewall
3 10 (2.16%) WAN
4 9 (1.95%) DHCP
4 9 (1.95%) DNS
4 9 (1.95%) TCP/IP
5 8 (1.73%) VLAN
5 8 (1.73%) VPN
6 7 (1.52%) MPLS
7 5 (1.08%) Broadband
7 5 (1.08%) Network Security
7 5 (1.08%) SD-WAN
7 5 (1.08%) SSL
8 4 (0.87%) BGP
8 4 (0.87%) Internet
8 4 (0.87%) OSPF
8 4 (0.87%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (0.43%) 5G
10 2 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.33%) MongoDB
2 11 (2.38%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.30%) MySQL
3 6 (1.30%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.08%) Big Data
4 5 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.87%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.65%) Power BI
7 2 (0.43%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.43%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.43%) Tableau
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.22%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.22%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.22%) Flink
8 1 (0.22%) MS Access
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.22%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 83 (17.97%) Selenium
2 58 (12.55%) Jenkins
3 57 (12.34%) REST Assured
4 56 (12.12%) JIRA
5 53 (11.47%) Cucumber
6 50 (10.82%) Postman
7 47 (10.17%) GitLab
8 33 (7.14%) JMeter
9 26 (5.63%) Gatling
10 25 (5.41%) Git
11 21 (4.55%) Cypress.io
12 15 (3.25%) LabVIEW
13 13 (2.81%) Serenity BDD
13 13 (2.81%) Zephyr
14 11 (2.38%) WebDriver
15 10 (2.16%) JUnit
16 8 (1.73%) Browser DevTools
16 8 (1.73%) HP UFT
17 7 (1.52%) MSTest
17 7 (1.52%) TestRail
General
1 55 (11.90%) Public Sector
2 50 (10.82%) Social Skills
3 32 (6.93%) Aerospace
3 32 (6.93%) Finance
4 30 (6.49%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (5.84%) Automotive
6 23 (4.98%) Electronics
7 13 (2.81%) Military
8 12 (2.60%) Manufacturing
9 10 (2.16%) Banking
9 10 (2.16%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.87%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.65%) Marketing
13 2 (0.43%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.43%) Law
14 1 (0.22%) Legal
14 1 (0.22%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (17.32%) Playwright
2 38 (8.23%) REST
3 20 (4.33%) Kafka
4 17 (3.68%) Spring Boot
5 16 (3.46%) .NET
5 16 (3.46%) Spring
6 14 (3.03%) RESTful
7 11 (2.38%) Spring Cloud
8 10 (2.16%) React
9 9 (1.95%) Gherkin
9 9 (1.95%) OpenID
9 9 (1.95%) pytest
10 8 (1.73%) LDAP
10 8 (1.73%) Node.js
10 8 (1.73%) SailPoint
11 6 (1.30%) HTML
12 5 (1.08%) Model Context Protocol
12 5 (1.08%) OpenTelemetry
13 4 (0.87%) Flask
13 4 (0.87%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 19 (4.11%) Product Ownership
2 17 (3.68%) Enterprise Software
3 13 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 13 (2.81%) Self-Motivation
4 12 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
5 8 (1.73%) Infotainment
6 7 (1.52%) AI Agents
6 7 (1.52%) Distributed Architecture
7 5 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.08%) NHS
8 4 (0.87%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.65%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (0.65%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.43%) Analogue Electronics
10 2 (0.43%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.43%) Fibre Optics
10 2 (0.43%) Hedge funds
10 2 (0.43%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.43%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 16 (3.46%) Windows
2 9 (1.95%) Linux
3 6 (1.30%) Mac OS
4 4 (0.87%) Unix
5 3 (0.65%) Android
6 2 (0.43%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 240 (51.95%) Test Automation
2 139 (30.09%) CI/CD
3 95 (20.56%) Agile
4 90 (19.48%) DevOps
5 87 (18.83%) API Testing
6 73 (15.80%) Validation
7 68 (14.72%) Software Testing
8 67 (14.50%) Test Strategy
9 59 (12.77%) BDD
10 52 (11.26%) Performance Testing
11 51 (11.04%) Microservices
12 49 (10.61%) Test Scripting
13 45 (9.74%) Manual Testing
14 44 (9.52%) Integration Testing
15 43 (9.31%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (9.09%) Non-Functional Testing
17 41 (8.87%) User Acceptance Testing
18 40 (8.66%) Problem-Solving
19 38 (8.23%) Regression Testing
20 36 (7.79%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 90 (19.48%) Java
2 74 (16.02%) Python
3 51 (11.04%) JavaScript
4 43 (9.31%) SQL
5 30 (6.49%) C#
5 30 (6.49%) TypeScript
6 13 (2.81%) Bash
7 9 (1.95%) PowerShell
8 7 (1.52%) Apex Code
8 7 (1.52%) Ruby
8 7 (1.52%) VBScript
9 6 (1.30%) C++
9 6 (1.30%) Kotlin
10 5 (1.08%) C
10 5 (1.08%) PHP
11 4 (0.87%) Scala
12 2 (0.43%) Cypher
12 2 (0.43%) Groovy
12 2 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.43%) Swift
Qualifications
1 139 (30.09%) Security Cleared
2 110 (23.81%) SC Cleared
3 26 (5.63%) ISTQB
4 13 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.38%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 10 (2.16%) Degree
7 7 (1.52%) HNC
8 6 (1.30%) HND
9 4 (0.87%) CCNP
9 4 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.65%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.43%) CCNA
11 2 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.22%) CCIP
12 1 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Six Sigma Black Belt
12 1 (0.22%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (14.07%) QA
2 41 (8.87%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.38%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.52%) WCAG
5 4 (0.87%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.43%) NCSC
7 1 (0.22%) GDPR
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.22%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.22%) NIST
7 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 44 (9.52%) Docker
2 6 (1.30%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.65%) Firmware
3 3 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.43%) VirtualBox
4 2 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.22%) Squid
Systems Management
1 20 (4.33%) Grafana
1 20 (4.33%) Prometheus
2 18 (3.90%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.81%) Terraform
4 5 (1.08%) Kibana
4 5 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.65%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.43%) Ansible
6 2 (0.43%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.22%) Iperf
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 22 (4.76%) Salesforce
2 18 (3.90%) Microsoft
3 16 (3.46%) Splunk
4 10 (2.16%) ServiceNow
5 8 (1.73%) Conga
5 8 (1.73%) EMC
5 8 (1.73%) GoCardless
6 7 (1.52%) Cisco
6 7 (1.52%) Citrix
6 7 (1.52%) Dynatrace
7 6 (1.30%) Google
8 4 (0.87%) Databricks
8 4 (0.87%) HP
8 4 (0.87%) Juniper
8 4 (0.87%) Pega
8 4 (0.87%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.65%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.65%) IBM
9 3 (0.65%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.65%) UiPath