Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £418, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 April 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 310 303
Rank change year-on-year +1 -7 +90
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 362 212 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.79% 0.73% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.86% 0.78% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 142 212
10th Percentile £303 £305 £314
25th Percentile £368 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -4.57% +2.94% -15.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £520
90th Percentile £625 £636 £580
UK excluding London median daily rate £411 £459 £425
% change year-on-year -10.35% +7.94% -8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 14 32
10th Percentile £28.24 £33.78 £29.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £50.27 £35.56
Median hourly rate £45.00 £56.25 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +36.36% -31.25%
75th Percentile £62.32 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.38 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £56.25 £41.25
% change year-on-year -20.00% +36.36% -31.25%

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 42,318 27,076 40,821
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.68% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,340 17,810 26,699
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,659 966 2,580
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.95 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.12 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.54 £31.58 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.37% -9.77% -21.81%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £30.20 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.87% -13.71% -17.38%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -4 305 £418 -4.57% 140
UK excluding London -5 234 £411 -10.35% 148
London -52 93 £432 +1.65% 19
North of England -26 76 £400 +9.22% 35
Midlands -12 61 £525 +20.00% 14
Work from Home -31 61 £398 -13.59% 29
West Midlands -9 56 £550 +53.85% 11
South East -58 38 £400 -23.81% 35
Yorkshire -31 30 £488 +30.00% 6
East of England -18 29 £338 -10.00% 23
North West -16 25 £390 +4.00% 23
North East -1 24 £400 +29.03% 6
South West -27 13 £400 -23.81% 19
Scotland +13 11 £313 -33.93% 17
Wales -6 10 £440 +32.86% 6
East Midlands -35 5 £400 -8.57% 3
Northern Ireland - 4 £450 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 10 April 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.

1 213 (58.84%) Test Automation
2 116 (32.04%) CI/CD
3 110 (30.39%) Security Cleared
4 93 (25.69%) Agile
5 87 (24.03%) SC Cleared
6 80 (22.10%) Azure
7 75 (20.72%) Selenium
8 74 (20.44%) DevOps
9 73 (20.17%) QA
10 67 (18.51%) Java
10 67 (18.51%) Python
11 66 (18.23%) JIRA
12 64 (17.68%) API Testing
13 59 (16.30%) AWS
14 58 (16.02%) Playwright
15 54 (14.92%) Cucumber
15 54 (14.92%) Postman
16 52 (14.36%) Manual Testing
17 51 (14.09%) Test Strategy
18 49 (13.54%) Performance Testing
19 48 (13.26%) JavaScript
19 48 (13.26%) Jenkins
19 48 (13.26%) Software Testing
19 48 (13.26%) Test Scripting
20 45 (12.43%) BDD
20 45 (12.43%) Regression Testing
21 44 (12.15%) Azure DevOps
22 43 (11.88%) GitLab
23 42 (11.60%) Functional Testing
23 42 (11.60%) Validation

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 10 (2.76%) Confluence
2 2 (0.55%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.28%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.28%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Findur
2 2 (0.55%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.28%) CODA-Financials
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 80 (22.10%) Azure
2 59 (16.30%) AWS
3 44 (12.15%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (9.94%) GitHub
5 21 (5.80%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (4.70%) GCP
7 12 (3.31%) BrowserStack
8 8 (2.21%) BlazeMeter
9 7 (1.93%) Serverless
10 6 (1.66%) Entra ID
11 5 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.38%) Tricentis Tosca
12 4 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
12 4 (1.10%) Power Platform
12 4 (1.10%) SaaS
13 3 (0.83%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (0.83%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 2 (0.55%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
14 2 (0.55%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.76%) Firewall
1 10 (2.76%) LAN
1 10 (2.76%) WAN
2 9 (2.49%) DHCP
2 9 (2.49%) DNS
3 8 (2.21%) SD-WAN
3 8 (2.21%) TCP/IP
4 7 (1.93%) VPN
5 6 (1.66%) VLAN
6 5 (1.38%) Broadband
6 5 (1.38%) Network Security
6 5 (1.38%) SSL
7 4 (1.10%) BGP
7 4 (1.10%) Internet
7 4 (1.10%) MPLS
7 4 (1.10%) OSPF
7 4 (1.10%) Spanning Tree
7 4 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (1.10%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.83%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.21%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.93%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.66%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.38%) MySQL
5 3 (0.83%) Big Data
6 2 (0.55%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.55%) Tableau
7 1 (0.28%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.28%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.28%) MS Access
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.28%) Power BI
7 1 (0.28%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 75 (20.72%) Selenium
2 66 (18.23%) JIRA
3 54 (14.92%) Cucumber
3 54 (14.92%) Postman
4 48 (13.26%) Jenkins
5 43 (11.88%) GitLab
6 36 (9.94%) REST Assured
7 33 (9.12%) Git
8 30 (8.29%) JMeter
9 16 (4.42%) Cypress.io
10 14 (3.87%) Gatling
11 12 (3.31%) Zephyr
12 9 (2.49%) JUnit
13 8 (2.21%) Browser DevTools
13 8 (2.21%) Serenity BDD
13 8 (2.21%) TestRail
13 8 (2.21%) WebDriver
14 7 (1.93%) Appium
14 7 (1.93%) HP UFT
14 7 (1.93%) LabVIEW
General
1 55 (15.19%) Public Sector
2 47 (12.98%) Social Skills
3 34 (9.39%) Finance
4 27 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (5.25%) Automotive
6 13 (3.59%) Aerospace
6 13 (3.59%) Electronics
7 11 (3.04%) Military
7 11 (3.04%) Telecoms
8 9 (2.49%) Banking
9 4 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.83%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.83%) Marketing
11 2 (0.55%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Avionics
12 1 (0.28%) German Language
12 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Retail
12 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (16.02%) Playwright
2 39 (10.77%) REST
3 11 (3.04%) Kafka
4 10 (2.76%) .NET
4 10 (2.76%) Gherkin
4 10 (2.76%) Node.js
4 10 (2.76%) RESTful
5 9 (2.49%) LDAP
5 9 (2.49%) OpenID
5 9 (2.49%) SailPoint
5 9 (2.49%) Spring
6 7 (1.93%) pytest
6 7 (1.93%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.93%) WireMock
7 6 (1.66%) React
7 6 (1.66%) Spring Cloud
7 6 (1.66%) Swagger
7 6 (1.66%) WebdriverIO
8 5 (1.38%) HTML
8 5 (1.38%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.18%) Product Ownership
2 10 (2.76%) Cloud Native
2 10 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
3 9 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.21%) Infotainment
5 7 (1.93%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.10%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.10%) Management Information System
8 3 (0.83%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.83%) Fibre Optics
8 3 (0.83%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.55%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (0.55%) NHS
9 2 (0.55%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.55%) PKI
9 2 (0.55%) Synthetic Data
10 1 (0.28%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.97%) Windows
2 7 (1.93%) Linux
3 6 (1.66%) Android
3 6 (1.66%) Mac OS
4 5 (1.38%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.28%) Unix
6 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (58.84%) Test Automation
2 116 (32.04%) CI/CD
3 93 (25.69%) Agile
4 74 (20.44%) DevOps
5 64 (17.68%) API Testing
6 52 (14.36%) Manual Testing
7 51 (14.09%) Test Strategy
8 49 (13.54%) Performance Testing
9 48 (13.26%) Software Testing
9 48 (13.26%) Test Scripting
10 45 (12.43%) BDD
10 45 (12.43%) Regression Testing
11 42 (11.60%) Functional Testing
11 42 (11.60%) Validation
12 38 (10.50%) Microservices
13 34 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
13 34 (9.39%) Non-Functional Testing
13 34 (9.39%) Scenario Testing
14 33 (9.12%) Problem-Solving
15 31 (8.56%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 67 (18.51%) Java
1 67 (18.51%) Python
2 48 (13.26%) JavaScript
3 34 (9.39%) TypeScript
4 28 (7.73%) SQL
5 22 (6.08%) C#
6 12 (3.31%) Bash
6 12 (3.31%) Ruby
7 9 (2.49%) PowerShell
8 7 (1.93%) VBScript
9 5 (1.38%) C
9 5 (1.38%) C++
9 5 (1.38%) PHP
10 3 (0.83%) Scala
11 2 (0.55%) AppleScript
11 2 (0.55%) Bicep
11 2 (0.55%) Cypher
11 2 (0.55%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.55%) Swift
Qualifications
1 110 (30.39%) Security Cleared
2 87 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.63%) ISTQB
4 17 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.76%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.66%) Degree
8 5 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.10%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.83%) CCNP
10 3 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.55%) CCNA
11 2 (0.55%) CEH
11 2 (0.55%) CREST Certified
11 2 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.55%) OSCP
11 2 (0.55%) SANS
12 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (20.17%) QA
2 37 (10.22%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.76%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.93%) WCAG
5 6 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.83%) NIST
8 2 (0.55%) NCSC
8 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.28%) GDPR
9 1 (0.28%) HL7
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.28%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 38 (10.50%) Docker
2 7 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.55%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.55%) Firmware
5 1 (0.28%) Squid
5 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (4.14%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.59%) Grafana
3 11 (3.04%) Prometheus
4 9 (2.49%) Terraform
5 5 (1.38%) HP ALM
5 5 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.55%) Ansible
6 2 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.28%) Iperf
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 21 (5.80%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.31%) Citrix
3 10 (2.76%) ServiceNow
4 9 (2.49%) Salesforce
5 8 (2.21%) Splunk
6 7 (1.93%) Cisco
7 6 (1.66%) Dynatrace
7 6 (1.66%) HP
8 4 (1.10%) Databricks
8 4 (1.10%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.83%) Google
9 3 (0.83%) Meraki
9 3 (0.83%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.83%) Pega
9 3 (0.83%) SAP
9 3 (0.83%) UiPath
10 2 (0.55%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.55%) EMC
10 2 (0.55%) Oracle
10 2 (0.55%) Siemens