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 27 May 2026.

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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 276 324 310
Rank change year-on-year +48 -14 +90
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 426 202 292
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.87% 0.71% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.95% 0.77% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 133 201
10th Percentile £301 £305 £300
25th Percentile £368 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £500 £538
90th Percentile £616 £612 £590
UK excluding London median daily rate £411 £438 £450
% change year-on-year -6.00% -2.78% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 19 32
10th Percentile £25.53 £41.51 £27.06
25th Percentile £28.25 £50.00 £35.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £44.78
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +22.84% -14.71%
75th Percentile £61.50 £62.50 £61.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.00 £64.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £44.78
% change year-on-year -4.55% +22.84% -14.71%

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 44,984 26,371 39,600
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.30% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,456 17,159 25,763
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,981 1,009 2,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.04 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.38% -24.58% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.97% -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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 +8 358 £425 - 163
UK excluding London +36 305 £411 -6.00% 170
North of England -11 88 £413 +0.61% 39
London -65 85 £434 +2.00% 16
Work from Home -10 80 £400 -5.88% 41
Midlands -15 65 £525 +34.27% 25
West Midlands -7 59 £525 +46.85% 24
South East -41 56 £405 -10.00% 37
East of England +2 44 £350 -6.67% 21
North West -11 39 £400 - 20
South West -9 30 £450 -16.28% 30
Yorkshire -34 30 £500 +18.34% 8
North East -6 25 £350 -8.20% 11
Scotland +17 23 £192 -59.58% 13
Wales -14 7 £300 -6.71% 3
East Midlands -30 6 £400 +2.30% 1
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 27 May 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.

1 231 (54.23%) Test Automation
2 128 (30.05%) CI/CD
3 126 (29.58%) Security Cleared
4 102 (23.94%) SC Cleared
5 91 (21.36%) Agile
6 88 (20.66%) Java
7 87 (20.42%) DevOps
8 83 (19.48%) API Testing
8 83 (19.48%) Selenium
9 79 (18.54%) Azure
10 74 (17.37%) Playwright
11 73 (17.14%) Python
12 69 (16.20%) AWS
13 65 (15.26%) Test Strategy
14 63 (14.79%) QA
14 63 (14.79%) Software Testing
15 58 (13.62%) BDD
15 58 (13.62%) Validation
16 55 (12.91%) JIRA
16 55 (12.91%) Performance Testing
17 54 (12.68%) JavaScript
17 54 (12.68%) Jenkins
17 54 (12.68%) REST Assured
18 52 (12.21%) Cucumber
19 51 (11.97%) Postman
20 49 (11.50%) GitHub
20 49 (11.50%) Test Scripting
21 47 (11.03%) Azure DevOps
22 46 (10.80%) Manual Testing
22 46 (10.80%) Microservices

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 9 (2.11%) Confluence
2 1 (0.23%) Apache
2 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.23%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.23%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.88%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.70%) Findur
3 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 79 (18.54%) Azure
2 69 (16.20%) AWS
3 49 (11.50%) GitHub
4 47 (11.03%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (5.16%) GCP
6 19 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (2.58%) BrowserStack
8 9 (2.11%) Power Platform
9 6 (1.41%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.17%) PowerApps
11 4 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (0.94%) BlazeMeter
11 4 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (0.94%) Power Automate
11 4 (0.94%) SaaS
11 4 (0.94%) Serverless
12 3 (0.70%) AWS Lambda
12 3 (0.70%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 2 (0.47%) Sauce Labs
13 2 (0.47%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 14 (3.29%) LAN
2 11 (2.58%) Firewall
3 10 (2.35%) WAN
4 8 (1.88%) DHCP
4 8 (1.88%) DNS
4 8 (1.88%) TCP/IP
4 8 (1.88%) VPN
5 7 (1.64%) MPLS
5 7 (1.64%) VLAN
6 5 (1.17%) Broadband
6 5 (1.17%) Network Security
6 5 (1.17%) SD-WAN
6 5 (1.17%) SSL
7 4 (0.94%) BGP
7 4 (0.94%) Internet
7 4 (0.94%) OSPF
7 4 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.94%) Wireshark
8 2 (0.47%) 5G
8 2 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.69%) MongoDB
2 11 (2.58%) Relational Database
3 7 (1.64%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.41%) MySQL
5 3 (0.70%) Big Data
5 3 (0.70%) Power BI
6 2 (0.47%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.47%) DynamoDB
6 2 (0.47%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.47%) Tableau
7 1 (0.23%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.23%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.23%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.23%) Flink
7 1 (0.23%) MS Access
7 1 (0.23%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.23%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 83 (19.48%) Selenium
2 55 (12.91%) JIRA
3 54 (12.68%) Jenkins
3 54 (12.68%) REST Assured
4 52 (12.21%) Cucumber
5 51 (11.97%) Postman
6 40 (9.39%) GitLab
7 32 (7.51%) JMeter
8 23 (5.40%) Git
9 21 (4.93%) Gatling
10 18 (4.23%) Cypress.io
11 14 (3.29%) LabVIEW
12 13 (3.05%) Serenity BDD
13 12 (2.82%) Zephyr
14 11 (2.58%) WebDriver
15 10 (2.35%) JUnit
16 8 (1.88%) Browser DevTools
16 8 (1.88%) HP UFT
17 7 (1.64%) MSTest
17 7 (1.64%) TestRail
General
1 57 (13.38%) Public Sector
2 44 (10.33%) Social Skills
3 32 (7.51%) Finance
4 28 (6.57%) Aerospace
4 28 (6.57%) Automotive
5 26 (6.10%) Analytical Skills
6 18 (4.23%) Electronics
7 12 (2.82%) Military
8 10 (2.35%) Banking
8 10 (2.35%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.64%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.94%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.70%) Marketing
13 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.23%) Avionics
14 1 (0.23%) German Language
14 1 (0.23%) Law
14 1 (0.23%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (17.37%) Playwright
2 39 (9.15%) REST
3 20 (4.69%) Kafka
4 16 (3.76%) Spring Boot
5 15 (3.52%) Spring
6 14 (3.29%) .NET
6 14 (3.29%) RESTful
7 11 (2.58%) Spring Cloud
8 10 (2.35%) React
9 9 (2.11%) Gherkin
9 9 (2.11%) OpenID
10 8 (1.88%) LDAP
10 8 (1.88%) SailPoint
11 7 (1.64%) Node.js
11 7 (1.64%) pytest
12 6 (1.41%) HTML
13 4 (0.94%) ADO
13 4 (0.94%) Flask
13 4 (0.94%) SAML
13 4 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 21 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 14 (3.29%) Enterprise Software
3 12 (2.82%) Cloud Native
3 12 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
4 8 (1.88%) Infotainment
5 7 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (1.17%) AI Agents
6 5 (1.17%) NHS
7 4 (0.94%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (0.94%) Mobile App
8 3 (0.70%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.70%) Distributed Architecture
8 3 (0.70%) Embedded Systems
8 3 (0.70%) Fibre Optics
8 3 (0.70%) Hedge funds
8 3 (0.70%) Management Information System
8 3 (0.70%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 3 (0.70%) Synthetic Data
9 2 (0.47%) Analogue Electronics
10 1 (0.23%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 16 (3.76%) Windows
2 6 (1.41%) Linux
2 6 (1.41%) Mac OS
3 3 (0.70%) Android
3 3 (0.70%) Unix
4 2 (0.47%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (54.23%) Test Automation
2 128 (30.05%) CI/CD
3 91 (21.36%) Agile
4 87 (20.42%) DevOps
5 83 (19.48%) API Testing
6 65 (15.26%) Test Strategy
7 63 (14.79%) Software Testing
8 58 (13.62%) BDD
8 58 (13.62%) Validation
9 55 (12.91%) Performance Testing
10 49 (11.50%) Test Scripting
11 46 (10.80%) Manual Testing
11 46 (10.80%) Microservices
12 44 (10.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 44 (10.33%) Non-Functional Testing
13 43 (10.09%) Integration Testing
14 38 (8.92%) Functional Testing
15 35 (8.22%) Problem-Solving
15 35 (8.22%) Regression Testing
16 34 (7.98%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 88 (20.66%) Java
2 73 (17.14%) Python
3 54 (12.68%) JavaScript
4 35 (8.22%) SQL
5 28 (6.57%) TypeScript
6 27 (6.34%) C#
7 10 (2.35%) Bash
8 9 (2.11%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.64%) Apex Code
9 7 (1.64%) Ruby
9 7 (1.64%) VBScript
10 6 (1.41%) C++
11 5 (1.17%) C
11 5 (1.17%) PHP
12 4 (0.94%) Scala
13 2 (0.47%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.47%) Cypher
13 2 (0.47%) Groovy
13 2 (0.47%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.47%) Swift
Qualifications
1 126 (29.58%) Security Cleared
2 102 (23.94%) SC Cleared
3 26 (6.10%) ISTQB
4 12 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (2.82%) Degree
5 11 (2.58%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (1.41%) HNC
7 5 (1.17%) HND
8 4 (0.94%) CCNP
8 4 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.70%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.47%) CCNA
11 1 (0.23%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.23%) CCIP
11 1 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.23%) Six Sigma Black Belt
11 1 (0.23%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (14.79%) QA
2 44 (10.33%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.58%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.64%) WCAG
5 4 (0.94%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.47%) NCSC
7 1 (0.23%) GDPR
7 1 (0.23%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.23%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.23%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.23%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.23%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.23%) NIST
7 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 42 (9.86%) Docker
2 6 (1.41%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.70%) Firmware
3 3 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.47%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 1 (0.23%) Squid
5 1 (0.23%) VirtualBox
5 1 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 18 (4.23%) Grafana
1 18 (4.23%) Prometheus
2 17 (3.99%) Kubernetes
3 11 (2.58%) Terraform
4 5 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.70%) HP ALM
5 3 (0.70%) Kibana
6 2 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.23%) Ansible
7 1 (0.23%) Iperf
7 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 18 (4.23%) Microsoft
2 16 (3.76%) Salesforce
3 14 (3.29%) Splunk
4 10 (2.35%) ServiceNow
5 8 (1.88%) Citrix
5 8 (1.88%) Conga
5 8 (1.88%) EMC
5 8 (1.88%) GoCardless
6 7 (1.64%) Cisco
6 7 (1.64%) Dynatrace
7 5 (1.17%) Google
8 4 (0.94%) Databricks
8 4 (0.94%) HP
8 4 (0.94%) Juniper
8 4 (0.94%) Pega
8 4 (0.94%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.70%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.70%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.70%) UiPath
10 2 (0.47%) Bloomberg