Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £430, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 July 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 265 334 326
Rank change year-on-year +69 -8 +56
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 477 208 274
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.93% 0.67% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.00% 0.73% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 124 184
10th Percentile £303 £287 £316
25th Percentile £363 £355 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £423 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -6.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £493 £556
90th Percentile £613 £673 £593
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £475
% change year-on-year +5.00% -15.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 24 28
10th Percentile £27.30 £30.38 £26.31
25th Percentile £31.25 £44.50 £35.56
Median hourly rate £52.50 £50.00 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +21.17% -21.40%
75th Percentile £61.84 £59.69 £62.13
90th Percentile £72.00 £64.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £50.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year +5.00% +21.17% -21.40%

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 47,563 28,496 40,366
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 92.02% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,794 18,232 25,937
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £415 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,217 1,276 2,865
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.82 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.58
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.75 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.75% -28.67% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.30 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 +41 403 £430 +1.18% 169
UK excluding London +46 353 £420 +5.00% 170
North of England -8 96 £413 -1.79% 27
London -64 85 £435 +2.35% 18
Work from Home -23 79 £400 +3.69% 40
South East -40 63 £405 +19.29% 53
Midlands -3 62 £525 +20.00% 24
West Midlands -10 60 £525 +16.67% 21
East of England +21 55 £350 -6.67% 27
South West +10 50 £450 -18.18% 29
North West -17 43 £425 -13.27% 12
North East -4 32 £325 -18.75% 7
Scotland +13 28 £525 +10.82% 10
Yorkshire -30 27 £500 +18.34% 8
Wales -11 7 £300 -3.85% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
East Midlands -20 2 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 2 July 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.

1 233 (48.85%) Test Automation
2 147 (30.82%) Security Cleared
3 141 (29.56%) CI/CD
4 112 (23.48%) SC Cleared
5 98 (20.55%) Agile
6 90 (18.87%) DevOps
7 87 (18.24%) Playwright
8 86 (18.03%) Java
9 83 (17.40%) API Testing
10 82 (17.19%) Selenium
11 81 (16.98%) Validation
12 75 (15.72%) Python
13 70 (14.68%) Azure
14 69 (14.47%) Software Testing
15 68 (14.26%) QA
16 67 (14.05%) Test Strategy
17 64 (13.42%) AWS
18 61 (12.79%) BDD
19 55 (11.53%) GitHub
20 54 (11.32%) Cucumber
21 53 (11.11%) Jenkins
22 52 (10.90%) Test Scripting
23 51 (10.69%) Performance Testing
23 51 (10.69%) REST Assured
24 50 (10.48%) JIRA
25 49 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
26 48 (10.06%) Microservices
26 48 (10.06%) Non-Functional Testing
27 47 (9.85%) GitLab
27 47 (9.85%) JavaScript

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 8 (1.68%) Confluence
2 4 (0.84%) Apache
2 4 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (0.84%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.84%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.21%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.21%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.68%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.63%) Findur
3 2 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.21%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.21%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 70 (14.68%) Azure
2 64 (13.42%) AWS
3 55 (11.53%) GitHub
4 45 (9.43%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
6 22 (4.61%) GCP
7 10 (2.10%) BrowserStack
8 7 (1.47%) Power Platform
9 6 (1.26%) Entra ID
10 4 (0.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (0.84%) Amazon EMR
10 4 (0.84%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (0.84%) PowerApps
11 3 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (0.63%) BlazeMeter
11 3 (0.63%) Power Automate
11 3 (0.63%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 3 (0.63%) Serverless
12 2 (0.42%) OpenShift
12 2 (0.42%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 15 (3.14%) LAN
2 12 (2.52%) Firewall
3 11 (2.31%) DNS
4 10 (2.10%) WAN
5 9 (1.89%) DHCP
5 9 (1.89%) TCP/IP
6 8 (1.68%) VLAN
6 8 (1.68%) VPN
7 7 (1.47%) MPLS
8 5 (1.05%) Broadband
8 5 (1.05%) Network Security
8 5 (1.05%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.84%) BGP
9 4 (0.84%) Internet
9 4 (0.84%) OSPF
9 4 (0.84%) SSL
9 4 (0.84%) Wireshark
10 3 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.42%) 4G
11 2 (0.42%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (4.61%) MongoDB
2 11 (2.31%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.26%) Big Data
3 6 (1.26%) Neo4j
4 5 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.63%) Power BI
7 2 (0.42%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.42%) Tableau
8 1 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.21%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.21%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.21%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.21%) Flink
8 1 (0.21%) MySQL
8 1 (0.21%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.21%) Power Query
8 1 (0.21%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 82 (17.19%) Selenium
2 54 (11.32%) Cucumber
3 53 (11.11%) Jenkins
4 51 (10.69%) REST Assured
5 50 (10.48%) JIRA
6 47 (9.85%) GitLab
6 47 (9.85%) Postman
7 35 (7.34%) JMeter
8 29 (6.08%) Gatling
9 25 (5.24%) Git
10 21 (4.40%) Cypress.io
11 15 (3.14%) LabVIEW
12 13 (2.73%) Serenity BDD
12 13 (2.73%) WebDriver
12 13 (2.73%) Zephyr
13 12 (2.52%) JUnit
14 10 (2.10%) SpecFlow
15 8 (1.68%) MSTest
16 7 (1.47%) Browser DevTools
17 6 (1.26%) TestNG
General
1 53 (11.11%) Public Sector
2 52 (10.90%) Social Skills
3 32 (6.71%) Aerospace
3 32 (6.71%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (6.50%) Finance
5 28 (5.87%) Automotive
6 26 (5.45%) Electronics
7 16 (3.35%) Manufacturing
8 13 (2.73%) Military
9 11 (2.31%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.89%) Banking
11 6 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.84%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.63%) Marketing
14 2 (0.42%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.42%) Law
14 2 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.21%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (18.24%) Playwright
2 39 (8.18%) REST
3 23 (4.82%) Kafka
4 19 (3.98%) Spring Boot
5 18 (3.77%) Spring
6 15 (3.14%) RESTful
7 12 (2.52%) .NET
8 11 (2.31%) Node.js
8 11 (2.31%) pytest
8 11 (2.31%) React
8 11 (2.31%) Spring Cloud
9 8 (1.68%) Gherkin
10 7 (1.47%) SOAP
11 6 (1.26%) HTML
11 6 (1.26%) Model Context Protocol
11 6 (1.26%) OpenTelemetry
12 4 (0.84%) Flask
12 4 (0.84%) Jest
12 4 (0.84%) Pandas
12 4 (0.84%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 20 (4.19%) Product Ownership
2 17 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
3 16 (3.35%) Cloud Native
4 13 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
5 8 (1.68%) Infotainment
6 7 (1.47%) AI Agents
7 6 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.05%) NHS
9 4 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
10 3 (0.63%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.63%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 2 (0.42%) Analogue Electronics
11 2 (0.42%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.42%) Fibre Optics
11 2 (0.42%) Hedge funds
11 2 (0.42%) Management Information System
11 2 (0.42%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 18 (3.77%) Windows
2 9 (1.89%) Linux
3 6 (1.26%) Mac OS
4 4 (0.84%) Unix
5 3 (0.63%) Android
6 2 (0.42%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.42%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (48.85%) Test Automation
2 141 (29.56%) CI/CD
3 98 (20.55%) Agile
4 90 (18.87%) DevOps
5 83 (17.40%) API Testing
6 81 (16.98%) Validation
7 69 (14.47%) Software Testing
8 67 (14.05%) Test Strategy
9 61 (12.79%) BDD
10 52 (10.90%) Test Scripting
11 51 (10.69%) Performance Testing
12 49 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
13 48 (10.06%) Microservices
13 48 (10.06%) Non-Functional Testing
14 46 (9.64%) Integration Testing
15 44 (9.22%) End-to-End Testing
16 43 (9.01%) Problem-Solving
17 39 (8.18%) User Acceptance Testing
18 38 (7.97%) Regression Testing
19 35 (7.34%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 86 (18.03%) Java
2 75 (15.72%) Python
3 47 (9.85%) JavaScript
4 37 (7.76%) SQL
5 36 (7.55%) C#
6 30 (6.29%) TypeScript
7 13 (2.73%) Bash
8 9 (1.89%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.47%) Apex Code
9 7 (1.47%) Ruby
10 6 (1.26%) C++
10 6 (1.26%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.05%) C
11 5 (1.05%) VBScript
12 4 (0.84%) Scala
13 3 (0.63%) Cypher
14 2 (0.42%) AppleScript
14 2 (0.42%) Groovy
14 2 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.42%) Swift
Qualifications
1 147 (30.82%) Security Cleared
2 112 (23.48%) SC Cleared
3 25 (5.24%) ISTQB
4 14 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (2.94%) DV Cleared
5 12 (2.52%) Degree
6 11 (2.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 7 (1.47%) HNC
8 6 (1.26%) HND
9 4 (0.84%) CCNP
9 4 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.63%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.42%) CCNA
11 2 (0.42%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.21%) CCIP
12 1 (0.21%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.21%) Six Sigma Black Belt
12 1 (0.21%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (14.26%) QA
2 38 (7.97%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.31%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.84%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 4 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.84%) WCAG
5 2 (0.42%) NCSC
6 1 (0.21%) GDPR
6 1 (0.21%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.21%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.21%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.21%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.21%) MIL-STD-1553
6 1 (0.21%) NIST
6 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 40 (8.39%) Docker
2 5 (1.05%) Active Directory
2 5 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
3 4 (0.84%) Firmware
3 4 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.42%) VirtualBox
4 2 (0.42%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 23 (4.82%) Grafana
2 20 (4.19%) Prometheus
3 17 (3.56%) Kubernetes
4 14 (2.94%) Terraform
5 7 (1.47%) Kibana
6 4 (0.84%) HP ALM
6 4 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.63%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.42%) Ansible
8 2 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.21%) Iperf
9 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 27 (5.66%) Salesforce
2 18 (3.77%) Splunk
3 16 (3.35%) Microsoft
4 8 (1.68%) Conga
4 8 (1.68%) EMC
4 8 (1.68%) GoCardless
5 7 (1.47%) Cisco
5 7 (1.47%) Citrix
5 7 (1.47%) Dynatrace
5 7 (1.47%) Google
6 5 (1.05%) HP
6 5 (1.05%) ServiceNow
7 4 (0.84%) Juniper
7 4 (0.84%) Pega
7 4 (0.84%) VMware
7 4 (0.84%) Zscaler
8 3 (0.63%) IBM
8 3 (0.63%) OpenLink
8 3 (0.63%) Siemens
8 3 (0.63%) UiPath