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 30 November 2025.

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

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 344 341 352
Rank change year-on-year -3 +11 +70
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 251 229 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.63% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.77% 0.68% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 143 207
10th Percentile £287 £316 £361
25th Percentile £350 £392 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £475 £440
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% +8.08% -2.33%
75th Percentile £519 £550 £538
90th Percentile £638 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £469 £425
% change year-on-year -12.00% +10.29% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 13 18
10th Percentile £22.31 £30.60 £33.70
25th Percentile £33.00 £38.40 £35.63
Median hourly rate £36.00 £57.25 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -37.12% +38.79% -31.25%
75th Percentile £49.38 £62.50 £57.69
90th Percentile £50.00 £70.50 £74.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £57.25 £41.25
% change year-on-year -37.12% +38.79% -31.25%

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 32,598 33,656 42,848
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.81% 93.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,655 20,421 28,929
10th Percentile £281 £300 £290
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £649
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.14% -0.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,903 1,218 1,519
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.24 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.50 £19.09
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +46.67%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +78.00%

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 30 November 2025.

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 30 November 2025.

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 30 November 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 -18 222 £425 -10.53% 134
UK excluding London +13 163 £413 -12.00% 140
London +16 68 £463 -2.63% 19
North of England -24 60 £425 +6.25% 12
Work from Home -8 57 £400 -20.00% 21
South East -22 28 £295 -41.00% 40
Midlands -15 26 £515 +15.41% 28
Yorkshire -24 24 £435 +6.75% 4
East of England +3 22 £375 +11.11% 23
North East +5 19 £425 +37.10% 6
West Midlands -11 18 £713 +67.65% 24
North West -17 17 £393 -1.88% 2
Wales +9 11 £425 +13.33% 10
South West -11 10 £500 -4.76% 24
East Midlands -13 8 £360 -22.99% 4
Scotland - 5 £65 - 8
Northern Ireland -4 1 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 30 November 2025, 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.

1 157 (62.55%) Test Automation
2 90 (35.86%) CI/CD
3 87 (34.66%) Agile
4 67 (26.69%) Security Cleared
5 65 (25.90%) QA
6 61 (24.30%) Selenium
7 58 (23.11%) Java
8 54 (21.51%) Cucumber
9 52 (20.72%) Azure
9 52 (20.72%) Test Scripting
10 51 (20.32%) DevOps
11 49 (19.52%) Test Strategy
12 48 (19.12%) SC Cleared
13 45 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
14 44 (17.53%) Software Testing
15 42 (16.73%) AWS
15 42 (16.73%) Postman
16 41 (16.33%) API Testing
17 40 (15.94%) JIRA
18 38 (15.14%) Python
19 36 (14.34%) Manual Testing
19 36 (14.34%) Scrum
20 35 (13.94%) BDD
20 35 (13.94%) Playwright
21 34 (13.55%) Performance Testing
22 33 (13.15%) Git
22 33 (13.15%) GitLab
23 32 (12.75%) REST
24 28 (11.16%) Regression Testing
25 27 (10.76%) Defect Management

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 (3.19%) Confluence
2 3 (1.20%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.80%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.40%) Drupal
4 1 (0.40%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.40%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.80%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.80%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.40%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.40%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.40%) ProductWriter
2 1 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 52 (20.72%) Azure
2 42 (16.73%) AWS
3 26 (10.36%) Azure DevOps
4 14 (5.58%) GitHub
5 12 (4.78%) GCP
6 10 (3.98%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (3.98%) Serverless
7 8 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
8 7 (2.79%) Power Platform
9 5 (1.99%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (1.99%) BrowserStack
10 4 (1.59%) BlazeMeter
11 3 (1.20%) PowerApps
11 3 (1.20%) Snowflake
11 3 (1.20%) Tricentis Tosca
12 2 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
12 2 (0.80%) Amazon EventBridge
12 2 (0.80%) AWS CodePipeline
12 2 (0.80%) Dynamics 365
12 2 (0.80%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 14 (5.58%) Firewall
2 9 (3.59%) Wireshark
3 8 (3.19%) Ethernet
3 8 (3.19%) SD-WAN
4 6 (2.39%) 5G
4 6 (2.39%) HTTP
4 6 (2.39%) WAN
5 5 (1.99%) 4G
6 4 (1.59%) VoIP
7 3 (1.20%) 3G
7 3 (1.20%) Cisco IOS
7 3 (1.20%) DHCP
7 3 (1.20%) DNS
7 3 (1.20%) FTP
7 3 (1.20%) LAN
7 3 (1.20%) SNMP
7 3 (1.20%) Spanning Tree
7 3 (1.20%) SSH
7 3 (1.20%) TACACS
8 2 (0.80%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.99%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (1.20%) Power BI
2 3 (1.20%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.80%) Oracle ODI
3 2 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
3 2 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.80%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.40%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (0.40%) Parquet
4 1 (0.40%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 61 (24.30%) Selenium
2 54 (21.51%) Cucumber
3 42 (16.73%) Postman
4 40 (15.94%) JIRA
5 33 (13.15%) Git
5 33 (13.15%) GitLab
6 26 (10.36%) Jenkins
7 20 (7.97%) REST Assured
8 19 (7.57%) Cypress.io
8 19 (7.57%) JMeter
9 11 (4.38%) Gatling
9 11 (4.38%) WebDriver
10 9 (3.59%) Bitbucket
10 9 (3.59%) SpecFlow
11 7 (2.79%) Appium
11 7 (2.79%) LoadRunner
12 4 (1.59%) Mockito
12 4 (1.59%) TestRail
12 4 (1.59%) Zephyr
13 3 (1.20%) CircleCI
General
1 57 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 47 (18.73%) Public Sector
3 25 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (7.97%) Finance
5 19 (7.57%) Telecoms
6 12 (4.78%) Banking
7 10 (3.98%) Aerospace
8 8 (3.19%) Military
9 7 (2.79%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.59%) Back Office
10 4 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.20%) Front Office
12 2 (0.80%) Automotive
12 2 (0.80%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.40%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.40%) Health Technology
13 1 (0.40%) Law
13 1 (0.40%) Local Government
13 1 (0.40%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (13.94%) Playwright
2 32 (12.75%) REST
3 17 (6.77%) Node.js
4 13 (5.18%) RFC 2544
5 12 (4.78%) WireMock
6 9 (3.59%) .NET
6 9 (3.59%) Kafka
7 7 (2.79%) pytest
7 7 (2.79%) Swagger
8 6 (2.39%) Middleware
8 6 (2.39%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.39%) React
8 6 (2.39%) Spring Boot
8 6 (2.39%) WebdriverIO
9 5 (1.99%) Gherkin
9 5 (1.99%) gRPC
9 5 (1.99%) JMS
9 5 (1.99%) WebSockets
10 4 (1.59%) JSON
11 3 (1.20%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.18%) Data Centre
1 13 (5.18%) Fibre Optics
2 12 (4.78%) Cloud Native
3 11 (4.38%) Product Ownership
3 11 (4.38%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (1.59%) Embedded Systems
4 4 (1.59%) Mobile App
4 4 (1.59%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.20%) Low-Code
5 3 (1.20%) NHS
6 2 (0.80%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (0.80%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (0.80%) PKI
6 2 (0.80%) Replication
7 1 (0.40%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.40%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 1 (0.40%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.40%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.40%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.79%) Windows
2 5 (1.99%) Android
2 5 (1.99%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.20%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.80%) Linux
4 2 (0.80%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.40%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (62.55%) Test Automation
2 90 (35.86%) CI/CD
3 87 (34.66%) Agile
4 52 (20.72%) Test Scripting
5 51 (20.32%) DevOps
6 49 (19.52%) Test Strategy
7 45 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
8 44 (17.53%) Software Testing
9 41 (16.33%) API Testing
10 36 (14.34%) Manual Testing
10 36 (14.34%) Scrum
11 35 (13.94%) BDD
12 34 (13.55%) Performance Testing
13 28 (11.16%) Regression Testing
14 27 (10.76%) Defect Management
15 26 (10.36%) Microservices
15 26 (10.36%) Non-Functional Testing
16 25 (9.96%) Integration Testing
17 24 (9.56%) TDD
18 23 (9.16%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 58 (23.11%) Java
2 38 (15.14%) Python
3 25 (9.96%) JavaScript
4 23 (9.16%) C#
5 22 (8.76%) TypeScript
6 19 (7.57%) SQL
7 12 (4.78%) Bash
8 7 (2.79%) Ruby
9 6 (2.39%) VB.NET
10 4 (1.59%) C
10 4 (1.59%) C++
11 2 (0.80%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.80%) VB
12 1 (0.40%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.40%) Bicep
12 1 (0.40%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.40%) Perl
12 1 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 67 (26.69%) Security Cleared
2 48 (19.12%) SC Cleared
3 12 (4.78%) ISTQB
4 10 (3.98%) Degree
5 8 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (1.59%) CCNA
8 4 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (1.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 3 (1.20%) Master's Degree
9 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.80%) CCNP
10 2 (0.80%) CEH
10 2 (0.80%) CREST Certified
10 2 (0.80%) MCSA
10 2 (0.80%) MCSE
10 2 (0.80%) OSCP
10 2 (0.80%) SANS
10 2 (0.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (25.90%) QA
2 26 (10.36%) Accessibility
3 13 (5.18%) WCAG
4 4 (1.59%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.59%) NIST
5 2 (0.80%) EU AI Act
5 2 (0.80%) HL7
5 2 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.80%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.40%) SNOMED CT
6 1 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 25 (9.96%) Docker
2 3 (1.20%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (5.98%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.59%) Grafana
3 8 (3.19%) Ansible
4 7 (2.79%) Terraform
5 4 (1.59%) HP ALM
5 4 (1.59%) Kibana
6 3 (1.20%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 25 (9.96%) Cisco
1 25 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 9 (3.59%) Splunk
3 7 (2.79%) Meraki
3 7 (2.79%) Nokia
4 6 (2.39%) Juniper
4 6 (2.39%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.39%) UiPath
5 5 (1.99%) HP
5 5 (1.99%) New Relic
5 5 (1.99%) Oracle
6 4 (1.59%) AppDynamics
6 4 (1.59%) Citrix
6 4 (1.59%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.20%) Progress
7 3 (1.20%) Virgin Media
8 2 (0.80%) Cerner
8 2 (0.80%) Databricks
8 2 (0.80%) SAP
8 2 (0.80%) Workday