Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £431, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 July 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 322 339
Rank change year-on-year +66 +17 +44
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 499 218 264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.95% 0.67% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.02% 0.73% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 127 181
10th Percentile £303 £288 £325
25th Percentile £363 £353 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £431 £420 £463
Median % change year-on-year +2.62% -9.19% -7.50%
75th Percentile £538 £495 £556
90th Percentile £623 £658 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £396 £475
% change year-on-year +7.46% -16.74% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 27 23
10th Percentile £27.79 £31.20 £25.38
25th Percentile £31.25 £39.60 £31.88
Median hourly rate £46.25 £50.00 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +21.17% -21.40%
75th Percentile £61.84 £58.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.54 £63.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 £50.00 £38.88
% change year-on-year -7.50% +28.59% -25.94%

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 48,701 29,792 39,645
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.70% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,482 18,952 25,549
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,274 1,409 2,702
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.27 £17.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.21 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.69% -34.48% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.49 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.04 £74.00 £73.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +53 423 £430 +2.38% 127
UK excluding London +55 369 £425 +7.46% 127
London -56 93 £436 +2.65% 12
North of England -22 89 £400 -4.76% 19
Work from Home -37 81 £400 +3.69% 31
Midlands -5 72 £525 +20.00% 20
West Midlands -3 67 £525 +16.67% 15
South East -39 66 £410 +8.18% 44
South West +20 56 £438 -20.45% 19
East of England +17 55 £350 -6.67% 20
North West -18 44 £450 -8.16% 9
Scotland +13 32 £525 +10.82% 4
North East -15 29 £325 -18.75% 4
Yorkshire -43 22 £550 +31.01% 6
Wales -6 7 £300 -3.85% 2
East Midlands -10 5 - - 5
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 16 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.

1 234 (46.89%) Test Automation
2 153 (30.66%) Security Cleared
3 139 (27.86%) CI/CD
4 114 (22.85%) SC Cleared
5 100 (20.04%) Agile
6 92 (18.44%) Validation
7 89 (17.84%) DevOps
8 84 (16.83%) Playwright
9 81 (16.23%) Java
10 79 (15.83%) API Testing
10 79 (15.83%) Python
10 79 (15.83%) Selenium
11 74 (14.83%) QA
11 74 (14.83%) Software Testing
12 67 (13.43%) Test Strategy
13 63 (12.63%) Azure
14 61 (12.22%) AWS
14 61 (12.22%) BDD
15 57 (11.42%) GitHub
16 54 (10.82%) Performance Testing
16 54 (10.82%) Test Scripting
17 52 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
18 50 (10.02%) Cucumber
18 50 (10.02%) Non-Functional Testing
19 49 (9.82%) Integration Testing
19 49 (9.82%) REST Assured
20 48 (9.62%) JIRA
21 47 (9.42%) Microservices
22 46 (9.22%) End-to-End Testing
22 46 (9.22%) Jenkins

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 (1.40%) Confluence
2 4 (0.80%) Apache
2 4 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (0.80%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.80%) Jupyter
3 3 (0.60%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.20%) Simulink
2 1 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.60%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.60%) Findur
2 3 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.20%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 63 (12.63%) Azure
2 61 (12.22%) AWS
3 57 (11.42%) GitHub
4 43 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
6 20 (4.01%) GCP
7 9 (1.80%) BrowserStack
8 8 (1.60%) Power Platform
9 4 (0.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (0.80%) Amazon EMR
9 4 (0.80%) Entra ID
9 4 (0.80%) Microsoft 365
9 4 (0.80%) PowerApps
10 3 (0.60%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (0.60%) Power Automate
10 3 (0.60%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 3 (0.60%) Serverless
11 2 (0.40%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (0.40%) BlazeMeter
11 2 (0.40%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 15 (3.01%) LAN
2 13 (2.61%) DNS
3 12 (2.40%) Firewall
4 10 (2.00%) WAN
5 9 (1.80%) DHCP
5 9 (1.80%) TCP/IP
6 8 (1.60%) VLAN
6 8 (1.60%) VPN
7 7 (1.40%) MPLS
8 5 (1.00%) Broadband
8 5 (1.00%) Network Security
8 5 (1.00%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.80%) BGP
9 4 (0.80%) Internet
9 4 (0.80%) OSPF
9 4 (0.80%) SSL
9 4 (0.80%) Wireshark
10 3 (0.60%) 4G
10 3 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.40%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (4.61%) MongoDB
2 11 (2.20%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.20%) Big Data
4 5 (1.00%) Neo4j
4 5 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.60%) Power BI
7 2 (0.40%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.40%) Tableau
8 1 (0.20%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.20%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.20%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.20%) Flink
8 1 (0.20%) MySQL
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.20%) Power Query
8 1 (0.20%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 79 (15.83%) Selenium
2 50 (10.02%) Cucumber
3 49 (9.82%) REST Assured
4 48 (9.62%) JIRA
5 46 (9.22%) Jenkins
6 44 (8.82%) GitLab
7 42 (8.42%) Postman
8 34 (6.81%) JMeter
9 29 (5.81%) Gatling
10 23 (4.61%) Cypress.io
11 22 (4.41%) Git
12 15 (3.01%) LabVIEW
13 14 (2.81%) WebDriver
13 14 (2.81%) Zephyr
14 13 (2.61%) Serenity BDD
15 12 (2.40%) JUnit
16 11 (2.20%) SpecFlow
17 8 (1.60%) MSTest
18 6 (1.20%) Browser DevTools
18 6 (1.20%) TestNG
General
1 59 (11.82%) Social Skills
2 51 (10.22%) Public Sector
3 34 (6.81%) Finance
4 33 (6.61%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (6.41%) Aerospace
6 30 (6.01%) Automotive
7 27 (5.41%) Electronics
8 17 (3.41%) Manufacturing
9 13 (2.61%) Military
10 12 (2.40%) Banking
10 12 (2.40%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.80%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.60%) Law
13 3 (0.60%) Marketing
14 2 (0.40%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.20%) Influencing Skills
15 1 (0.20%) Legal Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (16.83%) Playwright
2 38 (7.62%) REST
3 23 (4.61%) Kafka
4 18 (3.61%) Spring
4 18 (3.61%) Spring Boot
5 15 (3.01%) RESTful
6 12 (2.40%) .NET
6 12 (2.40%) pytest
6 12 (2.40%) React
7 11 (2.20%) Spring Cloud
8 10 (2.00%) Node.js
9 7 (1.40%) Gherkin
10 6 (1.20%) Model Context Protocol
10 6 (1.20%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (1.20%) SOAP
11 5 (1.00%) Swagger
12 4 (0.80%) ADO
12 4 (0.80%) Flask
12 4 (0.80%) Pandas
12 4 (0.80%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 21 (4.21%) Product Ownership
2 17 (3.41%) Enterprise Software
3 16 (3.21%) Cloud Native
4 14 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
6 8 (1.60%) Infotainment
7 7 (1.40%) AI Agents
8 6 (1.20%) Distributed Architecture
9 5 (1.00%) Embedded Systems
9 5 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.00%) NHS
10 4 (0.80%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.60%) Analogue Electronics
11 3 (0.60%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.60%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 2 (0.40%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.40%) Fibre Optics
12 2 (0.40%) Hedge funds
12 2 (0.40%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 20 (4.01%) Windows
2 11 (2.20%) Linux
3 6 (1.20%) Mac OS
4 4 (0.80%) Unix
4 4 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.60%) Android
6 2 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.20%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 234 (46.89%) Test Automation
2 139 (27.86%) CI/CD
3 100 (20.04%) Agile
4 92 (18.44%) Validation
5 89 (17.84%) DevOps
6 79 (15.83%) API Testing
7 74 (14.83%) Software Testing
8 67 (13.43%) Test Strategy
9 61 (12.22%) BDD
10 54 (10.82%) Performance Testing
10 54 (10.82%) Test Scripting
11 52 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
12 50 (10.02%) Non-Functional Testing
13 49 (9.82%) Integration Testing
14 47 (9.42%) Microservices
15 46 (9.22%) End-to-End Testing
16 44 (8.82%) Regression Testing
17 43 (8.62%) Problem-Solving
18 39 (7.82%) User Acceptance Testing
19 35 (7.01%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 81 (16.23%) Java
2 79 (15.83%) Python
3 43 (8.62%) JavaScript
4 37 (7.41%) C#
5 36 (7.21%) SQL
6 29 (5.81%) TypeScript
7 13 (2.61%) Bash
8 9 (1.80%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.40%) Apex Code
9 7 (1.40%) C++
9 7 (1.40%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.20%) C
10 6 (1.20%) Ruby
11 4 (0.80%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.60%) VBScript
13 2 (0.40%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.40%) Cypher
13 2 (0.40%) Groovy
13 2 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.40%) Swift
Qualifications
1 153 (30.66%) Security Cleared
2 114 (22.85%) SC Cleared
3 25 (5.01%) ISTQB
4 19 (3.81%) DV Cleared
5 14 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.81%) Degree
6 11 (2.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 8 (1.60%) HNC
8 7 (1.40%) HND
9 4 (0.80%) CCNP
9 4 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.40%) CCNA
11 2 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.20%) CCIP
12 1 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.20%) Six Sigma Black Belt
12 1 (0.20%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (14.83%) QA
2 39 (7.82%) Accessibility
3 12 (2.40%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.80%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 4 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.80%) WCAG
5 2 (0.40%) NCSC
5 2 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.20%) GDPR
6 1 (0.20%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.20%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.20%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.20%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.20%) MIL-STD-1553
6 1 (0.20%) NIST
6 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 40 (8.02%) Docker
2 7 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.00%) Active Directory
5 4 (0.80%) Firmware
5 4 (0.80%) vSphere
6 2 (0.40%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 24 (4.81%) Grafana
2 20 (4.01%) Prometheus
3 18 (3.61%) Kubernetes
4 14 (2.81%) Terraform
5 7 (1.40%) Kibana
6 4 (0.80%) HP ALM
6 4 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.60%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.40%) Ansible
8 2 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.20%) Iperf
9 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 28 (5.61%) Salesforce
2 18 (3.61%) Splunk
3 17 (3.41%) Microsoft
4 8 (1.60%) Conga
4 8 (1.60%) EMC
4 8 (1.60%) GoCardless
5 7 (1.40%) Cisco
5 7 (1.40%) Citrix
5 7 (1.40%) Dynatrace
6 6 (1.20%) Google
6 6 (1.20%) VMware
7 5 (1.00%) HP
8 4 (0.80%) Juniper
8 4 (0.80%) Pega
8 4 (0.80%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.60%) Databricks
9 3 (0.60%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.60%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.60%) Siemens
9 3 (0.60%) UiPath