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 18 November 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 346 348 333
Rank change year-on-year +2 -15 +80
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 236 217 308
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.60% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.73% 0.65% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 132 215
10th Percentile £282 £315 £360
25th Percentile £313 £364 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £465 £440
Median % change year-on-year -10.22% +5.80% -2.33%
75th Percentile £500 £552 £534
90th Percentile £600 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £398 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -6.47% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 14 18
10th Percentile £23.35 £28.60 £33.70
25th Percentile £33.00 £38.40 £35.63
Median hourly rate £36.00 £56.45 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -36.23% +36.85% -31.25%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £55.63 £72.50 £74.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £56.45 £41.25
% change year-on-year -36.23% +36.85% -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 32,191 33,474 43,775
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.85% 93.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,427 20,165 29,691
10th Percentile £278 £300 £293
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 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,886 1,246 1,552
10th Percentile £14.16 £15.22 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.08 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.30% -19.82% +60.06%
75th Percentile £54.56 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +87.50%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -18 209 £418 -10.22% 241
UK excluding London +10 157 £398 -6.47% 218
Work from Home +5 63 £375 -25.15% 65
London +8 60 £450 -5.26% 53
North of England -14 60 £425 +6.25% 35
South East -2 32 £295 -41.00% 61
Midlands -23 23 £426 -4.45% 33
Yorkshire -33 22 £435 +6.75% 6
North East +7 19 £425 +37.10% 5
North West -15 19 £393 -1.88% 24
East of England -8 17 £363 +7.41% 46
West Midlands -22 15 £465 +9.41% 29
South West -18 10 £500 -4.76% 24
Wales +10 9 £408 +8.67% 12
East Midlands -12 8 £360 -22.99% 4
Scotland - 5 £65 - 11
Northern Ireland -9 1 £450 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 145 (61.44%) Test Automation
2 85 (36.02%) CI/CD
3 81 (34.32%) Agile
4 65 (27.54%) Security Cleared
5 61 (25.85%) Selenium
6 57 (24.15%) QA
7 56 (23.73%) Java
8 54 (22.88%) Cucumber
9 50 (21.19%) DevOps
9 50 (21.19%) Test Scripting
10 49 (20.76%) Azure
11 47 (19.92%) SC Cleared
12 46 (19.49%) Test Strategy
13 44 (18.64%) API Testing
14 41 (17.37%) AWS
14 41 (17.37%) Postman
14 41 (17.37%) Software Testing
15 40 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
16 35 (14.83%) BDD
17 34 (14.41%) JIRA
17 34 (14.41%) Playwright
17 34 (14.41%) Scrum
18 33 (13.98%) Python
19 32 (13.56%) REST
20 30 (12.71%) Git
20 30 (12.71%) Performance Testing
21 29 (12.29%) GitLab
22 28 (11.86%) Cisco
22 28 (11.86%) Manual Testing
23 27 (11.44%) 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 (3.39%) Confluence
2 3 (1.27%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.85%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.42%) Drupal
4 1 (0.42%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.42%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.42%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.85%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.42%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.42%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.42%) ProductWriter
2 1 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 49 (20.76%) Azure
2 41 (17.37%) AWS
3 26 (11.02%) Azure DevOps
4 12 (5.08%) GCP
4 12 (5.08%) GitHub
5 11 (4.66%) Serverless
6 9 (3.81%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.97%) Power Platform
9 5 (2.12%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (2.12%) BrowserStack
10 3 (1.27%) BlazeMeter
10 3 (1.27%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.27%) Snowflake
11 2 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (0.85%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (0.85%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (0.85%) Dynamics 365
11 2 (0.85%) Tricentis Tosca
12 1 (0.42%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 18 (7.63%) Firewall
2 8 (3.39%) Wireshark
3 7 (2.97%) WAN
4 6 (2.54%) 5G
4 6 (2.54%) Ethernet
4 6 (2.54%) HTTP
5 5 (2.12%) 4G
5 5 (2.12%) LAN
5 5 (2.12%) SD-WAN
6 4 (1.69%) VoIP
7 3 (1.27%) 3G
7 3 (1.27%) DHCP
7 3 (1.27%) DNS
8 2 (0.85%) LTE
9 1 (0.42%) 3GPP
9 1 (0.42%) FCAPS
9 1 (0.42%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.69%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (1.27%) Power BI
2 3 (1.27%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.85%) Oracle ODI
3 2 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
3 2 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.85%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.42%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.42%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (0.42%) Parquet
4 1 (0.42%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 61 (25.85%) Selenium
2 54 (22.88%) Cucumber
3 41 (17.37%) Postman
4 34 (14.41%) JIRA
5 30 (12.71%) Git
6 29 (12.29%) GitLab
7 21 (8.90%) Jenkins
7 21 (8.90%) REST Assured
8 18 (7.63%) Cypress.io
9 17 (7.20%) JMeter
10 10 (4.24%) WebDriver
11 9 (3.81%) Bitbucket
11 9 (3.81%) Gatling
11 9 (3.81%) SpecFlow
12 6 (2.54%) Appium
12 6 (2.54%) LoadRunner
13 4 (1.69%) Mockito
13 4 (1.69%) TestRail
13 4 (1.69%) Zephyr
14 3 (1.27%) CircleCI
General
1 55 (23.31%) Social Skills
2 47 (19.92%) Public Sector
3 22 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (9.32%) Telecoms
4 16 (6.78%) Finance
5 12 (5.08%) Banking
6 9 (3.81%) Aerospace
7 7 (2.97%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.97%) Military
8 4 (1.69%) Back Office
8 4 (1.69%) Electronics
8 4 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.69%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.27%) Front Office
10 2 (0.85%) Automotive
10 2 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.42%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.42%) Law
11 1 (0.42%) Local Government
11 1 (0.42%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (14.41%) Playwright
2 32 (13.56%) REST
3 17 (7.20%) RFC 2544
4 16 (6.78%) Node.js
5 11 (4.66%) WireMock
6 9 (3.81%) .NET
7 8 (3.39%) Kafka
8 7 (2.97%) Swagger
9 6 (2.54%) Middleware
9 6 (2.54%) pytest
9 6 (2.54%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (2.54%) React
9 6 (2.54%) Spring Boot
10 5 (2.12%) Gherkin
10 5 (2.12%) gRPC
10 5 (2.12%) JMS
10 5 (2.12%) WebdriverIO
10 5 (2.12%) WebSockets
11 4 (1.69%) JSON
12 3 (1.27%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 16 (6.78%) Data Centre
1 16 (6.78%) Fibre Optics
2 14 (5.93%) Cloud Native
3 10 (4.24%) Product Ownership
4 9 (3.81%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (1.69%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.27%) Analogue Electronics
6 3 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.27%) Low-Code
6 3 (1.27%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.27%) NHS
6 3 (1.27%) PKI
7 2 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.85%) Replication
8 1 (0.42%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.42%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.42%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.42%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.42%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.54%) Windows
2 4 (1.69%) Android
2 4 (1.69%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.85%) Linux
3 2 (0.85%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.85%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (0.42%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (61.44%) Test Automation
2 85 (36.02%) CI/CD
3 81 (34.32%) Agile
4 50 (21.19%) DevOps
4 50 (21.19%) Test Scripting
5 46 (19.49%) Test Strategy
6 44 (18.64%) API Testing
7 41 (17.37%) Software Testing
8 40 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (14.83%) BDD
10 34 (14.41%) Scrum
11 30 (12.71%) Performance Testing
12 28 (11.86%) Manual Testing
13 27 (11.44%) Defect Management
14 25 (10.59%) End-to-End Testing
14 25 (10.59%) Microservices
14 25 (10.59%) Non-Functional Testing
15 24 (10.17%) TDD
16 23 (9.75%) Regression Testing
16 23 (9.75%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 56 (23.73%) Java
2 33 (13.98%) Python
3 25 (10.59%) JavaScript
4 23 (9.75%) C#
5 20 (8.47%) SQL
6 19 (8.05%) TypeScript
7 9 (3.81%) Bash
8 6 (2.54%) Ruby
8 6 (2.54%) VB.NET
9 4 (1.69%) C
9 4 (1.69%) C++
10 2 (0.85%) VB
11 1 (0.42%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.42%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.42%) Perl
11 1 (0.42%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 65 (27.54%) Security Cleared
2 47 (19.92%) SC Cleared
3 12 (5.08%) Degree
4 11 (4.66%) ISTQB
5 7 (2.97%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.69%) CCNA
8 4 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (1.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 4 (1.69%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.85%) CCNP
9 2 (0.85%) CEH
9 2 (0.85%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.85%) HNC
9 2 (0.85%) HND
9 2 (0.85%) MCSA
9 2 (0.85%) MCSE
9 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (24.15%) QA
2 24 (10.17%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.93%) WCAG
4 4 (1.69%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.69%) NIST
5 2 (0.85%) EU AI Act
5 2 (0.85%) HL7
5 2 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.85%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.42%) SNOMED CT
6 1 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 23 (9.75%) Docker
2 2 (0.85%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 13 (5.51%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.97%) Ansible
2 7 (2.97%) Grafana
3 6 (2.54%) HP ALM
3 6 (2.54%) Terraform
4 4 (1.69%) Kibana
5 2 (0.85%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 28 (11.86%) Cisco
2 24 (10.17%) Microsoft
3 8 (3.39%) Splunk
4 7 (2.97%) HP
4 7 (2.97%) Nokia
5 6 (2.54%) Juniper
5 6 (2.54%) Salesforce
5 6 (2.54%) UiPath
6 5 (2.12%) Progress
7 4 (1.69%) AppDynamics
7 4 (1.69%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.69%) Meraki
7 4 (1.69%) Micro Focus
7 4 (1.69%) New Relic
7 4 (1.69%) Oracle
8 3 (1.27%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.85%) Databricks
9 2 (0.85%) SAP
9 2 (0.85%) VMware
9 2 (0.85%) Workday