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 22 March 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 318 306
Rank change year-on-year +14 -12 +76
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 342 210 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 0.71% 0.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 0.76% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 140 222
10th Percentile £302 £305 £350
25th Percentile £368 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.94% -10.99%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £513
90th Percentile £633 £643 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £470 £425
% change year-on-year -12.23% +10.59% -8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 13 33
10th Percentile £28.25 £30.60 £29.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £51.06 £35.75
Median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -42.40% +47.06% -29.17%
75th Percentile £61.84 - £59.44
90th Percentile £64.88 £63.50 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -42.40% +47.06% -29.17%

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 40,370 27,451 41,125
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 92.96% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,228 17,896 26,949
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.46%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £487
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.46% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,504 902 2,504
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £12.88
25th Percentile £19.25 £21.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.91 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.41% +1.25% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £76.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.77% - -19.93%

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 22 March 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 22 March 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 22 March 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 -27 292 £425 -2.86% 145
UK excluding London +6 214 £413 -12.23% 151
London -28 95 £435 +1.05% 18
North of England -27 78 £400 +11.11% 35
Work from Home -26 57 £400 -15.79% 29
Midlands -17 51 £550 +34.80% 15
West Midlands -24 46 £580 +88.62% 12
Yorkshire -29 35 £500 +33.33% 7
South East -68 29 £386 -29.82% 35
East of England -7 25 £350 -12.50% 26
North West -12 25 £390 +8.33% 23
North East -4 21 £400 +25.98% 5
South West -31 14 £413 -21.43% 21
Scotland +4 9 £70 -85.22% 19
Wales +2 9 £475 +26.53% 2
East Midlands -35 5 £400 -6.81% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 22 March 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.

1 213 (62.28%) Test Automation
2 123 (35.96%) CI/CD
3 101 (29.53%) Security Cleared
4 96 (28.07%) Agile
5 81 (23.68%) QA
6 79 (23.10%) Azure
7 77 (22.51%) SC Cleared
8 71 (20.76%) Selenium
9 70 (20.47%) DevOps
9 70 (20.47%) Java
10 69 (20.18%) AWS
11 68 (19.88%) API Testing
12 65 (19.01%) Python
13 62 (18.13%) JIRA
13 62 (18.13%) Playwright
14 60 (17.54%) Cucumber
15 55 (16.08%) Test Strategy
16 53 (15.50%) Test Scripting
17 52 (15.20%) JavaScript
17 52 (15.20%) Performance Testing
17 52 (15.20%) Postman
18 51 (14.91%) Manual Testing
19 49 (14.33%) BDD
20 48 (14.04%) Jenkins
21 47 (13.74%) GitLab
22 46 (13.45%) Software Testing
23 45 (13.16%) Regression Testing
24 44 (12.87%) Accessibility
24 44 (12.87%) Functional Testing
25 43 (12.57%) Docker

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 11 (3.22%) Confluence
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.29%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.29%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Findur
2 2 (0.58%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.29%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.29%) CODA-Financials
3 1 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 79 (23.10%) Azure
2 69 (20.18%) AWS
3 40 (11.70%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (10.53%) GitHub
5 21 (6.14%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (4.97%) GCP
7 12 (3.51%) BrowserStack
8 9 (2.63%) Serverless
9 8 (2.34%) BlazeMeter
10 6 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.46%) SaaS
11 5 (1.46%) Tricentis Tosca
12 4 (1.17%) Amazon SQS
12 4 (1.17%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.88%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.88%) Power Platform
14 2 (0.58%) Amazon EKS
14 2 (0.58%) Amazon EventBridge
14 2 (0.58%) AWS CodePipeline
14 2 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.05%) WAN
2 6 (1.75%) DHCP
2 6 (1.75%) DNS
2 6 (1.75%) Firewall
2 6 (1.75%) LAN
2 6 (1.75%) SD-WAN
3 5 (1.46%) Broadband
3 5 (1.46%) TCP/IP
3 5 (1.46%) VPN
4 4 (1.17%) BGP
4 4 (1.17%) MPLS
4 4 (1.17%) OSPF
4 4 (1.17%) VLAN
4 4 (1.17%) Wireshark
5 3 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
5 3 (0.88%) Ethernet
5 3 (0.88%) Network Security
5 3 (0.88%) SNMP
5 3 (0.88%) SSL
5 3 (0.88%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.22%) MongoDB
2 7 (2.05%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.75%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.46%) MySQL
5 2 (0.58%) Neo4j
6 1 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.29%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.29%) MS Access
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.29%) Power BI
6 1 (0.29%) Power Query
6 1 (0.29%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 71 (20.76%) Selenium
2 62 (18.13%) JIRA
3 60 (17.54%) Cucumber
4 52 (15.20%) Postman
5 48 (14.04%) Jenkins
6 47 (13.74%) GitLab
7 36 (10.53%) REST Assured
8 34 (9.94%) Git
9 32 (9.36%) JMeter
10 23 (6.73%) Cypress.io
11 17 (4.97%) Gatling
12 11 (3.22%) Zephyr
13 8 (2.34%) JUnit
13 8 (2.34%) Serenity BDD
13 8 (2.34%) TestRail
14 7 (2.05%) Appium
14 7 (2.05%) HP UFT
14 7 (2.05%) WebDriver
15 6 (1.75%) Browser DevTools
16 5 (1.46%) MSTest
General
1 57 (16.67%) Public Sector
2 49 (14.33%) Social Skills
3 35 (10.23%) Finance
4 27 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (4.39%) Automotive
6 13 (3.80%) Military
7 11 (3.22%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.92%) Aerospace
8 10 (2.92%) Banking
9 8 (2.34%) Electronics
10 4 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.17%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.88%) Back Office
11 3 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.58%) Front Office
12 2 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.29%) Avionics
13 1 (0.29%) Law
13 1 (0.29%) Retail
13 1 (0.29%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (18.13%) Playwright
2 37 (10.82%) REST
3 15 (4.39%) Node.js
4 14 (4.09%) Kafka
5 12 (3.51%) .NET
6 9 (2.63%) LDAP
6 9 (2.63%) OpenID
6 9 (2.63%) pytest
6 9 (2.63%) SailPoint
6 9 (2.63%) Spring
6 9 (2.63%) Spring Boot
6 9 (2.63%) WireMock
7 7 (2.05%) Gherkin
7 7 (2.05%) React
7 7 (2.05%) Swagger
8 6 (1.75%) Middleware
8 6 (1.75%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (1.75%) Spring Cloud
8 6 (1.75%) WebdriverIO
9 5 (1.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 19 (5.56%) Product Ownership
2 14 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.34%) Infotainment
4 7 (2.05%) Mobile App
5 6 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (1.17%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.17%) Management Information System
8 3 (0.88%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.88%) Fibre Optics
8 3 (0.88%) Linux Command Line
8 3 (0.88%) Low-Code
8 3 (0.88%) Onboarding
8 3 (0.88%) PKI
9 2 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.58%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.58%) Embedded Systems
10 1 (0.29%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.29%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.09%) Windows
2 6 (1.75%) Android
2 6 (1.75%) Linux
3 5 (1.46%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.17%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.88%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (62.28%) Test Automation
2 123 (35.96%) CI/CD
3 96 (28.07%) Agile
4 70 (20.47%) DevOps
5 68 (19.88%) API Testing
6 55 (16.08%) Test Strategy
7 53 (15.50%) Test Scripting
8 52 (15.20%) Performance Testing
9 51 (14.91%) Manual Testing
10 49 (14.33%) BDD
11 46 (13.45%) Software Testing
12 45 (13.16%) Regression Testing
13 44 (12.87%) Functional Testing
14 42 (12.28%) Microservices
15 37 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
15 37 (10.82%) Validation
16 36 (10.53%) Continuous Improvement
16 36 (10.53%) Non-Functional Testing
17 34 (9.94%) Scenario Testing
18 31 (9.06%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 70 (20.47%) Java
2 65 (19.01%) Python
3 52 (15.20%) JavaScript
4 37 (10.82%) TypeScript
5 28 (8.19%) SQL
6 22 (6.43%) C#
7 12 (3.51%) Ruby
8 11 (3.22%) Bash
9 9 (2.63%) PowerShell
10 7 (2.05%) VBScript
11 6 (1.75%) C++
12 5 (1.46%) C
12 5 (1.46%) PHP
13 3 (0.88%) Scala
13 3 (0.88%) VB.NET
14 2 (0.58%) Bicep
14 2 (0.58%) Cypher
14 2 (0.58%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.58%) Swift
Qualifications
1 101 (29.53%) Security Cleared
2 77 (22.51%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.02%) ISTQB
4 16 (4.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.92%) DV Cleared
6 7 (2.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.75%) Degree
8 3 (0.88%) CCNP
8 3 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.88%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.58%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.58%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.58%) CEH
9 2 (0.58%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.58%) MCSA
9 2 (0.58%) MCSE
9 2 (0.58%) SANS
9 2 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (23.68%) QA
2 44 (12.87%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.34%) WCAG
4 7 (2.05%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 4 (1.17%) NIST
7 2 (0.58%) NCSC
7 2 (0.58%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.29%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.29%) GDPR
8 1 (0.29%) HL7
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.29%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 43 (12.57%) Docker
2 6 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.58%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.58%) Firmware
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Squid
Systems Management
1 19 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 16 (4.68%) Grafana
3 11 (3.22%) Prometheus
4 9 (2.63%) Terraform
5 5 (1.46%) HP ALM
6 3 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.58%) Ansible
7 2 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 21 (6.14%) Microsoft
2 10 (2.92%) Citrix
2 10 (2.92%) ServiceNow
2 10 (2.92%) Splunk
3 7 (2.05%) Cisco
4 6 (1.75%) HP
5 5 (1.46%) UiPath
6 4 (1.17%) Salesforce
7 3 (0.88%) Databricks
7 3 (0.88%) Dynatrace
7 3 (0.88%) Meraki
7 3 (0.88%) OpenLink
7 3 (0.88%) SAP
8 2 (0.58%) Fortinet
8 2 (0.58%) Google
8 2 (0.58%) Okta
8 2 (0.58%) Optimizely
8 2 (0.58%) Pega
8 2 (0.58%) VMware
8 2 (0.58%) Zscaler