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 11 March 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 315 325 312
Rank change year-on-year +10 -13 +76
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 340 205 318
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.80% 0.70% 0.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.87% 0.75% 0.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 138 225
10th Percentile £300 £305 £350
25th Percentile £367 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.94% -10.53%
75th Percentile £528 £538 £513
90th Percentile £631 £616 £559
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £469 £425
% change year-on-year -12.00% +10.29% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 13 35
10th Percentile £28.25 £30.60 £29.75
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% -29.75%
75th Percentile £61.84 - £59.44
90th Percentile £66.40 £63.50 £62.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -42.40% +47.06% -29.75%

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 39,127 27,402 41,559
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 92.96% 92.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,467 17,684 27,246
10th Percentile £312 £293 £270
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,427 859 2,507
10th Percentile £14.93 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.40 £32.69
Median % change year-on-year +4.79% +2.17% -22.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.16 £76.44 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.95 £32.50 £32.70
% change year-on-year +7.52% -0.60% -18.26%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -10 289 £425 -2.86% 154
UK excluding London -2 216 £413 -12.00% 154
London -23 89 £435 +1.05% 21
North of England -16 80 £413 +14.19% 30
Work from Home -16 62 £400 -15.79% 46
Midlands -28 50 £550 +34.80% 26
West Midlands -19 44 £628 +104.07% 24
Yorkshire -36 37 £475 +26.67% 9
South East -58 32 £386 -26.48% 34
North East +1 24 £413 +29.92% 3
East of England -9 24 £363 -9.38% 24
North West -26 22 £373 -0.67% 18
South West -17 14 £413 -21.43% 20
Wales +3 9 £440 - 1
Scotland +20 8 £68 -85.75% 21
East Midlands -34 6 £400 -6.81% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 11 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 (62.65%) Test Automation
2 124 (36.47%) CI/CD
3 99 (29.12%) Security Cleared
4 97 (28.53%) Agile
5 85 (25.00%) QA
6 77 (22.65%) Azure
6 77 (22.65%) Selenium
7 75 (22.06%) Java
7 75 (22.06%) SC Cleared
8 70 (20.59%) API Testing
9 69 (20.29%) AWS
10 68 (20.00%) DevOps
11 64 (18.82%) Cucumber
11 64 (18.82%) Playwright
11 64 (18.82%) Python
12 63 (18.53%) JIRA
13 56 (16.47%) Test Scripting
14 55 (16.18%) Test Strategy
15 54 (15.88%) Performance Testing
16 52 (15.29%) JavaScript
17 51 (15.00%) Manual Testing
17 51 (15.00%) Postman
18 49 (14.41%) BDD
18 49 (14.41%) GitLab
18 49 (14.41%) Jenkins
19 48 (14.12%) Software Testing
20 47 (13.82%) Microservices
21 46 (13.53%) Accessibility
22 45 (13.24%) Docker
22 45 (13.24%) Functional Testing

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 13 (3.82%) Confluence
2 3 (0.88%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 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 2 (0.59%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.29%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.29%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 77 (22.65%) Azure
2 69 (20.29%) AWS
3 37 (10.88%) Azure DevOps
4 31 (9.12%) GitHub
5 19 (5.59%) GCP
6 18 (5.29%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (3.53%) BrowserStack
8 9 (2.65%) Serverless
9 8 (2.35%) BlazeMeter
10 6 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.47%) Power Platform
11 5 (1.47%) SaaS
11 5 (1.47%) Tricentis Tosca
12 4 (1.18%) Amazon SQS
12 4 (1.18%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.88%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.88%) PowerApps
14 2 (0.59%) Amazon EKS
14 2 (0.59%) Amazon EventBridge
14 2 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.65%) Firewall
2 7 (2.06%) WAN
3 6 (1.76%) DHCP
3 6 (1.76%) DNS
3 6 (1.76%) LAN
3 6 (1.76%) SD-WAN
4 5 (1.47%) Broadband
4 5 (1.47%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.47%) VPN
5 4 (1.18%) BGP
5 4 (1.18%) MPLS
5 4 (1.18%) OSPF
5 4 (1.18%) VLAN
5 4 (1.18%) Wireshark
6 3 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
6 3 (0.88%) Ethernet
6 3 (0.88%) Network Security
6 3 (0.88%) SSH
6 3 (0.88%) TACACS
6 3 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.24%) MongoDB
2 6 (1.76%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.47%) MySQL
3 5 (1.47%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.59%) Neo4j
5 1 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.29%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.29%) MS Access
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.29%) Power BI
5 1 (0.29%) Power Query
5 1 (0.29%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 77 (22.65%) Selenium
2 64 (18.82%) Cucumber
3 63 (18.53%) JIRA
4 51 (15.00%) Postman
5 49 (14.41%) GitLab
5 49 (14.41%) Jenkins
6 36 (10.59%) Git
6 36 (10.59%) REST Assured
7 31 (9.12%) JMeter
8 24 (7.06%) Cypress.io
9 18 (5.29%) Gatling
10 12 (3.53%) Zephyr
11 8 (2.35%) JUnit
11 8 (2.35%) Serenity BDD
11 8 (2.35%) TestRail
12 7 (2.06%) Appium
12 7 (2.06%) HP UFT
12 7 (2.06%) WebDriver
13 6 (1.76%) Browser DevTools
14 5 (1.47%) Newman
General
1 63 (18.53%) Public Sector
2 49 (14.41%) Social Skills
3 33 (9.71%) Finance
4 26 (7.65%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (4.41%) Automotive
6 13 (3.82%) Telecoms
7 12 (3.53%) Military
8 10 (2.94%) Aerospace
9 9 (2.65%) Banking
10 6 (1.76%) Electronics
11 4 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.88%) Back Office
12 3 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.59%) Front Office
13 2 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.59%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.29%) Local Government
14 1 (0.29%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.29%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (18.82%) Playwright
2 39 (11.47%) REST
3 17 (5.00%) Node.js
4 14 (4.12%) Kafka
5 13 (3.82%) .NET
6 11 (3.24%) Spring Boot
6 11 (3.24%) WireMock
7 10 (2.94%) Spring
8 9 (2.65%) Gherkin
8 9 (2.65%) LDAP
8 9 (2.65%) OpenID
8 9 (2.65%) pytest
8 9 (2.65%) SailPoint
9 7 (2.06%) React
9 7 (2.06%) Swagger
10 6 (1.76%) HTML
10 6 (1.76%) Middleware
10 6 (1.76%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (1.76%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.76%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 18 (5.29%) Product Ownership
2 14 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.35%) Infotainment
4 6 (1.76%) Data Centre
4 6 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (1.76%) Fibre Optics
4 6 (1.76%) Mobile App
5 5 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (1.18%) Hedge funds
6 4 (1.18%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.18%) Onboarding
7 3 (0.88%) Low-Code
7 3 (0.88%) PKI
8 2 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.59%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.59%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.59%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.59%) NHS
9 1 (0.29%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.12%) Windows
2 6 (1.76%) Android
3 5 (1.47%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.47%) Linux
4 4 (1.18%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.88%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (62.65%) Test Automation
2 124 (36.47%) CI/CD
3 97 (28.53%) Agile
4 70 (20.59%) API Testing
5 68 (20.00%) DevOps
6 56 (16.47%) Test Scripting
7 55 (16.18%) Test Strategy
8 54 (15.88%) Performance Testing
9 51 (15.00%) Manual Testing
10 49 (14.41%) BDD
11 48 (14.12%) Software Testing
12 47 (13.82%) Microservices
13 45 (13.24%) Functional Testing
13 45 (13.24%) Regression Testing
14 37 (10.88%) Problem-Solving
15 36 (10.59%) Continuous Improvement
15 36 (10.59%) Validation
16 35 (10.29%) Non-Functional Testing
17 32 (9.41%) Integration Testing
18 31 (9.12%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 75 (22.06%) Java
2 64 (18.82%) Python
3 52 (15.29%) JavaScript
4 39 (11.47%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.47%) C#
5 22 (6.47%) SQL
6 12 (3.53%) Ruby
7 11 (3.24%) Bash
8 9 (2.65%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.06%) VBScript
10 6 (1.76%) C++
11 5 (1.47%) C
11 5 (1.47%) PHP
12 3 (0.88%) Scala
12 3 (0.88%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.59%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.59%) Bicep
13 2 (0.59%) Cypher
13 2 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.29%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 99 (29.12%) Security Cleared
2 75 (22.06%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.47%) ISTQB
4 16 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.94%) DV Cleared
6 6 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (1.76%) Degree
6 6 (1.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 4 (1.18%) CCNP
7 4 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.88%) CCNA
8 3 (0.88%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.59%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.59%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.59%) CEH
9 2 (0.59%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.59%) OSCP
9 2 (0.59%) SANS
9 2 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (25.00%) QA
2 46 (13.53%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.94%) WCAG
4 6 (1.76%) Data Quality
5 5 (1.47%) NIST
6 3 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.59%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.59%) NCSC
7 2 (0.59%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.29%) HL7
8 1 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.29%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 45 (13.24%) Docker
2 6 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.59%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.59%) Firmware
4 2 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Squid
Systems Management
1 20 (5.88%) Kubernetes
2 17 (5.00%) Grafana
3 12 (3.53%) Prometheus
4 10 (2.94%) Terraform
5 5 (1.47%) HP ALM
6 4 (1.18%) Ansible
7 3 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.59%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 22 (6.47%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.24%) ServiceNow
3 10 (2.94%) Cisco
3 10 (2.94%) Citrix
3 10 (2.94%) Splunk
4 6 (1.76%) HP
5 5 (1.47%) UiPath
6 4 (1.18%) Salesforce
7 3 (0.88%) Databricks
7 3 (0.88%) Google
7 3 (0.88%) Meraki
7 3 (0.88%) Oracle
8 2 (0.59%) Ciena
8 2 (0.59%) Fortinet
8 2 (0.59%) Okta
8 2 (0.59%) Pega
8 2 (0.59%) SAP
8 2 (0.59%) Siemens
8 2 (0.59%) VMware
8 2 (0.59%) Zscaler