Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £413, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 May 2026.

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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 321 319
Rank change year-on-year +31 -2 +78
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 391 209 293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 0.71% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.89% 0.77% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 138 203
10th Percentile £300 £312 £300
25th Percentile £363 £367 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £434 £438
Median % change year-on-year -4.95% -0.80% -14.22%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £538
90th Percentile £623 £689 £590
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -8.33% +5.88% -13.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 18 29
10th Percentile £27.41 £40.15 £28.38
25th Percentile £31.25 £50.27 £35.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £44.78
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +28.42% -14.71%
75th Percentile £61.50 £62.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.13 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £44.78
% change year-on-year -4.35% +28.42% -14.71%

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 43,929 27,125 40,035
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,003 17,719 26,065
10th Percentile £318 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.75% -2.10% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,852 1,052 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.36% -30.00% -4.76%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 +4 327 £416 -4.86% 160
UK excluding London +32 271 £413 -8.33% 166
London -48 86 £425 - 15
North of England -1 79 £400 +3.90% 43
Midlands -13 64 £525 +34.27% 15
Work from Home -18 64 £400 -8.57% 42
West Midlands +1 59 £550 +53.85% 12
South East -50 51 £405 -22.86% 44
East of England -8 36 £350 -6.67% 29
North West -20 31 £400 - 27
Yorkshire -34 28 £500 +11.73% 10
North East -3 23 £350 -1.75% 6
Scotland +13 19 £313 -33.93% 13
South West -26 17 £413 -23.26% 22
Wales -10 10 £440 +36.82% 4
East Midlands -29 5 £400 +2.30% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 6 May 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.

1 211 (53.96%) Test Automation
2 109 (27.88%) CI/CD
3 108 (27.62%) Security Cleared
4 90 (23.02%) SC Cleared
5 84 (21.48%) Agile
6 77 (19.69%) Azure
7 74 (18.93%) Java
8 70 (17.90%) Selenium
9 69 (17.65%) DevOps
9 69 (17.65%) QA
10 68 (17.39%) Python
11 60 (15.35%) API Testing
11 60 (15.35%) JIRA
12 59 (15.09%) Playwright
13 58 (14.83%) Manual Testing
14 55 (14.07%) AWS
15 53 (13.55%) Test Strategy
16 50 (12.79%) Performance Testing
16 50 (12.79%) Software Testing
17 49 (12.53%) Postman
18 48 (12.28%) Cucumber
19 47 (12.02%) Jenkins
19 47 (12.02%) Test Scripting
20 46 (11.76%) Validation
21 43 (11.00%) Azure DevOps
21 43 (11.00%) JavaScript
22 42 (10.74%) BDD
22 42 (10.74%) Regression Testing
23 39 (9.97%) GitLab
24 38 (9.72%) GitHub

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 9 (2.30%) Confluence
2 1 (0.26%) Apache
2 1 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.26%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.26%) Jupyter
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.26%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.77%) Findur
2 1 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 77 (19.69%) Azure
2 55 (14.07%) AWS
3 43 (11.00%) Azure DevOps
4 38 (9.72%) GitHub
5 21 (5.37%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (4.60%) GCP
7 11 (2.81%) BrowserStack
8 7 (1.79%) BlazeMeter
8 7 (1.79%) Power Platform
9 6 (1.53%) Entra ID
10 4 (1.02%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.02%) Power Automate
10 4 (1.02%) SaaS
10 4 (1.02%) Tricentis Tosca
11 3 (0.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (0.77%) PowerApps
11 3 (0.77%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 3 (0.77%) Serverless
12 2 (0.51%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.07%) LAN
2 11 (2.81%) WAN
3 10 (2.56%) Firewall
4 8 (2.05%) DHCP
4 8 (2.05%) DNS
4 8 (2.05%) SD-WAN
4 8 (2.05%) VPN
5 7 (1.79%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.53%) VLAN
7 5 (1.28%) Broadband
7 5 (1.28%) MPLS
7 5 (1.28%) Network Security
7 5 (1.28%) SSL
7 5 (1.28%) Wireshark
8 4 (1.02%) BGP
8 4 (1.02%) Internet
8 4 (1.02%) OSPF
8 4 (1.02%) Spanning Tree
8 4 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.56%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.79%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.53%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.28%) MySQL
5 3 (0.77%) Big Data
5 3 (0.77%) Power BI
6 2 (0.51%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.51%) Tableau
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.26%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.26%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.26%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.26%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.26%) Flink
7 1 (0.26%) MS Access
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.26%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 70 (17.90%) Selenium
2 60 (15.35%) JIRA
3 49 (12.53%) Postman
4 48 (12.28%) Cucumber
5 47 (12.02%) Jenkins
6 39 (9.97%) GitLab
7 34 (8.70%) REST Assured
8 30 (7.67%) JMeter
9 27 (6.91%) Git
10 14 (3.58%) Cypress.io
11 12 (3.07%) Gatling
11 12 (3.07%) Zephyr
12 11 (2.81%) LabVIEW
13 10 (2.56%) JUnit
13 10 (2.56%) WebDriver
14 8 (2.05%) Browser DevTools
14 8 (2.05%) HP UFT
14 8 (2.05%) Serenity BDD
15 7 (1.79%) Appium
15 7 (1.79%) MSTest
General
1 47 (12.02%) Public Sector
2 38 (9.72%) Social Skills
3 33 (8.44%) Finance
4 30 (7.67%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (7.42%) Aerospace
6 23 (5.88%) Automotive
7 14 (3.58%) Electronics
8 12 (3.07%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.56%) Military
10 9 (2.30%) Banking
11 4 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.02%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.77%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.77%) Marketing
13 1 (0.26%) Avionics
13 1 (0.26%) German Language
13 1 (0.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.26%) Law
13 1 (0.26%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (15.09%) Playwright
2 33 (8.44%) REST
3 12 (3.07%) Kafka
4 11 (2.81%) RESTful
5 10 (2.56%) Gherkin
6 9 (2.30%) .NET
6 9 (2.30%) LDAP
6 9 (2.30%) OpenID
6 9 (2.30%) SailPoint
7 7 (1.79%) Spring
7 7 (1.79%) Spring Boot
8 6 (1.53%) HTML
8 6 (1.53%) Spring Cloud
9 5 (1.28%) Node.js
9 5 (1.28%) pytest
9 5 (1.28%) SAML
9 5 (1.28%) WebdriverIO
10 4 (1.02%) Flask
10 4 (1.02%) Jest
10 4 (1.02%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.65%) Product Ownership
2 10 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
3 8 (2.05%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
3 8 (2.05%) Infotainment
4 7 (1.79%) Mobile App
5 6 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.02%) Hedge funds
6 4 (1.02%) Management Information System
7 3 (0.77%) Data Centre
7 3 (0.77%) Fibre Optics
7 3 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (0.77%) NHS
8 2 (0.51%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.51%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.51%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.51%) PKI
8 2 (0.51%) Synthetic Data
9 1 (0.26%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.26%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.35%) Windows
2 6 (1.53%) Android
2 6 (1.53%) Mac OS
3 5 (1.28%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.28%) Linux
4 2 (0.51%) Unix
4 2 (0.51%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (53.96%) Test Automation
2 109 (27.88%) CI/CD
3 84 (21.48%) Agile
4 69 (17.65%) DevOps
5 60 (15.35%) API Testing
6 58 (14.83%) Manual Testing
7 53 (13.55%) Test Strategy
8 50 (12.79%) Performance Testing
8 50 (12.79%) Software Testing
9 47 (12.02%) Test Scripting
10 46 (11.76%) Validation
11 42 (10.74%) BDD
11 42 (10.74%) Regression Testing
12 35 (8.95%) Functional Testing
12 35 (8.95%) Microservices
12 35 (8.95%) Problem-Solving
13 32 (8.18%) Scenario Testing
14 30 (7.67%) Continuous Improvement
15 29 (7.42%) Non-Functional Testing
16 28 (7.16%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 74 (18.93%) Java
2 68 (17.39%) Python
3 43 (11.00%) JavaScript
4 33 (8.44%) SQL
5 31 (7.93%) TypeScript
6 24 (6.14%) C#
7 13 (3.32%) Bash
8 12 (3.07%) Ruby
9 9 (2.30%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.79%) VBScript
11 5 (1.28%) C
11 5 (1.28%) C++
11 5 (1.28%) PHP
12 3 (0.77%) Scala
13 2 (0.51%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.51%) Bicep
13 2 (0.51%) Cypher
13 2 (0.51%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.51%) Swift
13 2 (0.51%) VBA
Qualifications
1 108 (27.62%) Security Cleared
2 90 (23.02%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.12%) ISTQB
4 14 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (1.79%) Degree
5 7 (1.79%) DV Cleared
6 6 (1.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 5 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (1.02%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.02%) CCNP
8 4 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.77%) HNC
9 3 (0.77%) HND
10 2 (0.51%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.51%) CCNA
10 2 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.26%) MCSE
11 1 (0.26%) Six Sigma Black Belt
11 1 (0.26%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 1 (0.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (17.65%) QA
2 37 (9.46%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.56%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.02%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 4 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.02%) WCAG
5 2 (0.51%) NCSC
6 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.26%) GDPR
6 1 (0.26%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.26%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.26%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.26%) MIL-STD-1553
6 1 (0.26%) NIST
6 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 35 (8.95%) Docker
2 7 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.77%) Firmware
3 3 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.51%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 1 (0.26%) Squid
5 1 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 14 (3.58%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.07%) Grafana
3 11 (2.81%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.53%) Terraform
5 5 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.77%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.26%) Ansible
8 1 (0.26%) Iperf
8 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 23 (5.88%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.07%) Citrix
3 10 (2.56%) ServiceNow
4 8 (2.05%) Cisco
4 8 (2.05%) Salesforce
4 8 (2.05%) Splunk
5 7 (1.79%) Dynatrace
6 5 (1.28%) EMC
7 4 (1.02%) HP
7 4 (1.02%) Pega
7 4 (1.02%) Zscaler
8 3 (0.77%) Databricks
8 3 (0.77%) Fortinet
8 3 (0.77%) Google
8 3 (0.77%) Meraki
8 3 (0.77%) OpenLink
8 3 (0.77%) UiPath
9 2 (0.51%) Ciena
9 2 (0.51%) Optimizely
9 2 (0.51%) Oracle