Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £440, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 September 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 339 329
Rank change year-on-year +72 -10 +47
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 521 223 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.97% 0.69% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.05% 0.75% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 135 150
10th Percentile £302 £282 £330
25th Percentile £350 £326 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £400 £488
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -17.95% +2.63%
75th Percentile £538 £475 £575
90th Percentile £594 £565 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £387 £494
% change year-on-year +7.24% -21.62% +7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 26 16
10th Percentile £28.00 £28.22 £25.00
25th Percentile £33.00 £35.06 £35.52
Median hourly rate £50.00 £50.00 £48.13
Median % change year-on-year - +3.88% -8.32%
75th Percentile £66.42 £58.39 £72.50
90th Percentile £75.48 £62.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £50.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year - +21.17% -21.40%

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 49,563 29,654 35,643
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 91.23% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,606 18,697 22,460
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,581 1,558 1,825
10th Percentile £14.90 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.02 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £71.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 +48 448 £435 +8.01% 308
UK excluding London +57 388 £415 +7.24% 325
North of England +5 100 £375 -13.74% 44
London -44 93 £463 +15.63% 38
Work from Home -23 83 £400 - 104
Midlands -2 69 £444 +5.62% 37
East of England +25 63 £350 -6.67% 67
South West +14 63 £538 +7.50% 56
South East -48 63 £420 +40.00% 79
West Midlands -6 56 £488 - 23
North West -14 46 £463 +4.52% 30
North East -12 35 £325 -26.97% 8
Scotland +4 32 £525 +707.69% 29
Yorkshire -36 22 £400 -6.92% 7
East Midlands -14 13 £300 -21.34% 14
Wales -15 6 £300 -3.85% 7
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 16

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

For the 6 months to 3 September 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.

1 227 (43.57%) Test Automation
2 159 (30.52%) Security Cleared
3 144 (27.64%) CI/CD
4 119 (22.84%) SC Cleared
5 114 (21.88%) Validation
6 101 (19.39%) Agile
7 89 (17.08%) DevOps
7 89 (17.08%) QA
8 82 (15.74%) Python
9 81 (15.55%) Test Strategy
10 79 (15.16%) API Testing
11 78 (14.97%) Java
12 75 (14.40%) Playwright
12 75 (14.40%) Software Testing
13 74 (14.20%) Azure
14 69 (13.24%) AWS
14 69 (13.24%) Selenium
15 68 (13.05%) Performance Testing
16 66 (12.67%) Test Scripting
17 60 (11.52%) GitHub
18 59 (11.32%) End-to-End Testing
19 55 (10.56%) BDD
19 55 (10.56%) Non-Functional Testing
20 52 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
21 51 (9.79%) Jenkins
22 50 (9.60%) Postman
23 48 (9.21%) Integration Testing
23 48 (9.21%) JMeter
23 48 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
24 47 (9.02%) Cucumber

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 (1.54%) Confluence
2 6 (1.15%) Apache
2 6 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.15%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.15%) Jupyter
3 5 (0.96%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.58%) SAS
5 2 (0.38%) Mule
5 2 (0.38%) Mule ESB
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 5 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.19%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 8 (1.54%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.58%) Findur
2 3 (0.58%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.38%) Lorenzo
4 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (14.20%) Azure
2 69 (13.24%) AWS
3 60 (11.52%) GitHub
4 41 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
5 31 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
6 30 (5.76%) GCP
7 10 (1.92%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 7 (1.34%) Amazon EMR
10 6 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (1.15%) Serverless
11 5 (0.96%) Amazon S3
11 5 (0.96%) BrowserStack
11 5 (0.96%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.96%) PowerApps
12 4 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (0.77%) Amazon SQS
12 4 (0.77%) GitHub Copilot
13 3 (0.58%) Amazon ECR
13 3 (0.58%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 16 (3.07%) DNS
1 16 (3.07%) LAN
2 15 (2.88%) Firewall
3 12 (2.30%) DHCP
4 11 (2.11%) TCP/IP
4 11 (2.11%) WAN
5 9 (1.73%) VLAN
6 8 (1.54%) SD-WAN
7 6 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.96%) HTTP
8 5 (0.96%) VPN
8 5 (0.96%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.77%) Internet
9 4 (0.77%) MPLS
9 4 (0.77%) Network Security
10 3 (0.58%) 4G
10 3 (0.58%) LTE
10 3 (0.58%) SSL
11 2 (0.38%) 2G
11 2 (0.38%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.45%) MongoDB
2 9 (1.73%) Big Data
3 6 (1.15%) Amazon Athena
3 6 (1.15%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.15%) Tableau
4 5 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (0.96%) Neo4j
4 5 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.96%) Power BI
5 4 (0.77%) DynamoDB
5 4 (0.77%) Electronic Patient Records
5 4 (0.77%) MySQL
6 3 (0.58%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.38%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.19%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.19%) Flink
8 1 (0.19%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.19%) Redis
8 1 (0.19%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 69 (13.24%) Selenium
2 51 (9.79%) Jenkins
3 50 (9.60%) Postman
4 48 (9.21%) JMeter
5 47 (9.02%) Cucumber
6 45 (8.64%) GitLab
7 39 (7.49%) REST Assured
8 38 (7.29%) JIRA
9 30 (5.76%) Gatling
10 22 (4.22%) Cypress.io
10 22 (4.22%) Git
11 17 (3.26%) LabVIEW
12 14 (2.69%) LoadRunner
13 12 (2.30%) WebDriver
14 10 (1.92%) SpecFlow
14 10 (1.92%) Zephyr
15 8 (1.54%) JUnit
15 8 (1.54%) Robot Framework
15 8 (1.54%) Serenity BDD
16 7 (1.34%) SoapUI
General
1 73 (14.01%) Social Skills
2 52 (9.98%) Public Sector
3 44 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (7.49%) Aerospace
5 36 (6.91%) Electronics
6 33 (6.33%) Finance
7 28 (5.37%) Automotive
8 22 (4.22%) Manufacturing
9 18 (3.45%) Banking
10 10 (1.92%) Military
10 10 (1.92%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.96%) Law
12 4 (0.77%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.77%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.58%) Marketing
14 2 (0.38%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.38%) German Language
14 2 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 1 (0.19%) Aviation
15 1 (0.19%) Legal Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (14.40%) Playwright
2 39 (7.49%) REST
3 31 (5.95%) Kafka
4 20 (3.84%) Terraform
5 16 (3.07%) RESTful
6 14 (2.69%) .NET
6 14 (2.69%) pytest
7 12 (2.30%) React
7 12 (2.30%) Spring Boot
8 11 (2.11%) SOAP
8 11 (2.11%) Spring
9 8 (1.54%) Node.js
9 8 (1.54%) Web Services
10 7 (1.34%) Gherkin
11 6 (1.15%) ADO
11 6 (1.15%) HTML
11 6 (1.15%) Model Context Protocol
11 6 (1.15%) OpenTelemetry
11 6 (1.15%) XML
12 5 (0.96%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 20 (3.84%) Product Ownership
2 19 (3.65%) Enterprise Software
3 16 (3.07%) Cloud Native
3 16 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (1.34%) AI Agents
6 6 (1.15%) NHS
7 5 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
7 5 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (0.96%) Onboarding
7 5 (0.96%) Virtual Team
8 4 (0.77%) Analogue Electronics
8 4 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (0.77%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 3 (0.58%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.58%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (0.58%) IoT
10 2 (0.38%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.38%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.38%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 18 (3.45%) Windows
2 16 (3.07%) Linux
3 11 (2.11%) Unix
4 4 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.58%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.38%) Android
6 2 (0.38%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.19%) CentOS
7 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (43.57%) Test Automation
2 144 (27.64%) CI/CD
3 114 (21.88%) Validation
4 101 (19.39%) Agile
5 89 (17.08%) DevOps
6 81 (15.55%) Test Strategy
7 79 (15.16%) API Testing
8 75 (14.40%) Software Testing
9 68 (13.05%) Performance Testing
10 66 (12.67%) Test Scripting
11 59 (11.32%) End-to-End Testing
12 55 (10.56%) BDD
12 55 (10.56%) Non-Functional Testing
13 52 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
14 48 (9.21%) Integration Testing
14 48 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
15 44 (8.45%) Regression Testing
16 42 (8.06%) User Acceptance Testing
17 39 (7.49%) Microservices
18 38 (7.29%) Manual Testing
Programming Languages
1 82 (15.74%) Python
2 78 (14.97%) Java
3 47 (9.02%) SQL
4 45 (8.64%) JavaScript
5 28 (5.37%) C#
6 24 (4.61%) TypeScript
7 9 (1.73%) Bash
8 7 (1.34%) Apex Code
8 7 (1.34%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.96%) PowerShell
9 5 (0.96%) Ruby
10 4 (0.77%) C++
10 4 (0.77%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.58%) C
11 3 (0.58%) Scala
12 2 (0.38%) Cypher
12 2 (0.38%) Groovy
12 2 (0.38%) Perl
12 2 (0.38%) R
13 1 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 159 (30.52%) Security Cleared
2 119 (22.84%) SC Cleared
3 23 (4.41%) DV Cleared
3 23 (4.41%) ISTQB
4 15 (2.88%) Degree
5 10 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.73%) HNC
6 9 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 8 (1.54%) HND
8 3 (0.58%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.58%) ISEB
9 2 (0.38%) CCNA
9 2 (0.38%) CCNP
9 2 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.19%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.19%) MOS
10 1 (0.19%) Six Sigma Black Belt
10 1 (0.19%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (17.08%) QA
2 27 (5.18%) Accessibility
3 12 (2.30%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (0.96%) WCAG
6 4 (0.77%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.58%) NIST
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.38%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.19%) GDPR
9 1 (0.19%) IEC 62304
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 15022
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 37 (7.10%) Docker
2 9 (1.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.77%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.77%) vSphere
5 3 (0.58%) Firmware
5 3 (0.58%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 32 (6.14%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.61%) Grafana
3 12 (2.30%) Prometheus
4 8 (1.54%) Ansible
5 7 (1.34%) Kibana
6 3 (0.58%) HP ALM
6 3 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.38%) Argo
7 2 (0.38%) Control-M
7 2 (0.38%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.38%) HP Quality Center
8 1 (0.19%) Iperf
Vendors
1 27 (5.18%) Salesforce
2 20 (3.84%) Splunk
3 17 (3.26%) Microsoft
4 15 (2.88%) Dynatrace
5 12 (2.30%) IBM
6 11 (2.11%) EMC
7 9 (1.73%) Google
7 9 (1.73%) VMware
8 8 (1.54%) Conga
8 8 (1.54%) GoCardless
9 7 (1.34%) Cisco
9 7 (1.34%) Oracle
10 6 (1.15%) Databricks
10 6 (1.15%) New Relic
11 4 (0.77%) Citrix
11 4 (0.77%) HP
11 4 (0.77%) SAP
12 3 (0.58%) Juniper
12 3 (0.58%) OpenLink
12 3 (0.58%) Zscaler