Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £400, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 347 343 360
Rank change year-on-year -4 +17 +86
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 216 236 302
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.66% 0.62% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.66% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 131 150 196
10th Percentile £270 £325 £366
25th Percentile £313 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £475 £459
Median % change year-on-year -15.79% +3.54% -3.42%
75th Percentile £475 £566 £575
90th Percentile £538 £600 £631
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -22.68% +7.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 16 10
10th Percentile £29.85 £25.00 £33.10
25th Percentile £35.69 £38.40 £43.44
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.75 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -7.14% -6.25%
75th Percentile £57.81 £72.50 £68.31
90th Percentile £62.50 - £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £42.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +17.65% -19.05% -6.25%

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 29,996 35,551 46,729
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.96% 94.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,952 21,923 31,999
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,570 1,683 1,490
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -2.01% +68.77%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -44.11% +5.88% +93.18%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Test Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Engineer 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 17 September 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 17 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Top 16 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 17 September 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 +23 193 £400 -17.95% 244
UK excluding London +5 139 £375 -22.68% 242
London +17 59 £400 -15.79% 18
Work from Home -13 59 £400 -15.79% 44
South East +31 43 £295 -32.57% 63
North of England -7 38 £435 +3.51% 51
Midlands +2 22 £403 -4.11% 51
Yorkshire -12 18 £430 +1.12% 19
East of England +12 15 £375 +63.04% 44
North West -13 15 £443 +10.63% 25
West Midlands -4 13 £488 -7.14% 39
East Midlands +2 9 £360 +14.29% 11
South West -10 9 £525 -2.33% 24
Wales +11 8 £322 -14.24% 4
North East +2 6 £445 - 7
Scotland -7 4 £65 -86.32% 7

Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 September 2025, Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Test Engineer in the job title.

1 126 (58.33%) Test Automation
2 86 (39.81%) Agile
3 60 (27.78%) Security Cleared
3 60 (27.78%) Java
4 59 (27.31%) Social Skills
5 58 (26.85%) CI/CD
6 57 (26.39%) Selenium
7 47 (21.76%) SC Cleared
7 47 (21.76%) Test Scripting
8 45 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
9 42 (19.44%) Test Strategy
10 37 (17.13%) DevOps
10 37 (17.13%) API Testing
10 37 (17.13%) Software Testing
11 36 (16.67%) QA
11 36 (16.67%) Cisco
12 35 (16.20%) Telecoms
12 35 (16.20%) JIRA
13 33 (15.28%) Postman
14 32 (14.81%) Python
15 31 (14.35%) Azure
15 31 (14.35%) Cucumber
16 29 (13.43%) Public Sector
16 29 (13.43%) AWS
16 29 (13.43%) Validation
16 29 (13.43%) Scrum
17 27 (12.50%) SQL
17 27 (12.50%) Microsoft
18 26 (12.04%) Jenkins
19 25 (11.57%) JavaScript

Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 11 (5.09%) Confluence
2 3 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.93%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.46%) Drupal
4 1 (0.46%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.46%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.46%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.93%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.46%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.46%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.46%) ProductWriter
Cloud Services
1 31 (14.35%) Azure
2 29 (13.43%) AWS
3 20 (9.26%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (4.63%) AWS Lambda
4 10 (4.63%) Serverless
5 9 (4.17%) GitHub
6 7 (3.24%) Power Platform
7 4 (1.85%) AWS Step Functions
7 4 (1.85%) BrowserStack
7 4 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (1.39%) AWS CodePipeline
8 3 (1.39%) GCP
8 3 (1.39%) PowerApps
9 2 (0.93%) Amazon SQS
9 2 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (0.93%) Dynamics 365
9 2 (0.93%) Snowflake
10 1 (0.46%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 17 (7.87%) Firewall
1 17 (7.87%) WAN
2 16 (7.41%) Wireshark
3 15 (6.94%) LAN
3 15 (6.94%) LTE
4 14 (6.48%) Ethernet
5 11 (5.09%) 5G
6 9 (4.17%) GSM
6 9 (4.17%) HTTP
7 8 (3.70%) ATM
7 8 (3.70%) Frame Relay
7 8 (3.70%) GPRS
7 8 (3.70%) MPLS
7 8 (3.70%) SAN
7 8 (3.70%) SDH
7 8 (3.70%) UMTS
7 8 (3.70%) VPN
8 7 (3.24%) 4G
9 5 (2.31%) 3G
9 5 (2.31%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.85%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (1.39%) NoSQL
3 3 (1.39%) Power BI
3 3 (1.39%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.93%) Delta Lake
4 2 (0.93%) Oracle ODI
4 2 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (0.93%) Star Schema
5 1 (0.46%) Big Data
5 1 (0.46%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.46%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.46%) Parquet
5 1 (0.46%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 57 (26.39%) Selenium
2 35 (16.20%) JIRA
3 33 (15.28%) Postman
4 31 (14.35%) Cucumber
5 26 (12.04%) Jenkins
6 25 (11.57%) Git
7 23 (10.65%) REST Assured
8 22 (10.19%) GitLab
9 21 (9.72%) Cypress.io
10 14 (6.48%) JMeter
11 13 (6.02%) WebDriver
12 12 (5.56%) SpecFlow
13 9 (4.17%) Appium
14 8 (3.70%) LoadRunner
15 7 (3.24%) TestNG
16 6 (2.78%) Bitbucket
16 6 (2.78%) TestRail
17 5 (2.31%) JUnit
17 5 (2.31%) Maven
17 5 (2.31%) Zephyr
General
1 59 (27.31%) Social Skills
2 35 (16.20%) Telecoms
3 29 (13.43%) Public Sector
4 23 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (7.41%) Finance
6 11 (5.09%) Banking
7 9 (4.17%) Electronics
8 8 (3.70%) Manufacturing
9 7 (3.24%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.85%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.85%) Military
11 3 (1.39%) Automotive
11 3 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.93%) Avionics
12 2 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.46%) Law
13 1 (0.46%) Local Government
13 1 (0.46%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.46%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (11.11%) Playwright
2 23 (10.65%) REST
3 16 (7.41%) RFC 2544
4 9 (4.17%) CSS
4 9 (4.17%) HTML
5 8 (3.70%) Node.js
6 5 (2.31%) .NET
6 5 (2.31%) JSON
6 5 (2.31%) Kafka
7 4 (1.85%) RESTful
8 3 (1.39%) Blazor
8 3 (1.39%) GWT
8 3 (1.39%) Puppeteer
8 3 (1.39%) pytest
8 3 (1.39%) Swagger
8 3 (1.39%) WireMock
9 2 (0.93%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 2 (0.93%) React
9 2 (0.93%) Spring Boot
9 2 (0.93%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 17 (7.87%) Self-Motivation
2 15 (6.94%) Data Centre
2 15 (6.94%) Fibre Optics
3 8 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 6 (2.78%) NHS
5 4 (1.85%) Analogue Electronics
5 4 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.85%) Mobile App
5 4 (1.85%) PKI
5 4 (1.85%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.39%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.93%) Housing Association
7 2 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (0.93%) Replication
8 1 (0.46%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.46%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.46%) Infotainment
8 1 (0.46%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 13 (6.02%) Linux
2 9 (4.17%) Unix
2 9 (4.17%) Windows
3 5 (2.31%) Android
4 4 (1.85%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.39%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.93%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (58.33%) Test Automation
2 86 (39.81%) Agile
3 58 (26.85%) CI/CD
4 47 (21.76%) Test Scripting
5 45 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
6 42 (19.44%) Test Strategy
7 37 (17.13%) API Testing
7 37 (17.13%) DevOps
7 37 (17.13%) Software Testing
8 29 (13.43%) Scrum
8 29 (13.43%) Validation
9 24 (11.11%) Defect Management
10 22 (10.19%) BDD
10 22 (10.19%) Performance Testing
11 20 (9.26%) Manual Testing
11 20 (9.26%) Test Management
12 18 (8.33%) Case Management
13 17 (7.87%) End-to-End Testing
13 17 (7.87%) Integration Testing
13 17 (7.87%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 60 (27.78%) Java
2 32 (14.81%) Python
3 27 (12.50%) SQL
4 25 (11.57%) JavaScript
5 24 (11.11%) C#
6 9 (4.17%) TypeScript
7 7 (3.24%) Bash
8 3 (1.39%) C++
8 3 (1.39%) VB
8 3 (1.39%) VB.NET
9 2 (0.93%) C
9 2 (0.93%) MATLAB
9 2 (0.93%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.46%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.46%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.46%) XPath
Qualifications
1 60 (27.78%) Security Cleared
2 47 (21.76%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.26%) ISTQB
4 17 (7.87%) Degree
5 13 (6.02%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (5.09%) CCNP
6 11 (5.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 9 (4.17%) ISEB
8 7 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (3.24%) Master's Degree
9 6 (2.78%) DV Cleared
10 5 (2.31%) CCNA
11 2 (0.93%) HNC
11 2 (0.93%) HND
11 2 (0.93%) MCSA
11 2 (0.93%) MCSE
11 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.93%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 1 (0.46%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (16.67%) QA
2 18 (8.33%) Accessibility
3 15 (6.94%) WCAG
4 6 (2.78%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.46%) HL7
5 1 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 12 (5.56%) Docker
2 3 (1.39%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.93%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 5 (2.31%) HP ALM
1 5 (2.31%) Kibana
2 4 (1.85%) Ansible
2 4 (1.85%) Grafana
2 4 (1.85%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.93%) Terraform
Vendors
1 36 (16.67%) Cisco
2 27 (12.50%) Microsoft
3 14 (6.48%) Juniper
4 8 (3.70%) Salesforce
5 7 (3.24%) Nokia
6 6 (2.78%) HP
6 6 (2.78%) Progress
6 6 (2.78%) Splunk
7 5 (2.31%) Micro Focus
8 4 (1.85%) AppDynamics
8 4 (1.85%) Databricks
8 4 (1.85%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.85%) EMC
8 4 (1.85%) Meraki
8 4 (1.85%) MuleSoft
8 4 (1.85%) New Relic
8 4 (1.85%) Oracle
9 3 (1.39%) Ericsson
9 3 (1.39%) UiPath
9 3 (1.39%) VMware