Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £423, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 October 2025.

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

6 months to
20 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 350 329 353
Rank change year-on-year -21 +24 +96
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 217 238 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.64% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.69% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 142 207
10th Percentile £271 £321 £375
25th Percentile £328 £390 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £423 £463 £455
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% +1.65% +1.11%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £550
90th Percentile £600 £600 £615
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -11.11% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 20 12
10th Percentile £24.38 £25.00 £35.03
25th Percentile £34.75 £38.40 £37.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £55.33 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.66% +16.47% -20.83%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £63.50 £72.50 £77.03
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.35 £55.65 £47.50
% change year-on-year -18.51% +17.16% -20.83%

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 30,142 34,441 45,147
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.84% 92.92% 93.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,024 20,756 30,859
10th Percentile £277 £300 £300
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,674 1,385 1,538
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.04 £14.64
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +66.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.62 £40.33 £43.83
% change year-on-year -38.95% -7.99% +94.78%

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 20 October 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 20 October 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 20 October 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 -7 199 £425 -9.33% 207
UK excluding London 0 147 £400 -11.11% 202
North of England -1 59 £435 +6.56% 51
Work from Home +16 58 £408 -14.18% 76
London +5 55 £440 -6.13% 24
South East +3 33 £295 -37.07% 52
Yorkshire -23 26 £435 +2.35% 8
Midlands -7 23 £403 +8.85% 21
North West -6 20 £395 -1.25% 35
West Midlands -8 15 £450 +5.88% 13
North East +7 14 £435 +33.85% 8
East of England +2 14 £350 -12.50% 50
South West -14 9 £563 +9.76% 22
East Midlands -6 8 £360 +14.29% 8
Scotland +5 5 £65 -86.32% 4
Wales +2 4 £340 -9.33% 4

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

For the 6 months to 20 October 2025, 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.

1 136 (62.67%) Test Automation
2 81 (37.33%) Agile
3 77 (35.48%) CI/CD
4 62 (28.57%) Java
5 61 (28.11%) Security Cleared
6 59 (27.19%) Selenium
7 50 (23.04%) Test Scripting
8 48 (22.12%) SC Cleared
9 47 (21.66%) QA
10 44 (20.28%) Azure
10 44 (20.28%) Cucumber
10 44 (20.28%) DevOps
11 43 (19.82%) Test Strategy
12 42 (19.35%) API Testing
12 42 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
13 41 (18.89%) Software Testing
14 40 (18.43%) AWS
15 39 (17.97%) Python
16 35 (16.13%) Postman
17 34 (15.67%) GitLab
18 33 (15.21%) BDD
18 33 (15.21%) Playwright
19 32 (14.75%) Cisco
19 32 (14.75%) REST
20 31 (14.29%) Performance Testing
21 28 (12.90%) Defect Management
21 28 (12.90%) JIRA
22 27 (12.44%) Scrum
23 26 (11.98%) Validation
24 25 (11.52%) Accessibility

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 (3.69%) Confluence
2 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (0.92%) Oracle Application Server
2 2 (0.92%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.46%) Drupal
3 1 (0.46%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.46%) SAS
3 1 (0.46%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.46%) Cerner Millennium
1 1 (0.46%) CODA-Financials
1 1 (0.46%) ProductWriter
1 1 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 44 (20.28%) Azure
2 40 (18.43%) AWS
3 23 (10.60%) Azure DevOps
4 12 (5.53%) GCP
5 10 (4.61%) Serverless
6 9 (4.15%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (3.23%) GitHub
7 7 (3.23%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.84%) BrowserStack
9 3 (1.38%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (1.38%) AWS Step Functions
9 3 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (1.38%) PowerApps
10 2 (0.92%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (0.92%) AWS CodePipeline
10 2 (0.92%) Snowflake
11 1 (0.46%) AWS Direct Connect
11 1 (0.46%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 1 (0.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 1 (0.46%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 19 (8.76%) Firewall
2 11 (5.07%) WAN
3 10 (4.61%) Wireshark
4 9 (4.15%) LAN
5 8 (3.69%) Ethernet
6 6 (2.76%) 5G
6 6 (2.76%) HTTP
7 5 (2.30%) 4G
7 5 (2.30%) SD-WAN
8 4 (1.84%) LTE
8 4 (1.84%) VoIP
9 3 (1.38%) 3G
9 3 (1.38%) DHCP
9 3 (1.38%) DNS
10 2 (0.92%) Frame Relay
10 2 (0.92%) MPLS
10 2 (0.92%) SAN
10 2 (0.92%) SDH
10 2 (0.92%) UMTS
10 2 (0.92%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.84%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
2 3 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (1.38%) Power BI
2 3 (1.38%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.92%) NoSQL
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle ODI
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
3 2 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.92%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.46%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.46%) Parquet
4 1 (0.46%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 59 (27.19%) Selenium
2 44 (20.28%) Cucumber
3 35 (16.13%) Postman
4 34 (15.67%) GitLab
5 28 (12.90%) JIRA
6 25 (11.52%) Jenkins
7 23 (10.60%) Git
7 23 (10.60%) REST Assured
8 22 (10.14%) Cypress.io
9 20 (9.22%) JMeter
10 9 (4.15%) WebDriver
11 8 (3.69%) Gatling
11 8 (3.69%) SpecFlow
12 7 (3.23%) Bitbucket
12 7 (3.23%) TestNG
13 6 (2.76%) LoadRunner
14 5 (2.30%) Maven
15 4 (1.84%) Appium
15 4 (1.84%) JUnit
16 3 (1.38%) Zephyr
General
1 51 (23.50%) Social Skills
2 38 (17.51%) Public Sector
3 25 (11.52%) Telecoms
4 23 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (5.53%) Finance
6 11 (5.07%) Banking
7 9 (4.15%) Electronics
8 7 (3.23%) Aerospace
9 6 (2.76%) Investment Banking
9 6 (2.76%) Manufacturing
9 6 (2.76%) Military
10 4 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.38%) Back Office
12 2 (0.92%) Automotive
12 2 (0.92%) Front Office
12 2 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.46%) Health Technology
13 1 (0.46%) Law
13 1 (0.46%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (15.21%) Playwright
2 32 (14.75%) REST
3 18 (8.29%) RFC 2544
4 11 (5.07%) Node.js
5 8 (3.69%) .NET
5 8 (3.69%) WireMock
6 7 (3.23%) Kafka
7 6 (2.76%) Middleware
7 6 (2.76%) pytest
7 6 (2.76%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (2.76%) Spring Boot
8 5 (2.30%) gRPC
8 5 (2.30%) JMS
8 5 (2.30%) WebSockets
9 4 (1.84%) JSON
9 4 (1.84%) Swagger
10 3 (1.38%) Gherkin
10 3 (1.38%) PyTorch
10 3 (1.38%) React
10 3 (1.38%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 17 (7.83%) Data Centre
1 17 (7.83%) Fibre Optics
2 15 (6.91%) Cloud Native
3 12 (5.53%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (1.84%) Analogue Electronics
4 4 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
5 3 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (1.38%) NHS
5 3 (1.38%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.38%) PKI
5 3 (1.38%) Product Ownership
6 2 (0.92%) Low-Code
6 2 (0.92%) Replication
7 1 (0.46%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.46%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.46%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.46%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.76%) Windows
2 4 (1.84%) Linux
3 3 (1.38%) Unix
4 2 (0.92%) Android
4 2 (0.92%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.92%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.92%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (62.67%) Test Automation
2 81 (37.33%) Agile
3 77 (35.48%) CI/CD
4 50 (23.04%) Test Scripting
5 44 (20.28%) DevOps
6 43 (19.82%) Test Strategy
7 42 (19.35%) API Testing
7 42 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
8 41 (18.89%) Software Testing
9 33 (15.21%) BDD
10 31 (14.29%) Performance Testing
11 28 (12.90%) Defect Management
12 27 (12.44%) Scrum
13 26 (11.98%) Validation
14 24 (11.06%) Non-Functional Testing
15 23 (10.60%) TDD
16 20 (9.22%) End-to-End Testing
16 20 (9.22%) Manual Testing
16 20 (9.22%) Microservices
17 19 (8.76%) Case Management
Programming Languages
1 62 (28.57%) Java
2 39 (17.97%) Python
3 23 (10.60%) JavaScript
3 23 (10.60%) SQL
4 22 (10.14%) C#
5 11 (5.07%) TypeScript
6 9 (4.15%) Bash
7 5 (2.30%) VB.NET
8 4 (1.84%) C
8 4 (1.84%) C++
9 2 (0.92%) VB
10 1 (0.46%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.46%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.46%) Perl
10 1 (0.46%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 61 (28.11%) Security Cleared
2 48 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 12 (5.53%) Degree
4 10 (4.61%) ISTQB
5 7 (3.23%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (2.30%) CCNA
6 5 (2.30%) CCNP
6 5 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.84%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.92%) HNC
9 2 (0.92%) HND
9 2 (0.92%) ISEB
9 2 (0.92%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 2 (0.92%) MCSA
9 2 (0.92%) MCSE
9 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.46%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (21.66%) QA
2 25 (11.52%) Accessibility
3 17 (7.83%) WCAG
4 6 (2.76%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.38%) NIST
6 2 (0.92%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.46%) HL7
7 1 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.46%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 25 (11.52%) Docker
2 2 (0.92%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 13 (5.99%) Kubernetes
2 10 (4.61%) Grafana
3 7 (3.23%) Ansible
4 5 (2.30%) HP ALM
4 5 (2.30%) Terraform
5 4 (1.84%) Kibana
6 2 (0.92%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 32 (14.75%) Cisco
2 22 (10.14%) Microsoft
3 8 (3.69%) Juniper
3 8 (3.69%) Splunk
4 7 (3.23%) Nokia
5 6 (2.76%) HP
5 6 (2.76%) Progress
5 6 (2.76%) Salesforce
6 5 (2.30%) Micro Focus
6 5 (2.30%) UiPath
7 4 (1.84%) AppDynamics
7 4 (1.84%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.84%) EMC
7 4 (1.84%) Meraki
7 4 (1.84%) New Relic
7 4 (1.84%) Oracle
8 3 (1.38%) Databricks
8 3 (1.38%) MuleSoft
9 2 (0.92%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.92%) VMware