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 5 April 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 334 316
Rank change year-on-year +30 -18 +67
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 362 204 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.80% 0.70% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.87% 0.75% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 138 213
10th Percentile £303 £305 £315
25th Percentile £368 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.94% -14.14%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £519
90th Percentile £626 £653 £579
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £469 £425
% change year-on-year -12.00% +10.29% -8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 12 33
10th Percentile £28.24 £30.59 £29.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £48.73 £35.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £57.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.06% +35.88% -29.17%
75th Percentile £63.27 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.63 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £57.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -35.06% +35.88% -29.17%

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 41,784 27,118 40,940
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.78% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,031 17,841 26,815
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.31%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,612 956 2,534
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.91 £20.26 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -5.26% -24.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £31.29 £34.61
% change year-on-year +31.21% -9.58% -18.32%

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 5 April 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 5 April 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 5 April 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 -6 307 £425 -2.86% 140
UK excluding London +7 231 £413 -12.00% 148
London -34 96 £435 +2.35% 19
North of England -24 79 £400 +10.73% 35
Midlands -15 61 £525 +20.00% 14
Work from Home -24 60 £395 -16.40% 29
West Midlands -3 56 £550 +53.85% 11
South East -54 37 £398 -27.64% 35
Yorkshire -33 31 £475 +26.67% 6
East of England -15 27 £338 -10.00% 23
North West -28 26 £395 +7.48% 23
North East +1 25 £400 +25.98% 6
South West -25 12 £400 -23.81% 19
Wales -5 10 £440 +17.33% 6
Scotland +11 9 £313 -33.93% 17
East Midlands -35 5 £400 -8.57% 3
Northern Ireland - 4 £450 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 5 April 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.

1 215 (59.39%) Test Automation
2 119 (32.87%) CI/CD
3 107 (29.56%) Security Cleared
4 96 (26.52%) Agile
5 84 (23.20%) SC Cleared
6 83 (22.93%) Azure
7 78 (21.55%) Selenium
8 76 (20.99%) DevOps
9 75 (20.72%) QA
10 70 (19.34%) Java
11 68 (18.78%) Python
12 66 (18.23%) API Testing
12 66 (18.23%) JIRA
13 61 (16.85%) AWS
14 60 (16.57%) Playwright
15 57 (15.75%) Cucumber
16 55 (15.19%) Postman
17 53 (14.64%) Test Strategy
18 52 (14.36%) Performance Testing
19 51 (14.09%) Manual Testing
20 49 (13.54%) JavaScript
20 49 (13.54%) Test Scripting
21 48 (13.26%) Jenkins
22 46 (12.71%) Azure DevOps
22 46 (12.71%) BDD
22 46 (12.71%) Regression Testing
22 46 (12.71%) Software Testing
23 44 (12.15%) GitLab
23 44 (12.15%) Validation
24 43 (11.88%) 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 10 (2.76%) Confluence
2 2 (0.55%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.28%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.28%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Findur
2 2 (0.55%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.28%) CODA-Financials
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 83 (22.93%) Azure
2 61 (16.85%) AWS
3 46 (12.71%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (9.94%) GitHub
5 21 (5.80%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (4.97%) GCP
7 12 (3.31%) BrowserStack
8 8 (2.21%) BlazeMeter
8 8 (2.21%) Serverless
9 6 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (1.66%) Entra ID
10 5 (1.38%) SaaS
10 5 (1.38%) Tricentis Tosca
11 4 (1.10%) Amazon SQS
11 4 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.10%) Power Platform
12 3 (0.83%) Power Automate
12 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 2 (0.55%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 2 (0.55%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.76%) Firewall
1 10 (2.76%) LAN
1 10 (2.76%) WAN
2 9 (2.49%) DHCP
2 9 (2.49%) DNS
3 8 (2.21%) SD-WAN
3 8 (2.21%) TCP/IP
4 7 (1.93%) VPN
5 6 (1.66%) VLAN
6 5 (1.38%) Broadband
6 5 (1.38%) Network Security
6 5 (1.38%) SSL
7 4 (1.10%) BGP
7 4 (1.10%) Internet
7 4 (1.10%) MPLS
7 4 (1.10%) OSPF
7 4 (1.10%) Spanning Tree
7 4 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (1.10%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.83%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.21%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.93%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.66%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.38%) MySQL
5 3 (0.83%) Big Data
6 2 (0.55%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.55%) Tableau
7 1 (0.28%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.28%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.28%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.28%) MS Access
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.28%) Power BI
7 1 (0.28%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 78 (21.55%) Selenium
2 66 (18.23%) JIRA
3 57 (15.75%) Cucumber
4 55 (15.19%) Postman
5 48 (13.26%) Jenkins
6 44 (12.15%) GitLab
7 37 (10.22%) REST Assured
8 35 (9.67%) Git
9 32 (8.84%) JMeter
10 17 (4.70%) Cypress.io
11 15 (4.14%) Gatling
12 12 (3.31%) Zephyr
13 9 (2.49%) JUnit
14 8 (2.21%) Browser DevTools
14 8 (2.21%) Serenity BDD
14 8 (2.21%) TestRail
14 8 (2.21%) WebDriver
15 7 (1.93%) Appium
15 7 (1.93%) HP UFT
16 6 (1.66%) Newman
General
1 58 (16.02%) Public Sector
2 47 (12.98%) Social Skills
3 35 (9.67%) Finance
4 27 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (4.97%) Automotive
6 12 (3.31%) Aerospace
6 12 (3.31%) Electronics
7 11 (3.04%) Military
7 11 (3.04%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.76%) Banking
9 4 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.83%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.83%) Marketing
11 2 (0.55%) Back Office
11 2 (0.55%) Front Office
11 2 (0.55%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.28%) Law
12 1 (0.28%) Retail
12 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (16.57%) Playwright
2 41 (11.33%) REST
3 12 (3.31%) Kafka
4 11 (3.04%) .NET
4 11 (3.04%) Node.js
5 10 (2.76%) Gherkin
5 10 (2.76%) RESTful
6 9 (2.49%) LDAP
6 9 (2.49%) OpenID
6 9 (2.49%) SailPoint
6 9 (2.49%) Spring
7 8 (2.21%) Spring Boot
7 8 (2.21%) WireMock
8 7 (1.93%) pytest
8 7 (1.93%) React
8 7 (1.93%) Swagger
9 6 (1.66%) Spring Cloud
9 6 (1.66%) WebdriverIO
10 5 (1.38%) HTML
10 5 (1.38%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.18%) Product Ownership
2 11 (3.04%) Cloud Native
3 10 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
4 9 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
5 8 (2.21%) Infotainment
6 7 (1.93%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (1.10%) Hedge funds
8 4 (1.10%) Management Information System
9 3 (0.83%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.83%) Fibre Optics
9 3 (0.83%) Linux Command Line
9 3 (0.83%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.55%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
10 2 (0.55%) NHS
10 2 (0.55%) PKI
10 2 (0.55%) Synthetic Data
11 1 (0.28%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.70%) Windows
2 7 (1.93%) Linux
3 6 (1.66%) Android
3 6 (1.66%) Mac OS
4 5 (1.38%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.28%) Unix
6 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 215 (59.39%) Test Automation
2 119 (32.87%) CI/CD
3 96 (26.52%) Agile
4 76 (20.99%) DevOps
5 66 (18.23%) API Testing
6 53 (14.64%) Test Strategy
7 52 (14.36%) Performance Testing
8 51 (14.09%) Manual Testing
9 49 (13.54%) Test Scripting
10 46 (12.71%) BDD
10 46 (12.71%) Regression Testing
10 46 (12.71%) Software Testing
11 44 (12.15%) Validation
12 43 (11.88%) Functional Testing
13 40 (11.05%) Microservices
14 36 (9.94%) Non-Functional Testing
15 35 (9.67%) Scenario Testing
16 34 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
16 34 (9.39%) Problem-Solving
17 31 (8.56%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 70 (19.34%) Java
2 68 (18.78%) Python
3 49 (13.54%) JavaScript
4 34 (9.39%) TypeScript
5 29 (8.01%) SQL
6 23 (6.35%) C#
7 12 (3.31%) Bash
7 12 (3.31%) Ruby
8 9 (2.49%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.93%) VBScript
10 5 (1.38%) C
10 5 (1.38%) C++
10 5 (1.38%) PHP
11 3 (0.83%) Scala
12 2 (0.55%) AppleScript
12 2 (0.55%) Bicep
12 2 (0.55%) Cypher
12 2 (0.55%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.55%) Swift
Qualifications
1 107 (29.56%) Security Cleared
2 84 (23.20%) SC Cleared
3 25 (6.91%) ISTQB
4 17 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.76%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.93%) Degree
6 7 (1.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (1.10%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.83%) CCNP
9 3 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.83%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.55%) CCNA
10 2 (0.55%) CEH
10 2 (0.55%) CREST Certified
10 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.55%) OSCP
10 2 (0.55%) SANS
11 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (20.72%) QA
2 37 (10.22%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.76%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.21%) WCAG
5 6 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.83%) NIST
8 2 (0.55%) NCSC
8 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.28%) GDPR
9 1 (0.28%) HL7
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.28%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 40 (11.05%) Docker
2 7 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.55%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.55%) Firmware
5 1 (0.28%) Squid
5 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 16 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.59%) Grafana
3 11 (3.04%) Prometheus
4 9 (2.49%) Terraform
5 5 (1.38%) HP ALM
5 5 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.55%) Ansible
6 2 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.28%) Iperf
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 20 (5.52%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.31%) Citrix
3 10 (2.76%) ServiceNow
4 9 (2.49%) Salesforce
5 8 (2.21%) Splunk
6 7 (1.93%) Cisco
7 6 (1.66%) Dynatrace
7 6 (1.66%) HP
8 4 (1.10%) Databricks
8 4 (1.10%) UiPath
8 4 (1.10%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.83%) Google
9 3 (0.83%) Meraki
9 3 (0.83%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.83%) Pega
9 3 (0.83%) SAP
10 2 (0.55%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.55%) EMC
10 2 (0.55%) Oracle
10 2 (0.55%) Siemens