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 23 December 2025.

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

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 336 323 332
Rank change year-on-year -13 +9 +83
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 276 228 298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.68% 0.69%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.82% 0.73% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 149 208
10th Percentile £299 £312 £354
25th Percentile £356 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £460 £438
Median % change year-on-year -7.61% +5.14% -2.78%
75th Percentile £519 £550 £538
90th Percentile £604 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -9.42% +5.88% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 11 18
10th Percentile £22.31 £37.00 £33.70
25th Percentile £33.00 £47.94 £35.63
Median hourly rate £36.00 £60.50 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -40.50% +46.67% -31.25%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.50 £60.69
90th Percentile £56.75 - £74.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £60.50 £41.25
% change year-on-year -40.50% +46.67% -31.25%

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 33,704 31,327 40,582
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.78% 93.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,320 19,249 27,284
10th Percentile £293 £300 £285
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,988 974 1,449
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.56 £15.16
25th Percentile £18.19 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.33 £33.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.23% -26.67% +48.76%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £73.32 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.16% +83.52%

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 23 December 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 23 December 2025.

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 23 December 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 -1 242 £425 -7.61% 149
UK excluding London -3 180 £408 -9.42% 157
North of England -9 75 £413 +8.84% 44
London +5 72 £441 -4.08% 18
Work from Home -11 60 £401 -19.73% 80
Midlands -18 34 £550 +29.41% 16
Yorkshire -25 32 £435 +6.75% 12
North West -18 23 £383 -1.29% 22
West Midlands -15 22 £700 +64.71% 9
South East -39 21 £295 -41.00% 34
North East +3 20 £425 +37.10% 10
East of England -12 19 £375 -6.25% 25
South West -12 13 £500 -4.76% 18
East Midlands -10 12 £400 +2.24% 7
Wales - 11 £425 - 2
Scotland - 6 £65 - 19
Northern Ireland -5 1 £450 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 23 December 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.

1 179 (64.86%) Test Automation
2 98 (35.51%) CI/CD
3 89 (32.25%) Agile
4 70 (25.36%) QA
5 65 (23.55%) Security Cleared
5 65 (23.55%) Selenium
6 64 (23.19%) Java
7 63 (22.83%) Azure
8 60 (21.74%) Cucumber
9 56 (20.29%) DevOps
9 56 (20.29%) Test Scripting
9 56 (20.29%) Test Strategy
10 54 (19.57%) API Testing
10 54 (19.57%) AWS
11 48 (17.39%) Python
12 47 (17.03%) JIRA
12 47 (17.03%) Postman
13 46 (16.67%) SC Cleared
14 44 (15.94%) Manual Testing
15 43 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
16 41 (14.86%) BDD
16 41 (14.86%) Software Testing
17 39 (14.13%) GitLab
17 39 (14.13%) Performance Testing
18 37 (13.41%) Playwright
18 37 (13.41%) REST
19 34 (12.32%) JavaScript
20 33 (11.96%) Jenkins
21 31 (11.23%) Accessibility
21 31 (11.23%) Git

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 11 (3.99%) Confluence
2 3 (1.09%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.72%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.36%) Drupal
4 1 (0.36%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.36%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.72%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.36%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.36%) ProductWriter
2 1 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 63 (22.83%) Azure
2 54 (19.57%) AWS
3 27 (9.78%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (6.52%) GCP
5 14 (5.07%) GitHub
6 11 (3.99%) GitHub Actions
6 11 (3.99%) Serverless
7 8 (2.90%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (2.90%) Power Platform
8 5 (1.81%) Amazon SQS
8 5 (1.81%) BrowserStack
8 5 (1.81%) SaaS
9 4 (1.45%) BlazeMeter
9 4 (1.45%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.09%) Snowflake
10 3 (1.09%) Tricentis Tosca
11 2 (0.72%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (0.72%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (0.72%) Dynamics 365
11 2 (0.72%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.62%) Firewall
2 8 (2.90%) Ethernet
2 8 (2.90%) SD-WAN
3 7 (2.54%) Wireshark
4 6 (2.17%) HTTP
5 5 (1.81%) 5G
6 4 (1.45%) 4G
6 4 (1.45%) VoIP
7 3 (1.09%) 3G
7 3 (1.09%) Cisco IOS
7 3 (1.09%) DHCP
7 3 (1.09%) DNS
7 3 (1.09%) FTP
7 3 (1.09%) SNMP
7 3 (1.09%) Spanning Tree
7 3 (1.09%) SSH
7 3 (1.09%) TACACS
7 3 (1.09%) WAN
8 2 (0.72%) IOS XR
8 2 (0.72%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.26%) SQL Server
2 6 (2.17%) MongoDB
3 5 (1.81%) MySQL
4 4 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.72%) Oracle ODI
5 2 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.72%) Power BI
5 2 (0.72%) Star Schema
6 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.36%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.36%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.36%) MS Access
6 1 (0.36%) Parquet
6 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 65 (23.55%) Selenium
2 60 (21.74%) Cucumber
3 47 (17.03%) JIRA
3 47 (17.03%) Postman
4 39 (14.13%) GitLab
5 33 (11.96%) Jenkins
6 31 (11.23%) Git
7 28 (10.14%) REST Assured
8 21 (7.61%) Cypress.io
9 20 (7.25%) JMeter
10 12 (4.35%) Gatling
11 9 (3.26%) SpecFlow
11 9 (3.26%) WebDriver
12 8 (2.90%) Bitbucket
12 8 (2.90%) TestRail
13 7 (2.54%) Appium
13 7 (2.54%) LoadRunner
14 6 (2.17%) Zephyr
15 4 (1.45%) Mockito
16 3 (1.09%) CircleCI
General
1 55 (19.93%) Social Skills
2 53 (19.20%) Public Sector
3 23 (8.33%) Finance
4 22 (7.97%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (6.16%) Telecoms
6 12 (4.35%) Banking
7 10 (3.62%) Aerospace
8 8 (2.90%) Military
9 6 (2.17%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.81%) Automotive
11 4 (1.45%) Back Office
11 4 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (1.09%) Front Office
13 2 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.36%) Avionics
14 1 (0.36%) Electronics
14 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
14 1 (0.36%) Local Government
14 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (13.41%) Playwright
1 37 (13.41%) REST
2 17 (6.16%) Node.js
3 13 (4.71%) .NET
4 12 (4.35%) WireMock
5 9 (3.26%) Kafka
5 9 (3.26%) RFC 2544
6 8 (2.90%) Swagger
7 7 (2.54%) pytest
8 6 (2.17%) LDAP
8 6 (2.17%) Middleware
8 6 (2.17%) OpenID
8 6 (2.17%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.17%) React
8 6 (2.17%) SailPoint
8 6 (2.17%) Spring Boot
8 6 (2.17%) WebdriverIO
9 5 (1.81%) gRPC
9 5 (1.81%) JMS
9 5 (1.81%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 12 (4.35%) Product Ownership
2 11 (3.99%) Cloud Native
3 10 (3.62%) Data Centre
3 10 (3.62%) Fibre Optics
4 9 (3.26%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (1.81%) Mobile App
6 4 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
6 4 (1.45%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.09%) Low-Code
7 3 (1.09%) PKI
8 2 (0.72%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (0.72%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.72%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.72%) NHS
8 2 (0.72%) Replication
8 2 (0.72%) Synthetic Data
9 1 (0.36%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.36%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.17%) Windows
2 5 (1.81%) Android
2 5 (1.81%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.09%) Linux
3 3 (1.09%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.72%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.36%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (64.86%) Test Automation
2 98 (35.51%) CI/CD
3 89 (32.25%) Agile
4 56 (20.29%) DevOps
4 56 (20.29%) Test Scripting
4 56 (20.29%) Test Strategy
5 54 (19.57%) API Testing
6 44 (15.94%) Manual Testing
7 43 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
8 41 (14.86%) BDD
8 41 (14.86%) Software Testing
9 39 (14.13%) Performance Testing
10 31 (11.23%) Scrum
11 30 (10.87%) Microservices
12 29 (10.51%) Non-Functional Testing
12 29 (10.51%) Regression Testing
13 27 (9.78%) Functional Testing
13 27 (9.78%) Integration Testing
13 27 (9.78%) Scenario Testing
13 27 (9.78%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 64 (23.19%) Java
2 48 (17.39%) Python
3 34 (12.32%) JavaScript
4 26 (9.42%) TypeScript
5 24 (8.70%) SQL
6 19 (6.88%) C#
7 13 (4.71%) Bash
8 7 (2.54%) Ruby
9 5 (1.81%) PHP
9 5 (1.81%) VB.NET
10 4 (1.45%) C
10 4 (1.45%) C++
11 2 (0.72%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.72%) VB
12 1 (0.36%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.36%) Bicep
12 1 (0.36%) Perl
12 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 65 (23.55%) Security Cleared
2 46 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.71%) ISTQB
4 10 (3.62%) Degree
5 8 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.54%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (1.09%) CCNA
8 3 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.09%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.72%) CEH
9 2 (0.72%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.72%) MCSA
9 2 (0.72%) MCSE
9 2 (0.72%) OSCP
9 2 (0.72%) SANS
9 2 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (25.36%) QA
2 31 (11.23%) Accessibility
3 14 (5.07%) WCAG
4 4 (1.45%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.45%) NIST
5 2 (0.72%) EU AI Act
5 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.72%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.36%) HL7
6 1 (0.36%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 29 (10.51%) Docker
2 4 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.36%) Squid
Systems Management
1 17 (6.16%) Kubernetes
2 10 (3.62%) Grafana
3 9 (3.26%) Terraform
4 8 (2.90%) Ansible
5 4 (1.45%) Kibana
5 4 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.72%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 27 (9.78%) Microsoft
2 19 (6.88%) Cisco
3 9 (3.26%) Splunk
4 7 (2.54%) Meraki
4 7 (2.54%) Nokia
5 6 (2.17%) Juniper
5 6 (2.17%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.81%) Citrix
6 5 (1.81%) New Relic
6 5 (1.81%) Salesforce
6 5 (1.81%) UiPath
7 4 (1.45%) AppDynamics
7 4 (1.45%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.45%) Oracle
8 3 (1.09%) Databricks
8 3 (1.09%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.72%) Ciena
9 2 (0.72%) Optimizely
9 2 (0.72%) VMware
9 2 (0.72%) Workday