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 19 April 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 295 315 312
Rank change year-on-year +20 -3 +70
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 367 218 292
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.79% 0.74% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.86% 0.80% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 147 207
10th Percentile £303 £306 £300
25th Percentile £370 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £431 £425
Median % change year-on-year -1.28% +1.29% -15.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £517
90th Percentile £623 £624 £577
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -8.33% +5.88% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 16 31
10th Percentile £28.24 £36.97 £28.75
25th Percentile £31.25 £50.00 £35.38
Median hourly rate £52.50 £56.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +32.35% -24.44%
75th Percentile £61.84 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.13 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £56.25 £42.50
% change year-on-year -6.67% +32.35% -24.44%

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 42,592 27,248 40,561
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.60% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,414 17,867 26,505
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,707 994 2,611
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.55 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.73% -13.00% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.70 £75.43 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £36.27
% change year-on-year +45.64% -18.60% -14.17%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -13 308 £425 -2.86% 175
UK excluding London -5 240 £413 -8.33% 184
London -39 91 £425 - 20
North of England -24 75 £400 +9.22% 44
Work from Home -25 63 £400 -9.86% 36
Midlands -15 61 £525 +20.00% 12
West Midlands -7 56 £550 +53.85% 9
South East -55 41 £400 -23.81% 45
East of England -14 29 £338 -10.00% 47
Yorkshire -34 29 £500 +33.33% 9
North East +2 25 £400 +29.03% 4
North West -28 24 £378 +0.67% 31
South West -22 16 £400 -23.81% 17
Scotland +9 12 £313 -33.93% 18
Wales -3 10 £440 +36.82% 6
East Midlands -33 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 19 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.

1 214 (58.31%) Test Automation
2 114 (31.06%) CI/CD
3 111 (30.25%) Security Cleared
4 92 (25.07%) Agile
5 89 (24.25%) SC Cleared
6 80 (21.80%) Azure
7 74 (20.16%) Selenium
8 72 (19.62%) DevOps
8 72 (19.62%) QA
9 69 (18.80%) Java
10 68 (18.53%) Python
11 65 (17.71%) JIRA
12 62 (16.89%) API Testing
13 59 (16.08%) AWS
14 57 (15.53%) Playwright
15 55 (14.99%) Manual Testing
16 53 (14.44%) Postman
17 52 (14.17%) Cucumber
18 49 (13.35%) Performance Testing
18 49 (13.35%) Test Scripting
18 49 (13.35%) Test Strategy
19 48 (13.08%) JavaScript
20 47 (12.81%) Jenkins
20 47 (12.81%) Software Testing
21 44 (11.99%) BDD
21 44 (11.99%) Regression Testing
21 44 (11.99%) Validation
22 43 (11.72%) Azure DevOps
23 40 (10.90%) Functional Testing
23 40 (10.90%) GitLab

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 (2.72%) Confluence
2 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.27%) SAS
2 1 (0.27%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.27%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.82%) Findur
2 2 (0.54%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.27%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 80 (21.80%) Azure
2 59 (16.08%) AWS
3 43 (11.72%) Azure DevOps
4 37 (10.08%) GitHub
5 21 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (4.90%) GCP
7 12 (3.27%) BrowserStack
8 7 (1.91%) BlazeMeter
9 6 (1.63%) Entra ID
9 6 (1.63%) Serverless
10 5 (1.36%) Power Platform
10 5 (1.36%) Tricentis Tosca
11 4 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (1.09%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.09%) SaaS
12 3 (0.82%) Power Automate
12 3 (0.82%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 2 (0.54%) AWS CodePipeline
13 2 (0.54%) Azure Sentinel
13 2 (0.54%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.72%) Firewall
1 10 (2.72%) LAN
1 10 (2.72%) WAN
2 8 (2.18%) DHCP
2 8 (2.18%) DNS
2 8 (2.18%) SD-WAN
3 7 (1.91%) TCP/IP
3 7 (1.91%) VPN
4 6 (1.63%) VLAN
5 5 (1.36%) Broadband
5 5 (1.36%) Network Security
5 5 (1.36%) SSL
6 4 (1.09%) BGP
6 4 (1.09%) Internet
6 4 (1.09%) MPLS
6 4 (1.09%) OSPF
6 4 (1.09%) Spanning Tree
6 4 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (1.09%) Wireshark
7 3 (0.82%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (2.45%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.91%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.63%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.36%) MySQL
5 3 (0.82%) Big Data
6 2 (0.54%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.54%) Power BI
6 2 (0.54%) Tableau
7 1 (0.27%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.27%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.27%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.27%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.27%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.27%) MS Access
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.27%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 74 (20.16%) Selenium
2 65 (17.71%) JIRA
3 53 (14.44%) Postman
4 52 (14.17%) Cucumber
5 47 (12.81%) Jenkins
6 40 (10.90%) GitLab
7 35 (9.54%) REST Assured
8 32 (8.72%) Git
9 30 (8.17%) JMeter
10 16 (4.36%) Cypress.io
11 13 (3.54%) Gatling
11 13 (3.54%) Zephyr
12 9 (2.45%) JUnit
12 9 (2.45%) WebDriver
13 8 (2.18%) Browser DevTools
13 8 (2.18%) LabVIEW
13 8 (2.18%) Serenity BDD
13 8 (2.18%) TestRail
14 7 (1.91%) Appium
14 7 (1.91%) HP UFT
General
1 54 (14.71%) Public Sector
2 44 (11.99%) Social Skills
3 36 (9.81%) Finance
4 28 (7.63%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (5.45%) Automotive
6 17 (4.63%) Aerospace
7 13 (3.54%) Electronics
8 11 (3.00%) Military
8 11 (3.00%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.72%) Banking
10 5 (1.36%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.82%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.82%) Marketing
13 1 (0.27%) Avionics
13 1 (0.27%) German Language
13 1 (0.27%) Law
13 1 (0.27%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.27%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (15.53%) Playwright
2 35 (9.54%) REST
3 10 (2.72%) Gherkin
3 10 (2.72%) Kafka
3 10 (2.72%) RESTful
4 9 (2.45%) .NET
4 9 (2.45%) LDAP
4 9 (2.45%) Node.js
4 9 (2.45%) OpenID
4 9 (2.45%) SailPoint
5 7 (1.91%) Spring
5 7 (1.91%) Spring Boot
6 6 (1.63%) HTML
6 6 (1.63%) pytest
6 6 (1.63%) Spring Cloud
6 6 (1.63%) WebdriverIO
6 6 (1.63%) WireMock
7 5 (1.36%) React
7 5 (1.36%) SAML
7 5 (1.36%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.08%) Product Ownership
2 10 (2.72%) Self-Motivation
3 9 (2.45%) Cloud Native
3 9 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.18%) Infotainment
5 7 (1.91%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.09%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.09%) Management Information System
8 3 (0.82%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.82%) Fibre Optics
8 3 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.54%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.54%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (0.54%) NHS
9 2 (0.54%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.54%) PKI
9 2 (0.54%) Synthetic Data
10 1 (0.27%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.63%) Windows
2 6 (1.63%) Android
2 6 (1.63%) Mac OS
3 5 (1.36%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.36%) Linux
4 2 (0.54%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.27%) Unix
5 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (58.31%) Test Automation
2 114 (31.06%) CI/CD
3 92 (25.07%) Agile
4 72 (19.62%) DevOps
5 62 (16.89%) API Testing
6 55 (14.99%) Manual Testing
7 49 (13.35%) Performance Testing
7 49 (13.35%) Test Scripting
7 49 (13.35%) Test Strategy
8 47 (12.81%) Software Testing
9 44 (11.99%) BDD
9 44 (11.99%) Regression Testing
9 44 (11.99%) Validation
10 40 (10.90%) Functional Testing
11 38 (10.35%) Microservices
12 35 (9.54%) Continuous Improvement
12 35 (9.54%) Scenario Testing
13 34 (9.26%) Problem-Solving
14 32 (8.72%) Non-Functional Testing
15 29 (7.90%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 69 (18.80%) Java
2 68 (18.53%) Python
3 48 (13.08%) JavaScript
4 34 (9.26%) TypeScript
5 28 (7.63%) SQL
6 22 (5.99%) C#
7 13 (3.54%) Ruby
8 11 (3.00%) Bash
9 9 (2.45%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.91%) VBScript
11 5 (1.36%) C
11 5 (1.36%) C++
11 5 (1.36%) PHP
12 3 (0.82%) Scala
13 2 (0.54%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.54%) Bicep
13 2 (0.54%) Cypher
13 2 (0.54%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.54%) Swift
Qualifications
1 111 (30.25%) Security Cleared
2 89 (24.25%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.54%) ISTQB
4 17 (4.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (2.45%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.63%) Degree
8 5 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.09%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.82%) CCNP
10 3 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.54%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.54%) CCNA
11 2 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.27%) CREST Certified
12 1 (0.27%) OSCP
12 1 (0.27%) Six Sigma Black Belt
12 1 (0.27%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (19.62%) QA
2 39 (10.63%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.72%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.63%) WCAG
5 5 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.09%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.54%) NCSC
7 2 (0.54%) NIST
8 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.27%) GDPR
8 1 (0.27%) HL7
8 1 (0.27%) ISO 14001
8 1 (0.27%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.27%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.27%) ISO 9001
8 1 (0.27%) MIL-STD-1553
8 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.27%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 37 (10.08%) Docker
2 7 (1.91%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.54%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.54%) Firmware
5 1 (0.27%) Squid
5 1 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 13 (3.54%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.27%) Grafana
3 11 (3.00%) Prometheus
4 7 (1.91%) Terraform
5 5 (1.36%) HP ALM
5 5 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.27%) Ansible
7 1 (0.27%) Iperf
7 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 23 (6.27%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.27%) Citrix
3 10 (2.72%) ServiceNow
4 8 (2.18%) Salesforce
4 8 (2.18%) Splunk
5 7 (1.91%) Cisco
5 7 (1.91%) Dynatrace
6 6 (1.63%) HP
7 4 (1.09%) Databricks
7 4 (1.09%) Zscaler
8 3 (0.82%) Google
8 3 (0.82%) Meraki
8 3 (0.82%) OpenLink
8 3 (0.82%) Pega
8 3 (0.82%) SAP
8 3 (0.82%) UiPath
9 2 (0.54%) Ciena
9 2 (0.54%) EMC
9 2 (0.54%) Fortinet
9 2 (0.54%) Optimizely