Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £415, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 April 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 287 330 318
Rank change year-on-year +43 -12 +70
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 388 205 293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 0.70% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.89% 0.76% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 138 205
10th Percentile £300 £310 £300
25th Percentile £368 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £434 £425
Median % change year-on-year -4.38% +2.12% -15.00%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £515
90th Percentile £622 £637 £580
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -8.89% +5.88% -11.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 17 30
10th Percentile £28.24 £38.56 £26.88
25th Percentile £33.44 £50.00 £35.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +35.29% -19.05%
75th Percentile £61.76 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.00 £62.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.35% +35.29% -19.05%

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 43,468 27,008 40,187
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.57% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,813 17,658 26,169
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £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 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £491
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.27% -1.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,818 1,032 2,646
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.43 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.69 £29.15 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +49.88% -18.93% -20.10%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.23 £28.75 £37.75
% change year-on-year +57.32% -23.84% -11.18%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +24 323 £418 -4.57% 141
UK excluding London +28 261 £410 -8.89% 151
London -63 91 £425 - 9
North of England -17 75 £400 +9.22% 34
Work from Home -18 65 £400 -8.57% 38
Midlands -9 63 £525 +20.00% 17
West Midlands -3 58 £550 +53.85% 13
South East -59 49 £400 -23.81% 36
East of England -11 35 £350 -6.67% 32
Yorkshire -38 28 £500 +33.33% 7
North West -12 27 £378 +0.67% 22
North East 0 23 £400 +21.21% 5
Scotland +13 17 £313 -33.93% 11
South West -25 16 £400 -25.58% 20
Wales -6 11 £433 +34.49% 4
East Midlands -40 5 £400 -8.57% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 217 (55.93%) Test Automation
2 113 (29.12%) CI/CD
3 109 (28.09%) Security Cleared
4 88 (22.68%) Agile
4 88 (22.68%) SC Cleared
5 81 (20.88%) Azure
6 75 (19.33%) Java
7 74 (19.07%) Selenium
8 72 (18.56%) DevOps
8 72 (18.56%) QA
9 67 (17.27%) Python
10 62 (15.98%) JIRA
11 60 (15.46%) API Testing
12 59 (15.21%) Manual Testing
13 58 (14.95%) Playwright
14 57 (14.69%) AWS
15 52 (13.40%) Cucumber
16 51 (13.14%) Postman
16 51 (13.14%) Test Scripting
16 51 (13.14%) Test Strategy
17 50 (12.89%) Software Testing
18 49 (12.63%) Performance Testing
19 48 (12.37%) Jenkins
20 47 (12.11%) BDD
21 46 (11.86%) Validation
22 45 (11.60%) Azure DevOps
22 45 (11.60%) JavaScript
23 44 (11.34%) Regression Testing
24 39 (10.05%) GitHub
24 39 (10.05%) 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 9 (2.32%) Confluence
2 1 (0.26%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.77%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.26%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 3 (0.77%) Findur
2 2 (0.52%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 81 (20.88%) Azure
2 57 (14.69%) AWS
3 45 (11.60%) Azure DevOps
4 39 (10.05%) GitHub
5 21 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (4.64%) GCP
7 12 (3.09%) BrowserStack
8 7 (1.80%) BlazeMeter
8 7 (1.80%) Power Platform
9 6 (1.55%) Entra ID
10 4 (1.03%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.03%) Power Automate
10 4 (1.03%) SaaS
10 4 (1.03%) Serverless
10 4 (1.03%) Tricentis Tosca
11 3 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (0.77%) PowerApps
11 3 (0.77%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 2 (0.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (0.52%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.09%) LAN
2 11 (2.84%) WAN
3 10 (2.58%) Firewall
4 8 (2.06%) DHCP
4 8 (2.06%) DNS
4 8 (2.06%) SD-WAN
4 8 (2.06%) VPN
5 7 (1.80%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.55%) VLAN
7 5 (1.29%) Broadband
7 5 (1.29%) MPLS
7 5 (1.29%) Network Security
7 5 (1.29%) SSL
7 5 (1.29%) Wireshark
8 4 (1.03%) BGP
8 4 (1.03%) Internet
8 4 (1.03%) OSPF
8 4 (1.03%) Spanning Tree
8 4 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.58%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.80%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.55%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.29%) MySQL
5 3 (0.77%) Big Data
5 3 (0.77%) Power BI
6 2 (0.52%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.52%) Tableau
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.26%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.26%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.26%) Flink
7 1 (0.26%) MS Access
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.26%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 74 (19.07%) Selenium
2 62 (15.98%) JIRA
3 52 (13.40%) Cucumber
4 51 (13.14%) Postman
5 48 (12.37%) Jenkins
6 39 (10.05%) GitLab
7 35 (9.02%) REST Assured
8 31 (7.99%) Git
9 30 (7.73%) JMeter
10 14 (3.61%) Cypress.io
11 13 (3.35%) Zephyr
12 12 (3.09%) Gatling
12 12 (3.09%) WebDriver
13 10 (2.58%) LabVIEW
14 9 (2.32%) JUnit
15 8 (2.06%) Browser DevTools
15 8 (2.06%) HP UFT
15 8 (2.06%) Serenity BDD
16 7 (1.80%) MSTest
16 7 (1.80%) TestRail
General
1 48 (12.37%) Public Sector
2 39 (10.05%) Social Skills
3 37 (9.54%) Finance
4 30 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (6.70%) Aerospace
6 22 (5.67%) Automotive
7 14 (3.61%) Electronics
8 12 (3.09%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.58%) Banking
9 10 (2.58%) Military
10 5 (1.29%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.77%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.77%) Marketing
13 1 (0.26%) Avionics
13 1 (0.26%) Front Office
13 1 (0.26%) German Language
13 1 (0.26%) Law
13 1 (0.26%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (14.95%) Playwright
2 34 (8.76%) REST
3 12 (3.09%) Kafka
4 10 (2.58%) .NET
4 10 (2.58%) Gherkin
4 10 (2.58%) RESTful
5 9 (2.32%) LDAP
5 9 (2.32%) Node.js
5 9 (2.32%) OpenID
5 9 (2.32%) SailPoint
6 7 (1.80%) Spring
6 7 (1.80%) Spring Boot
7 6 (1.55%) HTML
7 6 (1.55%) Spring Cloud
7 6 (1.55%) WebdriverIO
8 5 (1.29%) pytest
8 5 (1.29%) SAML
8 5 (1.29%) WireMock
9 4 (1.03%) OAuth
9 4 (1.03%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.44%) Product Ownership
2 10 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
3 8 (2.06%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
3 8 (2.06%) Infotainment
4 7 (1.80%) Mobile App
5 5 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.03%) Hedge funds
6 4 (1.03%) Management Information System
7 3 (0.77%) Data Centre
7 3 (0.77%) Fibre Optics
7 3 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (0.77%) NHS
8 2 (0.52%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.52%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.52%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.52%) PKI
8 2 (0.52%) Synthetic Data
9 1 (0.26%) CMDB
9 1 (0.26%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.38%) Windows
2 6 (1.55%) Android
2 6 (1.55%) Mac OS
3 5 (1.29%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.29%) Linux
4 2 (0.52%) Unix
4 2 (0.52%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (55.93%) Test Automation
2 113 (29.12%) CI/CD
3 88 (22.68%) Agile
4 72 (18.56%) DevOps
5 60 (15.46%) API Testing
6 59 (15.21%) Manual Testing
7 51 (13.14%) Test Scripting
7 51 (13.14%) Test Strategy
8 50 (12.89%) Software Testing
9 49 (12.63%) Performance Testing
10 47 (12.11%) BDD
11 46 (11.86%) Validation
12 44 (11.34%) Regression Testing
13 37 (9.54%) Microservices
14 36 (9.28%) Functional Testing
14 36 (9.28%) Problem-Solving
15 34 (8.76%) Scenario Testing
16 32 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
17 29 (7.47%) Integration Testing
17 29 (7.47%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 75 (19.33%) Java
2 67 (17.27%) Python
3 45 (11.60%) JavaScript
4 32 (8.25%) TypeScript
5 30 (7.73%) SQL
6 25 (6.44%) C#
7 12 (3.09%) Ruby
8 11 (2.84%) Bash
9 9 (2.32%) PowerShell
10 7 (1.80%) VBScript
11 5 (1.29%) C
11 5 (1.29%) C++
11 5 (1.29%) PHP
12 3 (0.77%) Scala
13 2 (0.52%) Bicep
13 2 (0.52%) Cypher
13 2 (0.52%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.52%) Swift
13 2 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 109 (28.09%) Security Cleared
2 88 (22.68%) SC Cleared
3 21 (5.41%) ISTQB
4 16 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.06%) Degree
6 7 (1.80%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (1.03%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.03%) CCNP
8 4 (1.03%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.77%) HNC
9 3 (0.77%) HND
10 2 (0.52%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.52%) CCNA
10 2 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.26%) Six Sigma Black Belt
11 1 (0.26%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 1 (0.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (18.56%) QA
2 38 (9.79%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.58%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.29%) WCAG
5 4 (1.03%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.52%) NCSC
7 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.26%) GDPR
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.26%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.26%) NIST
7 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 36 (9.28%) Docker
2 7 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.77%) Firmware
3 3 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.52%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 1 (0.26%) Squid
5 1 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 13 (3.35%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.09%) Grafana
3 11 (2.84%) Prometheus
4 7 (1.80%) Terraform
5 5 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (1.03%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.26%) Ansible
8 1 (0.26%) Iperf
8 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 23 (5.93%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.09%) Citrix
3 10 (2.58%) ServiceNow
4 8 (2.06%) Cisco
4 8 (2.06%) Salesforce
4 8 (2.06%) Splunk
5 7 (1.80%) Dynatrace
6 5 (1.29%) HP
7 4 (1.03%) Pega
7 4 (1.03%) UiPath
7 4 (1.03%) Zscaler
8 3 (0.77%) Databricks
8 3 (0.77%) EMC
8 3 (0.77%) Fortinet
8 3 (0.77%) Google
8 3 (0.77%) Meraki
8 3 (0.77%) OpenLink
9 2 (0.52%) Bloomberg
9 2 (0.52%) Oracle
9 2 (0.52%) SAP