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 18 June 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 334 326
Rank change year-on-year +74 -8 +56
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 460 203 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 0.68% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.99% 0.74% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 126 192
10th Percentile £303 £283 £300
25th Percentile £359 £356 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £498 £538
90th Percentile £613 £638 £590
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +1.25% -11.11% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 21 33
10th Percentile £26.57 £34.75 £26.88
25th Percentile £29.00 £46.25 £35.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £54.88 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.23% +29.12% -19.05%
75th Percentile £61.50 £62.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £64.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £54.88 £42.50
% change year-on-year +0.23% +29.12% -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 46,545 27,461 40,758
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.26% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,281 17,668 26,127
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,104 1,179 2,967
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.97 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.79 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.56% -26.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +37 388 £430 +1.18% 168
UK excluding London +51 329 £405 +1.25% 171
North of England -5 94 £400 -4.76% 46
London -40 92 £435 +2.35% 18
Work from Home -15 78 £400 +2.30% 37
South East -41 59 £400 +33.33% 37
Midlands -7 58 £525 +20.00% 22
West Midlands -2 56 £525 +16.67% 18
East of England +9 50 £350 -6.67% 29
South West +14 44 £450 -18.18% 23
North West -5 41 £400 -10.11% 21
North East -9 33 £325 -18.75% 10
Yorkshire -48 26 £500 +18.34% 16
Scotland +8 25 £525 +10.82% 10
Wales -11 7 £300 -6.71% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 3
East Midlands -24 2 £400 -3.44% 4

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

For the 6 months to 18 June 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.

1 233 (50.65%) Test Automation
2 144 (31.30%) Security Cleared
3 139 (30.22%) CI/CD
4 111 (24.13%) SC Cleared
5 98 (21.30%) Agile
6 90 (19.57%) DevOps
7 86 (18.70%) Java
8 85 (18.48%) API Testing
9 84 (18.26%) Playwright
10 78 (16.96%) Selenium
11 77 (16.74%) Validation
12 73 (15.87%) Azure
13 71 (15.43%) AWS
14 70 (15.22%) Python
15 67 (14.57%) QA
15 67 (14.57%) Software Testing
16 65 (14.13%) Test Strategy
17 57 (12.39%) BDD
18 53 (11.52%) GitHub
18 53 (11.52%) Jenkins
18 53 (11.52%) Performance Testing
19 51 (11.09%) REST Assured
20 50 (10.87%) Cucumber
20 50 (10.87%) Microservices
21 49 (10.65%) JIRA
22 48 (10.43%) Azure DevOps
22 48 (10.43%) GitLab
23 47 (10.22%) JavaScript
23 47 (10.22%) Postman
24 45 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement

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 7 (1.52%) Confluence
2 4 (0.87%) Apache
2 4 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (0.87%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.87%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.22%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.22%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.74%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.65%) Findur
3 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 73 (15.87%) Azure
2 71 (15.43%) AWS
3 53 (11.52%) GitHub
4 48 (10.43%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (4.57%) GCP
5 21 (4.57%) GitHub Actions
6 11 (2.39%) BrowserStack
7 8 (1.74%) Power Platform
8 6 (1.30%) Entra ID
9 4 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 4 (0.87%) Amazon EMR
9 4 (0.87%) BlazeMeter
9 4 (0.87%) Microsoft 365
9 4 (0.87%) PowerApps
10 3 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (0.65%) Power Automate
10 3 (0.65%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 3 (0.65%) Serverless
11 2 (0.43%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 2 (0.43%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 15 (3.26%) LAN
2 12 (2.61%) Firewall
3 10 (2.17%) WAN
4 9 (1.96%) DHCP
4 9 (1.96%) DNS
4 9 (1.96%) TCP/IP
5 8 (1.74%) VLAN
5 8 (1.74%) VPN
6 7 (1.52%) MPLS
7 5 (1.09%) Broadband
7 5 (1.09%) Network Security
7 5 (1.09%) SD-WAN
7 5 (1.09%) SSL
8 4 (0.87%) BGP
8 4 (0.87%) Internet
8 4 (0.87%) OSPF
8 4 (0.87%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (0.43%) 4G
10 2 (0.43%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (4.78%) MongoDB
2 11 (2.39%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.30%) Big Data
4 5 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
5 4 (0.87%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.65%) Power BI
7 2 (0.43%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.43%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.43%) Tableau
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.22%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.22%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.22%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.22%) Flink
8 1 (0.22%) MySQL
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.22%) Power Query
8 1 (0.22%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 78 (16.96%) Selenium
2 53 (11.52%) Jenkins
3 51 (11.09%) REST Assured
4 50 (10.87%) Cucumber
5 49 (10.65%) JIRA
6 48 (10.43%) GitLab
7 47 (10.22%) Postman
8 35 (7.61%) JMeter
9 28 (6.09%) Gatling
10 26 (5.65%) Git
11 22 (4.78%) Cypress.io
12 15 (3.26%) LabVIEW
13 13 (2.83%) Serenity BDD
14 12 (2.61%) JUnit
14 12 (2.61%) WebDriver
14 12 (2.61%) Zephyr
15 8 (1.74%) Browser DevTools
15 8 (1.74%) HP UFT
16 7 (1.52%) MSTest
16 7 (1.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 58 (12.61%) Public Sector
2 50 (10.87%) Social Skills
3 33 (7.17%) Aerospace
3 33 (7.17%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (6.52%) Finance
5 26 (5.65%) Automotive
6 22 (4.78%) Electronics
7 14 (3.04%) Military
8 12 (2.61%) Manufacturing
9 10 (2.17%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.96%) Banking
11 6 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.87%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.65%) Marketing
14 2 (0.43%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.43%) Law
15 1 (0.22%) Legal
15 1 (0.22%) Legal Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (18.26%) Playwright
2 36 (7.83%) REST
3 22 (4.78%) Kafka
4 19 (4.13%) Spring Boot
5 18 (3.91%) Spring
6 14 (3.04%) RESTful
7 12 (2.61%) .NET
8 11 (2.39%) Node.js
8 11 (2.39%) React
8 11 (2.39%) Spring Cloud
9 9 (1.96%) Gherkin
9 9 (1.96%) pytest
10 6 (1.30%) HTML
10 6 (1.30%) Model Context Protocol
10 6 (1.30%) OpenTelemetry
11 4 (0.87%) Flask
11 4 (0.87%) Jest
11 4 (0.87%) OpenID
11 4 (0.87%) Pandas
11 4 (0.87%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 19 (4.13%) Product Ownership
2 17 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
3 15 (3.26%) Cloud Native
4 14 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
6 8 (1.74%) AI Agents
6 8 (1.74%) Infotainment
7 7 (1.52%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.09%) NHS
9 3 (0.65%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (0.65%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.65%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 2 (0.43%) Analogue Electronics
10 2 (0.43%) Data Centre
10 2 (0.43%) Fibre Optics
10 2 (0.43%) Hedge funds
10 2 (0.43%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.43%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 16 (3.48%) Windows
2 9 (1.96%) Linux
3 6 (1.30%) Mac OS
4 4 (0.87%) Unix
5 3 (0.65%) Android
6 2 (0.43%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (50.65%) Test Automation
2 139 (30.22%) CI/CD
3 98 (21.30%) Agile
4 90 (19.57%) DevOps
5 85 (18.48%) API Testing
6 77 (16.74%) Validation
7 67 (14.57%) Software Testing
8 65 (14.13%) Test Strategy
9 57 (12.39%) BDD
10 53 (11.52%) Performance Testing
11 50 (10.87%) Microservices
12 45 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
12 45 (9.78%) Integration Testing
12 45 (9.78%) Test Scripting
13 43 (9.35%) Non-Functional Testing
14 42 (9.13%) Problem-Solving
15 38 (8.26%) End-to-End Testing
15 38 (8.26%) Regression Testing
16 36 (7.83%) Manual Testing
16 36 (7.83%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 86 (18.70%) Java
2 70 (15.22%) Python
3 47 (10.22%) JavaScript
4 37 (8.04%) SQL
5 31 (6.74%) C#
6 30 (6.52%) TypeScript
7 14 (3.04%) Bash
8 9 (1.96%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.52%) Apex Code
9 7 (1.52%) Ruby
9 7 (1.52%) VBScript
10 6 (1.30%) C++
10 6 (1.30%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.09%) C
12 4 (0.87%) Scala
13 2 (0.43%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.43%) Cypher
13 2 (0.43%) Groovy
13 2 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.43%) Swift
Qualifications
1 144 (31.30%) Security Cleared
2 111 (24.13%) SC Cleared
3 25 (5.43%) ISTQB
4 15 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.39%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 10 (2.17%) Degree
7 7 (1.52%) HNC
8 6 (1.30%) HND
9 4 (0.87%) CCNP
9 4 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.65%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.43%) CCNA
11 2 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.22%) CCIP
12 1 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) Six Sigma Black Belt
12 1 (0.22%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (14.57%) QA
2 42 (9.13%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.39%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.30%) WCAG
5 4 (0.87%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.43%) NCSC
7 1 (0.22%) GDPR
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 9001
7 1 (0.22%) MIL-STD-1553
7 1 (0.22%) NIST
7 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 44 (9.57%) Docker
2 6 (1.30%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.65%) Firmware
3 3 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 2 (0.43%) VirtualBox
4 2 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.22%) Squid
Systems Management
1 22 (4.78%) Grafana
2 21 (4.57%) Prometheus
3 18 (3.91%) Kubernetes
4 15 (3.26%) Terraform
5 7 (1.52%) Kibana
6 5 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.65%) HP ALM
8 2 (0.43%) Ansible
8 2 (0.43%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.22%) Iperf
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 23 (5.00%) Salesforce
2 18 (3.91%) Splunk
3 17 (3.70%) Microsoft
4 8 (1.74%) Conga
4 8 (1.74%) EMC
4 8 (1.74%) GoCardless
5 7 (1.52%) Cisco
5 7 (1.52%) Citrix
5 7 (1.52%) Dynatrace
6 6 (1.30%) Google
7 5 (1.09%) ServiceNow
8 4 (0.87%) Databricks
8 4 (0.87%) HP
8 4 (0.87%) Juniper
8 4 (0.87%) Pega
8 4 (0.87%) Zscaler
9 3 (0.65%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.65%) IBM
9 3 (0.65%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.65%) UiPath