Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £418, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 April 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 308 317
Rank change year-on-year +6 +9 +77
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 361 220 293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.79% 0.75% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.85% 0.81% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 147 207
10th Percentile £303 £305 £315
25th Percentile £368 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -4.57% +2.94% -15.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £515
90th Percentile £625 £626 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £411 £468 £425
% change year-on-year -12.03% +10.00% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 15 32
10th Percentile £28.24 £35.37 £29.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £50.53 £35.56
Median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +39.39% -31.92%
75th Percentile £61.84 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.25 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £41.25
% change year-on-year -8.70% +39.39% -31.92%

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 42,306 27,128 40,399
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.60% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,259 17,804 26,404
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £627 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,679 980 2,578
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.65 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.26 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.86 £31.42 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.20% -10.22% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.58 £72.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.28% -14.29% -17.38%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -26 303 £418 -4.57% 151
UK excluding London +10 235 £411 -12.03% 166
London -49 91 £425 - 12
North of England -22 73 £400 +9.22% 38
Work from Home -20 61 £398 -13.59% 33
Midlands -11 60 £525 +20.00% 15
West Midlands -7 55 £550 +53.85% 12
South East -55 41 £400 -23.81% 41
East of England -11 30 £338 -10.00% 38
Yorkshire -31 29 £500 +33.33% 4
North West -27 25 £390 +4.00% 27
North East -5 22 £375 +20.97% 7
South West -28 13 £400 -23.81% 15
Scotland +11 12 £313 -33.93% 19
Wales -5 10 £440 +36.82% 5
East Midlands -32 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 15 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.

1 210 (58.17%) Test Automation
2 112 (31.02%) CI/CD
3 110 (30.47%) Security Cleared
4 91 (25.21%) Agile
5 87 (24.10%) SC Cleared
6 78 (21.61%) Azure
7 73 (20.22%) DevOps
7 73 (20.22%) Selenium
8 72 (19.94%) QA
9 66 (18.28%) Python
10 65 (18.01%) Java
11 64 (17.73%) JIRA
12 62 (17.17%) API Testing
13 57 (15.79%) Playwright
14 55 (15.24%) AWS
15 53 (14.68%) Manual Testing
16 52 (14.40%) Postman
17 51 (14.13%) Cucumber
18 50 (13.85%) Test Strategy
19 49 (13.57%) Performance Testing
20 48 (13.30%) Software Testing
20 48 (13.30%) Test Scripting
21 47 (13.02%) JavaScript
21 47 (13.02%) Jenkins
22 44 (12.19%) Azure DevOps
22 44 (12.19%) BDD
22 44 (12.19%) Regression Testing
23 42 (11.63%) Validation
24 41 (11.36%) Functional Testing
24 41 (11.36%) 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 (2.77%) Confluence
2 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.28%) SAS
2 1 (0.28%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) 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
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 78 (21.61%) Azure
2 55 (15.24%) AWS
3 44 (12.19%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (9.97%) GitHub
5 21 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
6 16 (4.43%) GCP
7 12 (3.32%) BrowserStack
8 8 (2.22%) BlazeMeter
9 6 (1.66%) Entra ID
9 6 (1.66%) Serverless
10 5 (1.39%) Tricentis Tosca
11 4 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (1.11%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.11%) Power Platform
11 4 (1.11%) SaaS
12 3 (0.83%) Power Automate
12 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 2 (0.55%) AWS CodePipeline
13 2 (0.55%) Azure Sentinel
13 2 (0.55%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.77%) Firewall
1 10 (2.77%) LAN
1 10 (2.77%) WAN
2 9 (2.49%) DHCP
2 9 (2.49%) DNS
3 8 (2.22%) SD-WAN
3 8 (2.22%) TCP/IP
4 7 (1.94%) VPN
5 6 (1.66%) VLAN
6 5 (1.39%) Broadband
6 5 (1.39%) Network Security
6 5 (1.39%) SSL
7 4 (1.11%) BGP
7 4 (1.11%) Internet
7 4 (1.11%) MPLS
7 4 (1.11%) OSPF
7 4 (1.11%) Spanning Tree
7 4 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (1.11%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.83%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.22%) MongoDB
2 7 (1.94%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.66%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.39%) 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 73 (20.22%) Selenium
2 64 (17.73%) JIRA
3 52 (14.40%) Postman
4 51 (14.13%) Cucumber
5 47 (13.02%) Jenkins
6 41 (11.36%) GitLab
7 34 (9.42%) REST Assured
8 31 (8.59%) Git
9 30 (8.31%) JMeter
10 16 (4.43%) Cypress.io
11 13 (3.60%) Gatling
12 12 (3.32%) Zephyr
13 9 (2.49%) JUnit
14 8 (2.22%) Browser DevTools
14 8 (2.22%) LabVIEW
14 8 (2.22%) Serenity BDD
14 8 (2.22%) TestRail
14 8 (2.22%) WebDriver
15 7 (1.94%) Appium
15 7 (1.94%) HP UFT
General
1 53 (14.68%) Public Sector
2 44 (12.19%) Social Skills
3 34 (9.42%) Finance
4 25 (6.93%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (5.26%) Automotive
6 16 (4.43%) Aerospace
7 13 (3.60%) Electronics
8 11 (3.05%) Military
8 11 (3.05%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.94%) Banking
10 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.83%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.83%) Marketing
12 2 (0.55%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Avionics
13 1 (0.28%) German Language
13 1 (0.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.28%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (15.79%) Playwright
2 36 (9.97%) REST
3 10 (2.77%) .NET
3 10 (2.77%) Gherkin
3 10 (2.77%) Kafka
3 10 (2.77%) RESTful
4 9 (2.49%) LDAP
4 9 (2.49%) Node.js
4 9 (2.49%) OpenID
4 9 (2.49%) SailPoint
5 8 (2.22%) Spring
6 7 (1.94%) pytest
6 7 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 6 (1.66%) Spring Cloud
7 6 (1.66%) WebdriverIO
7 6 (1.66%) WireMock
8 5 (1.39%) HTML
8 5 (1.39%) React
8 5 (1.39%) SAML
8 5 (1.39%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.20%) Product Ownership
2 10 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
3 9 (2.49%) Cloud Native
3 9 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.22%) Infotainment
5 7 (1.94%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.11%) Hedge funds
7 4 (1.11%) Management Information System
8 3 (0.83%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.83%) Fibre Optics
8 3 (0.83%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.55%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (0.55%) NHS
9 2 (0.55%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.55%) PKI
9 2 (0.55%) Synthetic Data
10 1 (0.28%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.99%) Windows
2 7 (1.94%) Linux
3 6 (1.66%) Android
3 6 (1.66%) Mac OS
4 5 (1.39%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.28%) Unix
6 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (58.17%) Test Automation
2 112 (31.02%) CI/CD
3 91 (25.21%) Agile
4 73 (20.22%) DevOps
5 62 (17.17%) API Testing
6 53 (14.68%) Manual Testing
7 50 (13.85%) Test Strategy
8 49 (13.57%) Performance Testing
9 48 (13.30%) Software Testing
9 48 (13.30%) Test Scripting
10 44 (12.19%) BDD
10 44 (12.19%) Regression Testing
11 42 (11.63%) Validation
12 41 (11.36%) Functional Testing
13 37 (10.25%) Microservices
14 34 (9.42%) Scenario Testing
15 33 (9.14%) Non-Functional Testing
16 32 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
17 31 (8.59%) Problem-Solving
18 29 (8.03%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 66 (18.28%) Python
2 65 (18.01%) Java
3 47 (13.02%) JavaScript
4 34 (9.42%) TypeScript
5 28 (7.76%) SQL
6 22 (6.09%) C#
7 12 (3.32%) Bash
7 12 (3.32%) Ruby
8 9 (2.49%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.94%) VBScript
10 5 (1.39%) C
10 5 (1.39%) C++
10 5 (1.39%) 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
1 110 (30.47%) Security Cleared
2 87 (24.10%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.65%) ISTQB
4 17 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.77%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.66%) Degree
8 5 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.11%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.83%) CCNP
10 3 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.55%) CCNA
11 2 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.28%) CREST Certified
12 1 (0.28%) OSCP
12 1 (0.28%) SANS
12 1 (0.28%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (19.94%) QA
2 37 (10.25%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.77%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.66%) WCAG
5 5 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.11%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.55%) NCSC
7 2 (0.55%) NIST
8 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.28%) GDPR
8 1 (0.28%) HL7
8 1 (0.28%) ISO 14001
8 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
8 1 (0.28%) MIL-STD-1553
8 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 36 (9.97%) Docker
2 7 (1.94%) 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 14 (3.88%) Kubernetes
2 13 (3.60%) Grafana
3 11 (3.05%) Prometheus
4 8 (2.22%) Terraform
5 5 (1.39%) HP ALM
5 5 (1.39%) 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 21 (5.82%) Microsoft
2 12 (3.32%) Citrix
3 10 (2.77%) ServiceNow
4 9 (2.49%) Salesforce
5 8 (2.22%) Splunk
6 7 (1.94%) Cisco
6 7 (1.94%) Dynatrace
7 6 (1.66%) HP
8 4 (1.11%) Databricks
8 4 (1.11%) 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
9 3 (0.83%) UiPath
10 2 (0.55%) Ciena
10 2 (0.55%) EMC
10 2 (0.55%) Fortinet
10 2 (0.55%) Optimizely