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 7 March 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 325 329 304
Rank change year-on-year +4 -25 +82
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 336 205 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.79% 0.67% 0.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.86% 0.72% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 137 234
10th Percentile £300 £305 £350
25th Percentile £363 £356 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.94% -10.53%
75th Percentile £528 £538 £512
90th Percentile £631 £606 £556
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £468 £425
% change year-on-year -11.76% +10.00% -8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 12 35
10th Percentile £28.25 £29.80 £29.75
25th Percentile £31.69 £48.63 £35.75
Median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -42.40% +47.06% -29.17%
75th Percentile £61.84 - £59.44
90th Percentile £67.10 £63.63 £62.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £62.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -42.40% +47.06% -29.46%

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 39,253 28,458 41,733
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.91% 92.86% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,589 18,093 27,411
10th Percentile £310 £293 £273
25th Percentile £409 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,404 876 2,465
10th Percentile £14.84 £16.17 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.89 £21.39 £16.25
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +6.06% -18.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.17 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year +2.06% -1.71% -14.67%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -18 283 £425 -2.86% 152
UK excluding London +6 214 £413 -11.76% 158
London -25 87 £435 +2.35% 21
North of England -14 81 £413 +14.19% 31
Work from Home -16 62 £400 -15.79% 50
Midlands -29 47 £550 +34.80% 26
West Midlands -19 41 £628 +104.07% 23
Yorkshire -28 38 £475 +26.67% 7
South East -50 30 £386 -26.48% 37
North East +3 25 £413 +29.92% 3
East of England -8 24 £363 -9.38% 23
North West -26 21 £373 -0.67% 21
South West -27 14 £413 -21.43% 20
Wales +8 10 £433 - 2
Scotland +18 9 £65 -86.28% 21
East Midlands -30 6 £400 -6.81% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 7 March 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 (63.69%) Test Automation
2 125 (37.20%) CI/CD
3 99 (29.46%) Agile
3 99 (29.46%) Security Cleared
4 86 (25.60%) QA
5 77 (22.92%) Java
6 76 (22.62%) Azure
6 76 (22.62%) Selenium
7 73 (21.73%) SC Cleared
8 70 (20.83%) API Testing
8 70 (20.83%) AWS
9 67 (19.94%) Cucumber
9 67 (19.94%) DevOps
10 65 (19.35%) Playwright
11 64 (19.05%) JIRA
12 61 (18.15%) Python
13 57 (16.96%) Test Scripting
14 56 (16.67%) Test Strategy
15 54 (16.07%) Performance Testing
16 53 (15.77%) Postman
17 52 (15.48%) JavaScript
17 52 (15.48%) Jenkins
18 51 (15.18%) BDD
18 51 (15.18%) GitLab
18 51 (15.18%) Manual Testing
19 50 (14.88%) Software Testing
20 49 (14.58%) Microservices
21 47 (13.99%) Accessibility
22 44 (13.10%) Docker
22 44 (13.10%) Functional Testing

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 14 (4.17%) Confluence
2 3 (0.89%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.30%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.30%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 2 (0.60%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.30%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.30%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 76 (22.62%) Azure
2 70 (20.83%) AWS
3 36 (10.71%) Azure DevOps
4 31 (9.23%) GitHub
5 19 (5.65%) GCP
6 18 (5.36%) GitHub Actions
7 13 (3.87%) BrowserStack
8 9 (2.68%) Serverless
9 8 (2.38%) BlazeMeter
10 6 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.49%) Power Platform
11 5 (1.49%) SaaS
11 5 (1.49%) Tricentis Tosca
12 4 (1.19%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (0.89%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.89%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.89%) PowerApps
14 2 (0.60%) Amazon EKS
14 2 (0.60%) AWS CodePipeline
14 2 (0.60%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.38%) Firewall
2 5 (1.49%) Broadband
2 5 (1.49%) DHCP
2 5 (1.49%) DNS
2 5 (1.49%) WAN
3 4 (1.19%) BGP
3 4 (1.19%) LAN
3 4 (1.19%) MPLS
3 4 (1.19%) OSPF
3 4 (1.19%) SD-WAN
3 4 (1.19%) TCP/IP
3 4 (1.19%) VLAN
3 4 (1.19%) VPN
3 4 (1.19%) Wireshark
4 3 (0.89%) 4G
4 3 (0.89%) 5G
4 3 (0.89%) Cisco IOS
4 3 (0.89%) SSH
4 3 (0.89%) TACACS
4 3 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.57%) MongoDB
2 6 (1.79%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.49%) MySQL
3 5 (1.49%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.60%) Neo4j
5 1 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.30%) MS Access
5 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.30%) Power BI
5 1 (0.30%) Power Query
5 1 (0.30%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 76 (22.62%) Selenium
2 67 (19.94%) Cucumber
3 64 (19.05%) JIRA
4 53 (15.77%) Postman
5 52 (15.48%) Jenkins
6 51 (15.18%) GitLab
7 37 (11.01%) Git
7 37 (11.01%) REST Assured
8 30 (8.93%) JMeter
9 24 (7.14%) Cypress.io
10 18 (5.36%) Gatling
11 13 (3.87%) Zephyr
12 8 (2.38%) Serenity BDD
12 8 (2.38%) TestRail
12 8 (2.38%) WebDriver
13 7 (2.08%) HP UFT
13 7 (2.08%) JUnit
14 6 (1.79%) Appium
15 5 (1.49%) SoapUI
15 5 (1.49%) SpecFlow
General
1 63 (18.75%) Public Sector
2 51 (15.18%) Social Skills
3 33 (9.82%) Finance
4 24 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (4.17%) Automotive
5 14 (4.17%) Telecoms
6 13 (3.87%) Military
7 11 (3.27%) Aerospace
8 9 (2.68%) Banking
9 5 (1.49%) Electronics
10 4 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.89%) Back Office
11 3 (0.89%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.60%) Front Office
12 2 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.30%) Local Government
13 1 (0.30%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (19.35%) Playwright
2 39 (11.61%) REST
3 18 (5.36%) Node.js
4 14 (4.17%) Kafka
5 13 (3.87%) .NET
6 11 (3.27%) Spring Boot
6 11 (3.27%) WireMock
7 10 (2.98%) Spring
8 9 (2.68%) Gherkin
8 9 (2.68%) LDAP
8 9 (2.68%) OpenID
8 9 (2.68%) pytest
8 9 (2.68%) SailPoint
9 7 (2.08%) React
9 7 (2.08%) Swagger
10 6 (1.79%) HTML
10 6 (1.79%) Middleware
10 6 (1.79%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (1.79%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.79%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 18 (5.36%) Product Ownership
2 14 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.38%) Infotainment
4 6 (1.79%) Data Centre
4 6 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
4 6 (1.79%) Mobile App
5 5 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (1.19%) Hedge funds
6 4 (1.19%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.19%) Onboarding
7 3 (0.89%) Low-Code
7 3 (0.89%) PKI
8 2 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.60%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.60%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.60%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.60%) NHS
9 1 (0.30%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.57%) Windows
2 6 (1.79%) Android
3 5 (1.49%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.49%) Linux
4 3 (0.89%) Mac OS
4 3 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (63.69%) Test Automation
2 125 (37.20%) CI/CD
3 99 (29.46%) Agile
4 70 (20.83%) API Testing
5 67 (19.94%) DevOps
6 57 (16.96%) Test Scripting
7 56 (16.67%) Test Strategy
8 54 (16.07%) Performance Testing
9 51 (15.18%) BDD
9 51 (15.18%) Manual Testing
10 50 (14.88%) Software Testing
11 49 (14.58%) Microservices
12 44 (13.10%) Functional Testing
13 43 (12.80%) Regression Testing
14 38 (11.31%) Problem-Solving
15 37 (11.01%) Validation
16 36 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
17 35 (10.42%) Non-Functional Testing
18 31 (9.23%) Integration Testing
19 30 (8.93%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 77 (22.92%) Java
2 61 (18.15%) Python
3 52 (15.48%) JavaScript
4 40 (11.90%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.55%) SQL
6 21 (6.25%) C#
7 12 (3.57%) Ruby
8 11 (3.27%) Bash
9 7 (2.08%) C++
9 7 (2.08%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.08%) VBScript
10 6 (1.79%) C
11 5 (1.49%) PHP
12 3 (0.89%) Scala
12 3 (0.89%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.60%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.60%) Bicep
13 2 (0.60%) Cypher
13 2 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 99 (29.46%) Security Cleared
2 73 (21.73%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.25%) ISTQB
4 16 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.98%) DV Cleared
6 6 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (1.79%) Degree
6 6 (1.79%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 4 (1.19%) CCNP
7 4 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.89%) CCNA
8 3 (0.89%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.60%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.60%) CEH
9 2 (0.60%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.60%) MCSE
9 2 (0.60%) OSCP
9 2 (0.60%) SANS
9 2 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (25.60%) QA
2 47 (13.99%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.27%) WCAG
4 6 (1.79%) Data Quality
5 4 (1.19%) NIST
6 2 (0.60%) EU AI Act
6 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.60%) NCSC
6 2 (0.60%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.30%) HL7
7 1 (0.30%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 44 (13.10%) Docker
2 5 (1.49%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.60%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
3 2 (0.60%) Firmware
3 2 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.30%) Squid
Systems Management
1 20 (5.95%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.36%) Grafana
3 12 (3.57%) Prometheus
4 10 (2.98%) Terraform
5 5 (1.49%) HP ALM
6 4 (1.19%) Ansible
7 2 (0.60%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 21 (6.25%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.27%) ServiceNow
2 11 (3.27%) Splunk
3 10 (2.98%) Cisco
4 8 (2.38%) Citrix
5 6 (1.79%) HP
6 5 (1.49%) UiPath
7 4 (1.19%) Salesforce
8 3 (0.89%) Databricks
8 3 (0.89%) Google
8 3 (0.89%) Meraki
8 3 (0.89%) Oracle
9 2 (0.60%) Ciena
9 2 (0.60%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.60%) Fortinet
9 2 (0.60%) Optimizely
9 2 (0.60%) Pega
9 2 (0.60%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.60%) VMware
9 2 (0.60%) Workday