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 29 March 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 310 319 307
Rank change year-on-year +9 -12 +72
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 361 208 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.71% 0.69%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.88% 0.77% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 138 216
10th Percentile £301 £305 £319
25th Percentile £368 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.94% -12.37%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £520
90th Percentile £628 £653 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £411 £470 £425
% change year-on-year -12.50% +10.59% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 15 33
10th Percentile £28.23 £32.20 £29.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £47.47 £35.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £60.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.02% +42.35% -29.17%
75th Percentile £64.38 £62.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.25 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £60.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -38.02% +42.35% -29.17%

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 40,989 27,183 41,081
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 92.83% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,539 17,878 26,912
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,552 945 2,521
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.09 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -1.52% -24.36%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.81 £71.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.63 £32.25 £33.00
% change year-on-year +19.78% -2.27% -21.07%

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 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 29 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 29 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 -1 310 £425 -2.86% 140
UK excluding London +4 228 £411 -12.50% 148
London -36 99 £435 +2.35% 19
North of England -8 85 £400 +10.73% 35
Work from Home -10 61 £400 -15.79% 29
Midlands -20 56 £550 +28.13% 14
West Midlands -7 51 £550 +53.85% 11
South East -54 36 £386 -29.82% 35
Yorkshire -32 35 £500 +33.33% 6
North West -24 28 £395 +7.48% 23
East of England -15 26 £325 -13.33% 23
North East +3 25 £400 +25.98% 6
South West -27 12 £400 -23.81% 19
Scotland +9 9 £192 -59.58% 17
Wales -3 9 £475 +26.53% 6
East Midlands -31 5 £400 -6.81% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £450 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 221 (61.22%) Test Automation
2 124 (34.35%) CI/CD
3 104 (28.81%) Security Cleared
4 100 (27.70%) Agile
5 83 (22.99%) Azure
5 83 (22.99%) QA
6 81 (22.44%) SC Cleared
7 75 (20.78%) Selenium
8 72 (19.94%) DevOps
9 71 (19.67%) Java
9 71 (19.67%) Python
10 68 (18.84%) API Testing
10 68 (18.84%) AWS
11 63 (17.45%) JIRA
11 63 (17.45%) Playwright
12 60 (16.62%) Cucumber
13 57 (15.79%) Test Strategy
14 56 (15.51%) Postman
15 54 (14.96%) Test Scripting
16 53 (14.68%) JavaScript
16 53 (14.68%) Performance Testing
17 52 (14.40%) Manual Testing
18 50 (13.85%) BDD
18 50 (13.85%) Jenkins
18 50 (13.85%) Software Testing
19 48 (13.30%) GitLab
20 44 (12.19%) Accessibility
20 44 (12.19%) Regression Testing
21 43 (11.91%) Functional Testing
22 42 (11.63%) Azure DevOps

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 2 (0.55%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.28%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.55%) 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%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 83 (22.99%) Azure
2 68 (18.84%) AWS
3 42 (11.63%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (9.97%) GitHub
5 21 (5.82%) GCP
5 21 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
6 12 (3.32%) BrowserStack
7 8 (2.22%) BlazeMeter
7 8 (2.22%) Serverless
8 6 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (1.39%) SaaS
9 5 (1.39%) Tricentis Tosca
10 4 (1.11%) Amazon SQS
10 4 (1.11%) Entra ID
11 3 (0.83%) Power Automate
11 3 (0.83%) Power Platform
12 2 (0.55%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (0.55%) Amazon EventBridge
12 2 (0.55%) Azure Sentinel
12 2 (0.55%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.22%) WAN
2 7 (1.94%) Firewall
2 7 (1.94%) LAN
3 6 (1.66%) DHCP
3 6 (1.66%) DNS
3 6 (1.66%) SD-WAN
3 6 (1.66%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.39%) Broadband
4 5 (1.39%) VLAN
4 5 (1.39%) VPN
5 4 (1.11%) BGP
5 4 (1.11%) MPLS
5 4 (1.11%) OSPF
5 4 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (1.11%) Wireshark
6 3 (0.83%) Cisco IOS
6 3 (0.83%) Network Security
6 3 (0.83%) SSH
6 3 (0.83%) SSL
6 3 (0.83%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.05%) 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 75 (20.78%) Selenium
2 63 (17.45%) JIRA
3 60 (16.62%) Cucumber
4 56 (15.51%) Postman
5 50 (13.85%) Jenkins
6 48 (13.30%) GitLab
7 35 (9.70%) Git
7 35 (9.70%) REST Assured
8 33 (9.14%) JMeter
9 22 (6.09%) Cypress.io
10 17 (4.71%) Gatling
11 11 (3.05%) Zephyr
12 8 (2.22%) JUnit
12 8 (2.22%) Serenity BDD
12 8 (2.22%) TestRail
12 8 (2.22%) WebDriver
13 7 (1.94%) Appium
13 7 (1.94%) HP UFT
14 6 (1.66%) Browser DevTools
15 5 (1.39%) Robot Framework
General
1 58 (16.07%) Public Sector
2 51 (14.13%) Social Skills
3 35 (9.70%) Finance
4 28 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (4.71%) Automotive
6 11 (3.05%) Aerospace
6 11 (3.05%) Banking
6 11 (3.05%) Electronics
6 11 (3.05%) Military
6 11 (3.05%) Telecoms
7 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (1.11%) Investment Banking
8 3 (0.83%) Back Office
8 3 (0.83%) Marketing
9 2 (0.55%) Front Office
9 2 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.28%) Avionics
10 1 (0.28%) German Language
10 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (17.45%) Playwright
2 42 (11.63%) REST
3 15 (4.16%) Node.js
4 14 (3.88%) Kafka
5 11 (3.05%) .NET
6 10 (2.77%) Gherkin
6 10 (2.77%) RESTful
7 9 (2.49%) LDAP
7 9 (2.49%) OpenID
7 9 (2.49%) pytest
7 9 (2.49%) SailPoint
7 9 (2.49%) Spring
8 8 (2.22%) Spring Boot
8 8 (2.22%) WireMock
9 7 (1.94%) React
9 7 (1.94%) Swagger
10 6 (1.66%) Middleware
10 6 (1.66%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (1.66%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.66%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.20%) Product Ownership
2 13 (3.60%) Cloud Native
3 9 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
4 8 (2.22%) Infotainment
5 7 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
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
8 3 (0.83%) Low-Code
8 3 (0.83%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.55%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.55%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (0.55%) PKI
10 1 (0.28%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.28%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.60%) Windows
2 6 (1.66%) Android
2 6 (1.66%) Linux
3 5 (1.39%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.11%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (61.22%) Test Automation
2 124 (34.35%) CI/CD
3 100 (27.70%) Agile
4 72 (19.94%) DevOps
5 68 (18.84%) API Testing
6 57 (15.79%) Test Strategy
7 54 (14.96%) Test Scripting
8 53 (14.68%) Performance Testing
9 52 (14.40%) Manual Testing
10 50 (13.85%) BDD
10 50 (13.85%) Software Testing
11 44 (12.19%) Regression Testing
12 43 (11.91%) Functional Testing
13 42 (11.63%) Validation
14 41 (11.36%) Microservices
15 38 (10.53%) Non-Functional Testing
15 38 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
16 37 (10.25%) Continuous Improvement
17 35 (9.70%) Scenario Testing
18 29 (8.03%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 71 (19.67%) Java
1 71 (19.67%) Python
2 53 (14.68%) JavaScript
3 37 (10.25%) TypeScript
4 28 (7.76%) SQL
5 24 (6.65%) C#
6 12 (3.32%) Ruby
7 11 (3.05%) Bash
8 9 (2.49%) PowerShell
9 7 (1.94%) VBScript
10 6 (1.66%) C++
11 5 (1.39%) C
11 5 (1.39%) PHP
12 3 (0.83%) Scala
12 3 (0.83%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.55%) AppleScript
13 2 (0.55%) Bicep
13 2 (0.55%) Cypher
13 2 (0.55%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.55%) Swift
Qualifications
1 104 (28.81%) Security Cleared
2 81 (22.44%) SC Cleared
3 25 (6.93%) ISTQB
4 17 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.77%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.94%) Degree
6 7 (1.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.83%) CCNP
8 3 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.83%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.55%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.55%) CCNA
9 2 (0.55%) CEH
9 2 (0.55%) CREST Certified
9 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.55%) OSCP
9 2 (0.55%) SANS
10 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (22.99%) QA
2 44 (12.19%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.77%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.22%) WCAG
5 6 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.11%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.83%) NIST
8 2 (0.55%) NCSC
8 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.28%) GDPR
9 1 (0.28%) HL7
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 41 (11.36%) Docker
2 5 (1.39%) 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 18 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 16 (4.43%) Grafana
3 11 (3.05%) Prometheus
4 9 (2.49%) Terraform
5 5 (1.39%) HP ALM
6 3 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.55%) Ansible
7 2 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 20 (5.54%) Microsoft
2 10 (2.77%) Citrix
2 10 (2.77%) ServiceNow
2 10 (2.77%) Splunk
3 8 (2.22%) Salesforce
4 7 (1.94%) Cisco
5 6 (1.66%) HP
6 5 (1.39%) Dynatrace
6 5 (1.39%) UiPath
7 4 (1.11%) Databricks
8 3 (0.83%) Google
8 3 (0.83%) Meraki
8 3 (0.83%) OpenLink
8 3 (0.83%) Pega
8 3 (0.83%) SAP
9 2 (0.55%) Bloomberg
9 2 (0.55%) Fortinet
9 2 (0.55%) Optimizely
9 2 (0.55%) Oracle
9 2 (0.55%) Siemens