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 25 November 2025.

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

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 348 355 338
Rank change year-on-year +7 -17 +85
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 254 221 304
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.61% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.78% 0.66% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 135 212
10th Percentile £288 £314 £363
25th Percentile £350 £368 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £470 £439
Median % change year-on-year -9.57% +7.18% -2.56%
75th Percentile £509 £553 £533
90th Percentile £638 £600 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £438 £425
% change year-on-year -8.57% +2.94% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 14 18
10th Percentile £23.35 £31.40 £33.70
25th Percentile £33.00 £38.40 £35.63
Median hourly rate £36.00 £56.45 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year -36.23% +36.85% -31.25%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £55.63 £69.50 £74.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £56.45 £41.25
% change year-on-year -36.23% +36.85% -31.25%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 32,581 33,702 43,115
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.00% 92.80% 93.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,628 20,343 29,147
10th Percentile £281 £300 £290
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.94% -1.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,917 1,258 1,525
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £15.19
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £19.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +50.00%
75th Percentile £56.44 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +81.52%

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 25 November 2025.

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 25 November 2025.

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 25 November 2025. 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 +1 224 £425 -9.57% 162
UK excluding London +3 166 £400 -8.57% 162
London +14 68 £450 -5.26% 25
Work from Home +7 61 £388 -22.50% 28
North of England -23 60 £425 +6.25% 12
South East -14 31 £295 -41.00% 56
Midlands -19 27 £480 +7.56% 29
Yorkshire -25 24 £435 +6.75% 3
East of England -4 20 £375 +11.11% 28
West Midlands -12 19 £700 +64.71% 25
North East +5 18 £425 +37.10% 3
North West -15 18 £393 -1.88% 6
Wales +10 11 £425 +13.33% 11
South West -18 10 £500 -4.76% 26
East Midlands -9 8 £360 -22.99% 3
Scotland - 6 £65 - 5
Northern Ireland -4 1 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 25 November 2025, 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.

1 155 (61.02%) Test Automation
2 88 (34.65%) CI/CD
3 85 (33.46%) Agile
4 70 (27.56%) Security Cleared
5 63 (24.80%) QA
6 59 (23.23%) Selenium
7 56 (22.05%) Java
8 54 (21.26%) Cucumber
9 52 (20.47%) Azure
9 52 (20.47%) Test Scripting
10 51 (20.08%) DevOps
10 51 (20.08%) SC Cleared
11 49 (19.29%) Test Strategy
12 44 (17.32%) Software Testing
13 43 (16.93%) AWS
14 42 (16.54%) API Testing
14 42 (16.54%) Postman
14 42 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
15 39 (15.35%) JIRA
16 37 (14.57%) Python
17 35 (13.78%) BDD
17 35 (13.78%) Manual Testing
17 35 (13.78%) Playwright
17 35 (13.78%) Scrum
18 32 (12.60%) Git
18 32 (12.60%) Performance Testing
18 32 (12.60%) REST
19 31 (12.20%) GitLab
20 29 (11.42%) Cisco
20 29 (11.42%) Defect Management

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 8 (3.15%) Confluence
2 3 (1.18%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.39%) Drupal
4 1 (0.39%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.39%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.79%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.79%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.39%) Cerner Millennium
2 1 (0.39%) CODA-Financials
2 1 (0.39%) ProductWriter
2 1 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 52 (20.47%) Azure
2 43 (16.93%) AWS
3 26 (10.24%) Azure DevOps
4 13 (5.12%) GitHub
5 12 (4.72%) GCP
6 11 (4.33%) Serverless
7 9 (3.54%) AWS Lambda
7 9 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (2.76%) Power Platform
9 5 (1.97%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (1.97%) BrowserStack
10 3 (1.18%) BlazeMeter
10 3 (1.18%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.18%) Snowflake
10 3 (1.18%) Tricentis Tosca
11 2 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (0.79%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (0.79%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
12 1 (0.39%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.69%) Firewall
2 10 (3.94%) Wireshark
3 8 (3.15%) Ethernet
3 8 (3.15%) SD-WAN
4 7 (2.76%) WAN
5 6 (2.36%) 5G
5 6 (2.36%) HTTP
6 5 (1.97%) 4G
7 4 (1.57%) LAN
7 4 (1.57%) VoIP
8 3 (1.18%) 3G
8 3 (1.18%) Cisco IOS
8 3 (1.18%) DHCP
8 3 (1.18%) DNS
8 3 (1.18%) FTP
8 3 (1.18%) SNMP
8 3 (1.18%) Spanning Tree
8 3 (1.18%) SSH
8 3 (1.18%) TACACS
9 2 (0.79%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.97%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (1.18%) Power BI
2 3 (1.18%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle ODI
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
3 2 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.79%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.39%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.39%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (0.39%) Parquet
4 1 (0.39%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 59 (23.23%) Selenium
2 54 (21.26%) Cucumber
3 42 (16.54%) Postman
4 39 (15.35%) JIRA
5 32 (12.60%) Git
6 31 (12.20%) GitLab
7 23 (9.06%) Jenkins
8 20 (7.87%) REST Assured
9 18 (7.09%) Cypress.io
10 17 (6.69%) JMeter
11 10 (3.94%) Gatling
11 10 (3.94%) WebDriver
12 9 (3.54%) Bitbucket
12 9 (3.54%) SpecFlow
13 7 (2.76%) LoadRunner
14 6 (2.36%) Appium
15 4 (1.57%) Mockito
15 4 (1.57%) TestRail
15 4 (1.57%) Zephyr
16 3 (1.18%) CircleCI
General
1 58 (22.83%) Social Skills
2 48 (18.90%) Public Sector
3 24 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (9.06%) Telecoms
5 20 (7.87%) Finance
6 12 (4.72%) Banking
7 11 (4.33%) Aerospace
8 8 (3.15%) Military
9 7 (2.76%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.57%) Back Office
10 4 (1.57%) Electronics
10 4 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.57%) Manufacturing
11 3 (1.18%) Automotive
11 3 (1.18%) Front Office
12 2 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.39%) Health Technology
13 1 (0.39%) Law
13 1 (0.39%) Local Government
13 1 (0.39%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (13.78%) Playwright
2 32 (12.60%) REST
3 17 (6.69%) Node.js
4 16 (6.30%) RFC 2544
5 12 (4.72%) WireMock
6 9 (3.54%) .NET
6 9 (3.54%) Kafka
7 7 (2.76%) pytest
7 7 (2.76%) Swagger
8 6 (2.36%) Middleware
8 6 (2.36%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.36%) React
8 6 (2.36%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.97%) Gherkin
9 5 (1.97%) gRPC
9 5 (1.97%) JMS
9 5 (1.97%) WebdriverIO
9 5 (1.97%) WebSockets
10 4 (1.57%) JSON
11 3 (1.18%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 15 (5.91%) Data Centre
1 15 (5.91%) Fibre Optics
2 13 (5.12%) Cloud Native
3 11 (4.33%) Self-Motivation
4 10 (3.94%) Product Ownership
5 4 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (1.57%) Embedded Systems
5 4 (1.57%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.18%) Analogue Electronics
6 3 (1.18%) Low-Code
6 3 (1.18%) Mobile App
6 3 (1.18%) NHS
6 3 (1.18%) PKI
7 2 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.79%) Replication
8 1 (0.39%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.39%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (0.39%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.39%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.76%) Windows
2 4 (1.57%) Android
2 4 (1.57%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.18%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.79%) Linux
4 2 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.39%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (61.02%) Test Automation
2 88 (34.65%) CI/CD
3 85 (33.46%) Agile
4 52 (20.47%) Test Scripting
5 51 (20.08%) DevOps
6 49 (19.29%) Test Strategy
7 44 (17.32%) Software Testing
8 42 (16.54%) API Testing
8 42 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (13.78%) BDD
9 35 (13.78%) Manual Testing
9 35 (13.78%) Scrum
10 32 (12.60%) Performance Testing
11 29 (11.42%) Defect Management
12 26 (10.24%) Microservices
12 26 (10.24%) Non-Functional Testing
13 25 (9.84%) Regression Testing
14 24 (9.45%) End-to-End Testing
14 24 (9.45%) TDD
14 24 (9.45%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 56 (22.05%) Java
2 37 (14.57%) Python
3 24 (9.45%) C#
3 24 (9.45%) JavaScript
4 21 (8.27%) TypeScript
5 20 (7.87%) SQL
6 12 (4.72%) Bash
7 7 (2.76%) Ruby
8 6 (2.36%) VB.NET
9 4 (1.57%) C
9 4 (1.57%) C++
10 2 (0.79%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.79%) VB
11 1 (0.39%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.39%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.39%) Perl
11 1 (0.39%) VBA
Qualifications
1 70 (27.56%) Security Cleared
2 51 (20.08%) SC Cleared
3 12 (4.72%) Degree
3 12 (4.72%) ISTQB
4 7 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (2.76%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.57%) CCNA
6 4 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (1.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
6 4 (1.57%) Master's Degree
7 3 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.79%) CCNP
8 2 (0.79%) CEH
8 2 (0.79%) HNC
8 2 (0.79%) HND
8 2 (0.79%) MCSA
8 2 (0.79%) MCSE
8 2 (0.79%) OSCP
8 2 (0.79%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (24.80%) QA
2 25 (9.84%) Accessibility
3 13 (5.12%) WCAG
4 4 (1.57%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.57%) NIST
5 2 (0.79%) EU AI Act
5 2 (0.79%) HL7
5 2 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.79%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.39%) SNOMED CT
6 1 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 24 (9.45%) Docker
2 3 (1.18%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 14 (5.51%) Kubernetes
2 9 (3.54%) Grafana
3 8 (3.15%) Ansible
4 7 (2.76%) Terraform
5 5 (1.97%) HP ALM
6 4 (1.57%) Kibana
7 3 (1.18%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 29 (11.42%) Cisco
2 25 (9.84%) Microsoft
3 9 (3.54%) Splunk
4 7 (2.76%) Meraki
4 7 (2.76%) Nokia
5 6 (2.36%) HP
5 6 (2.36%) Juniper
5 6 (2.36%) Salesforce
5 6 (2.36%) UiPath
6 5 (1.97%) New Relic
6 5 (1.97%) Oracle
7 4 (1.57%) AppDynamics
7 4 (1.57%) Citrix
7 4 (1.57%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.57%) Progress
8 3 (1.18%) Micro Focus
8 3 (1.18%) Virgin Media
9 2 (0.79%) Databricks
9 2 (0.79%) VMware
9 2 (0.79%) Workday