Test Engineer Contracts

Test Engineer
UK

The median Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £438, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 323 306 386
Rank change year-on-year -17 +80 +36
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 206 297 361
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.70% 0.68% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.76% 0.73% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 207 260
10th Percentile £312 £300 £340
25th Percentile £363 £375 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £425 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -15.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £613
90th Percentile £689 £583 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £425 £480
% change year-on-year +7.94% -11.46% +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 30 15
10th Percentile £38.56 £26.88 £40.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £35.00 £50.00
Median hourly rate £57.50 £42.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.29% -19.05% +9.55%
75th Percentile £62.50 £59.44 £69.38
90th Percentile £63.00 £62.05 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £42.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +35.29% -19.05% +3.24%

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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Test Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Test Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Engineer in the UK

Test Engineer
Top 17 Contract 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 1 May 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 -12 183 £438 +1.74% 438
UK excluding London -16 108 £459 +7.94% 434
London +46 83 £425 -2.86% 40
South East +38 51 £513 +20.59% 117
Work from Home -24 47 £438 +2.94% 186
North of England -18 17 £366 -13.82% 79
East of England +22 10 £375 -10.71% 56
South West +19 9 £538 -7.33% 74
Midlands +10 9 £438 +71.57% 83
East Midlands -3 7 £438 +71.57% 19
Scotland +16 6 £474 +30.33% 15
North West -14 6 £375 -16.67% 43
North East - 6 £350 - 12
Wales 0 5 £322 -11.29% 23
Yorkshire -4 5 £423 +0.90% 24
West Midlands +15 2 £358 -31.90% 61
Channel Islands - 1 - -

Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Test Engineer in the job title.

1 135 (65.53%) Test Automation
2 84 (40.78%) Agile
3 67 (32.52%) Java
4 64 (31.07%) Security Cleared
4 64 (31.07%) CI/CD
5 60 (29.13%) Social Skills
6 57 (27.67%) Selenium
7 56 (27.18%) Problem-Solving
8 50 (24.27%) Test Scripting
9 49 (23.79%) SC Cleared
10 45 (21.84%) Test Strategy
11 44 (21.36%) Linux
12 43 (20.87%) AWS
12 43 (20.87%) QA
13 42 (20.39%) Python
13 42 (20.39%) Jenkins
13 42 (20.39%) API Testing
14 40 (19.42%) JIRA
15 37 (17.96%) Git
16 36 (17.48%) Postman
17 33 (16.02%) JavaScript
18 31 (15.05%) Performance Testing
18 31 (15.05%) Public Sector
19 30 (14.56%) DevOps
19 30 (14.56%) ISTQB
19 30 (14.56%) Scrum
20 29 (14.08%) BDD
20 29 (14.08%) REST
21 28 (13.59%) REST Assured
21 28 (13.59%) Telecoms

Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 15 (7.28%) Confluence
2 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.97%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.49%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.49%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.49%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.97%) CANalyzer
2 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.94%) SAP Hybris
2 2 (0.97%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.49%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 43 (20.87%) AWS
2 22 (10.68%) Azure
3 13 (6.31%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
4 7 (3.40%) Serverless
5 6 (2.91%) GitHub
6 4 (1.94%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
6 4 (1.94%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 3 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (1.46%) AWS CodePipeline
7 3 (1.46%) AWS Step Functions
7 3 (1.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
7 3 (1.46%) GCP
8 2 (0.97%) Amazon S3
8 2 (0.97%) Amazon SQS
8 2 (0.97%) Datadog
8 2 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.49%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 19 (9.22%) LTE
2 16 (7.77%) Ethernet
3 15 (7.28%) GSM
3 15 (7.28%) MPLS
3 15 (7.28%) VPN
3 15 (7.28%) WAN
3 15 (7.28%) Wireshark
4 14 (6.80%) ATM
4 14 (6.80%) Frame Relay
4 14 (6.80%) GPRS
4 14 (6.80%) LAN
4 14 (6.80%) SAN
4 14 (6.80%) SDH
4 14 (6.80%) UMTS
5 8 (3.88%) Software-Defined Radio
6 7 (3.40%) SNMP
7 6 (2.91%) HTTP
8 5 (2.43%) 5G
9 4 (1.94%) DHCP
9 4 (1.94%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.94%) Big Data
1 4 (1.94%) MongoDB
1 4 (1.94%) NoSQL
1 4 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (1.46%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (0.97%) Delta Lake
3 2 (0.97%) MariaDB
3 2 (0.97%) MySQL
3 2 (0.97%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.49%) DynamoDB
4 1 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.49%) RDBMS
4 1 (0.49%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 57 (27.67%) Selenium
2 42 (20.39%) Jenkins
3 40 (19.42%) JIRA
4 37 (17.96%) Git
5 36 (17.48%) Postman
6 28 (13.59%) Cypress.io
6 28 (13.59%) REST Assured
7 26 (12.62%) JMeter
8 22 (10.68%) Cucumber
9 14 (6.80%) LoadRunner
10 12 (5.83%) SpecFlow
11 10 (4.85%) Appium
11 10 (4.85%) GitLab
11 10 (4.85%) TestRail
12 9 (4.37%) Robot Framework
12 9 (4.37%) WebDriver
13 8 (3.88%) Gatling
14 7 (3.40%) Bitbucket
14 7 (3.40%) GoogleTest
15 6 (2.91%) NUnit
General
1 60 (29.13%) Social Skills
2 31 (15.05%) Public Sector
3 28 (13.59%) Telecoms
4 27 (13.11%) Finance
5 23 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (7.28%) Banking
6 15 (7.28%) Manufacturing
7 12 (5.83%) Electronics
8 7 (3.40%) Marketing
9 5 (2.43%) Aerospace
10 3 (1.46%) Automotive
10 3 (1.46%) Law
10 3 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.97%) Aviation
11 2 (0.97%) Avionics
11 2 (0.97%) Health Technology
11 2 (0.97%) Military
11 2 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.49%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.49%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (14.08%) REST
2 22 (10.68%) Playwright
3 15 (7.28%) pytest
4 14 (6.80%) HTML
5 11 (5.34%) CSS
5 11 (5.34%) RESTful
6 10 (4.85%) .NET
7 9 (4.37%) Node.js
8 8 (3.88%) FIX Protocol
8 8 (3.88%) Kafka
9 6 (2.91%) Gherkin
9 6 (2.91%) React
10 5 (2.43%) Jest
10 5 (2.43%) Web Services
11 4 (1.94%) AngularJS
11 4 (1.94%) Play Framework
12 3 (1.46%) GraphQL
12 3 (1.46%) Puppeteer
12 3 (1.46%) PySpark
12 3 (1.46%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (8.74%) Self-Motivation
2 8 (3.88%) Product Ownership
2 8 (3.88%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 5 (2.43%) Mobile App
3 5 (2.43%) NHS
4 4 (1.94%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.46%) Analogue Electronics
5 3 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (1.46%) IoT
5 3 (1.46%) Operational Technology
5 3 (1.46%) PKI
5 3 (1.46%) SCADA
5 3 (1.46%) Virtual Team
6 2 (0.97%) Cloud Native
6 2 (0.97%) Housing Association
6 2 (0.97%) Infotainment
6 2 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.49%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 44 (21.36%) Linux
2 22 (10.68%) Windows
3 18 (8.74%) Unix
4 5 (2.43%) Android
5 4 (1.94%) Apple iOS
6 3 (1.46%) AIX
6 3 (1.46%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.97%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.49%) CentOS
8 1 (0.49%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (65.53%) Test Automation
2 84 (40.78%) Agile
3 64 (31.07%) CI/CD
4 56 (27.18%) Problem-Solving
5 50 (24.27%) Test Scripting
6 45 (21.84%) Test Strategy
7 42 (20.39%) API Testing
8 31 (15.05%) Performance Testing
9 30 (14.56%) DevOps
9 30 (14.56%) Scrum
10 29 (14.08%) BDD
11 27 (13.11%) Validation
12 25 (12.14%) Test Management
13 23 (11.17%) Software Testing
14 22 (10.68%) Regression Testing
15 19 (9.22%) Manual Testing
16 17 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
17 16 (7.77%) Integration Testing
17 16 (7.77%) Non-Functional Testing
17 16 (7.77%) SDET
Programming Languages
1 67 (32.52%) Java
2 42 (20.39%) Python
3 33 (16.02%) JavaScript
4 25 (12.14%) SQL
5 17 (8.25%) TypeScript
6 14 (6.80%) C#
7 10 (4.85%) Bash
7 10 (4.85%) C++
8 8 (3.88%) VB
9 7 (3.40%) Ruby
10 5 (2.43%) Scala
11 4 (1.94%) PHP
12 3 (1.46%) Perl
12 3 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.46%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.97%) C
13 2 (0.97%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.97%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.49%) JCL
14 1 (0.49%) REXX
Qualifications
1 64 (31.07%) Security Cleared
2 49 (23.79%) SC Cleared
3 30 (14.56%) ISTQB
4 24 (11.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 22 (10.68%) Degree
6 15 (7.28%) ISEB
7 14 (6.80%) CCNP
7 14 (6.80%) Cisco Certification
8 13 (6.31%) DV Cleared
9 9 (4.37%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.94%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.97%) MCSA
11 2 (0.97%) MCSE
11 2 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.97%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 1 (0.49%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.49%) CEH
12 1 (0.49%) CISSP
12 1 (0.49%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (20.87%) QA
2 8 (3.88%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.97%) Data Quality
3 2 (0.97%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (3.40%) Docker
2 4 (1.94%) Active Directory
2 4 (1.94%) Firmware
2 4 (1.94%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 6 (2.91%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.46%) Terraform
3 2 (0.97%) CA Wily
3 2 (0.97%) Grafana
3 2 (0.97%) Kibana
4 1 (0.49%) Ansible
4 1 (0.49%) Control-M
4 1 (0.49%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.49%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 23 (11.17%) Microsoft
2 17 (8.25%) Cisco
3 14 (6.80%) Juniper
4 11 (5.34%) SAP
5 8 (3.88%) Google
6 6 (2.91%) Atlassian
7 5 (2.43%) Oracle
7 5 (2.43%) Splunk
7 5 (2.43%) VMware
8 4 (1.94%) Databricks
9 3 (1.46%) Mentor Graphics
9 3 (1.46%) Murex
9 3 (1.46%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.97%) AppDynamics
10 2 (0.97%) Brio
10 2 (0.97%) Ericsson
10 2 (0.97%) Hitachi
10 2 (0.97%) HP
10 2 (0.97%) NEC
10 2 (0.97%) Virgin Media