Test-First Development Contract Job Trends

Test-First Development
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Test-First Development skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 589 570 -
Rank change year-on-year -19 - -
Contract jobs citing Test-First Development 2 2 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.006% 0.006% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.006% 0.006% -
Number of daily rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £358 - -
25th Percentile £371 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £394 £800 -
Median % change year-on-year -50.75% - -
75th Percentile £421 - -
90th Percentile £434 - -
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test-First Development falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,027 31,522 40,787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.46% 86.80% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,051 18,965 27,382
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,103 1,143 1,561
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.15 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +48.33%

Test-First Development
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test-First Development relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Test-First Development job vacancy trend in the UK

Test-First Development
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test-First Development.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test-First Development

Test-First Development
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test-First Development.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test-First Development

Test-First Development
Top 2 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-First Development 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
London +9 2 £394 -50.75%
England -16 2 £394 -50.75%

Test-First Development
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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (50.00%) AWS
1 1 (50.00%) GitHub
1 1 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (50.00%) Apache Cassandra
1 1 (50.00%) Big Data
1 1 (50.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (50.00%) MongoDB
1 1 (50.00%) NoSQL
1 1 (50.00%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (50.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (50.00%) GitLab
1 1 (50.00%) Jenkins
1 1 (50.00%) JUnit
1 1 (50.00%) Mockito
1 1 (50.00%) NUnit
1 1 (50.00%) Selenium
1 1 (50.00%) SpecFlow
1 1 (50.00%) Team Foundation Server
1 1 (50.00%) Visual Studio
1 1 (50.00%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 1 (50.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (50.00%) Developer
1 1 (50.00%) Java Developer
1 1 (50.00%) Senior
1 1 (50.00%) Senior Tester
1 1 (50.00%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (50.00%) AngularJS
1 1 (50.00%) CSS
1 1 (50.00%) HTML
1 1 (50.00%) Kafka
1 1 (50.00%) React
1 1 (50.00%) REST
1 1 (50.00%) Spring
1 1 (50.00%) Spring Boot
1 1 (50.00%) Vue
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Agile
1 2 (100.00%) CI/CD
2 1 (50.00%) Analytics
2 1 (50.00%) Business Intelligence
2 1 (50.00%) Data Governance
2 1 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
2 1 (50.00%) Data Protection
2 1 (50.00%) ETL
2 1 (50.00%) Expense Management
2 1 (50.00%) Microservices
2 1 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (50.00%) Software Engineering
2 1 (50.00%) Test Automation
2 1 (50.00%) Test Strategy
2 1 (50.00%) User Acceptance Testing
2 1 (50.00%) Visualisation
2 1 (50.00%) V-Model
2 1 (50.00%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 2 (100.00%) JavaScript
1 2 (100.00%) SQL
2 1 (50.00%) C#
2 1 (50.00%) Java
2 1 (50.00%) PL/SQL
2 1 (50.00%) PowerShell
2 1 (50.00%) T-SQL
2 1 (50.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (50.00%) HP APS
System Software
1 1 (50.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (50.00%) HP ALM
1 1 (50.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (50.00%) HP
1 1 (50.00%) Microsoft