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 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 676 - 567
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs citing Test-First Development 4 0 2
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.007% - 0.005%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.009% - 0.006%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £700 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £800 - £800
75th Percentile £900 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Process & 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 46,342 29,835 32,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.50% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,074 18,533 19,873
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,192 1,836 1,405
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.32 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 3 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 24 September 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 - 4 £800 - 5
London - 4 £800 - 5
Work from Home - 1 - - 5

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 4 (100.00%) GCP
2 3 (75.00%) Cloud Run
2 3 (75.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
3 1 (25.00%) AWS
3 1 (25.00%) Azure
General
1 4 (100.00%) Banking
1 4 (100.00%) Front Office
2 3 (75.00%) Investment Banking
3 2 (50.00%) Finance
4 1 (25.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (50.00%) Developer
2 1 (25.00%) Cloud Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) DevOps Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) GCP DevOps
2 1 (25.00%) GCP DevOps Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) GCP Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) Kafka
1 1 (25.00%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 1 (25.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (25.00%) Distributed Systems
1 1 (25.00%) Greenfield Project
1 1 (25.00%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 1 (25.00%) Android
1 1 (25.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 4 (100.00%) Event-Driven
1 4 (100.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
1 4 (100.00%) High Availability
1 4 (100.00%) Mob Programming
1 4 (100.00%) Refactoring
1 4 (100.00%) TDD
2 3 (75.00%) Clean Code
2 3 (75.00%) Code Quality
2 3 (75.00%) Extreme Programming
2 3 (75.00%) SDLC
3 1 (25.00%) Agile
3 1 (25.00%) Collaborative Engineering
3 1 (25.00%) Collaborative Working
3 1 (25.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 1 (25.00%) DevOps
3 1 (25.00%) Fintech
3 1 (25.00%) Low Latency
3 1 (25.00%) Pair Programming
3 1 (25.00%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 4 (100.00%) Kotlin
2 3 (75.00%) SQL
System Software
1 1 (25.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (25.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (25.00%) Google