User Acceptance Testing Contract Job Trends

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring User Acceptance Testing skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 115 116
Rank change year-on-year +38 +1 +34
Contract jobs citing User Acceptance Testing 1,495 687 844
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 2.40% 1.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.63% 2.64% 2.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 920 453 571
10th Percentile £350 £350 £325
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £588
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £453 £475
% change year-on-year +4.30% -4.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 10 9
10th Percentile £15.25 £29.83 £12.92
25th Percentile £18.00 £40.19 £14.18
Median hourly rate £27.30 £58.75 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -53.53% +22.40% -23.20%
75th Percentile £54.23 £64.69 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.25 £67.03 £71.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.95 £55.00 £54.00
% change year-on-year -51.00% +1.85% -13.60%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

User Acceptance Testing 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 41,181 26,010 36,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 91.03% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,765 16,696 23,578
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,462 1,066 2,486
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.73 £17.92 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £25.15 £37.75
% change year-on-year +69.72% -33.38% +7.86%

User Acceptance Testing
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing User Acceptance Testing relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

User Acceptance Testing job vacancy trend in the UK

User Acceptance Testing
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Acceptance Testing.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Acceptance Testing

User Acceptance Testing
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Acceptance Testing over the 6 months to 27 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for User Acceptance Testing in the UK

User Acceptance Testing
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Acceptance Testing.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Acceptance Testing

User Acceptance Testing
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing User Acceptance Testing over the 6 months to 27 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for User Acceptance Testing in the UK

User Acceptance Testing
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 User Acceptance Testing within the UK over the 6 months to 27 May 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 +27 1,283 £500 - 343
London +22 703 £525 - 167
UK excluding London +49 623 £473 +4.30% 217
Work from Home +22 464 £513 +2.50% 141
South East +38 172 £500 +20.48% 68
Midlands +18 155 £475 +2.70% 40
North of England -19 134 £449 -7.81% 59
West Midlands +17 100 £488 -0.76% 23
North West -21 88 £425 -15.59% 39
South West +3 59 £475 - 17
East Midlands -1 54 £450 +5.88% 17
Scotland +35 50 £525 +10.53% 19
Yorkshire -21 39 £461 -2.54% 18
East of England -18 29 £550 +29.41% 9
Northern Ireland +9 16 £475 -11.21% 3
Wales -10 12 £468 +3.54% 5
North East -19 7 £355 +5.97% 2

User Acceptance Testing
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 97 (6.49%) Confluence
2 23 (1.54%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.74%) SAS
4 8 (0.54%) Appian
5 6 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.33%) Apache
7 3 (0.20%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.20%) Camunda
8 2 (0.13%) Cloud Foundry
8 2 (0.13%) CMS
8 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.13%) JBoss
8 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.13%) Mendix
8 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.13%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.067%) Kentico
9 1 (0.067%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.067%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 57 (3.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (2.47%) MS Visio
3 31 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
4 28 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.067%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 117 (7.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (2.74%) Oracle Payables
3 40 (2.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 33 (2.21%) Dynamics CRM
4 33 (2.21%) Oracle EBS
5 32 (2.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 21 (1.40%) Oracle General Ledger
7 20 (1.34%) Oracle ERP
8 18 (1.20%) Oracle Assets
8 18 (1.20%) Oracle EBS R12
9 15 (1.00%) Payment Gateway
9 15 (1.00%) SAP GRC
10 14 (0.94%) Oracle Cash Management
11 13 (0.87%) Aladdin
12 12 (0.80%) SAP FI
13 11 (0.74%) SAP CO
14 10 (0.67%) Finacle
14 10 (0.67%) Loan IQ
14 10 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
15 9 (0.60%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 213 (14.25%) Azure
2 120 (8.03%) Power Platform
3 114 (7.63%) Azure DevOps
4 97 (6.49%) Dynamics 365
5 82 (5.48%) AWS
6 50 (3.34%) OCI
7 42 (2.81%) SuccessFactors
8 33 (2.21%) SaaS
9 32 (2.14%) Entra ID
10 28 (1.87%) GCP
10 28 (1.87%) Power Automate
11 26 (1.74%) GitHub
12 22 (1.47%) PowerApps
12 22 (1.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 20 (1.34%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
14 17 (1.14%) Boomi
15 15 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
16 12 (0.80%) Azure Data Factory
16 12 (0.80%) OpenShift
16 12 (0.80%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.20%) Firewall
2 14 (0.94%) Network Security
3 9 (0.60%) WAN
4 8 (0.54%) SMS
5 7 (0.47%) LAN
6 6 (0.40%) DNS
6 6 (0.40%) VPN
7 5 (0.33%) BGP
7 5 (0.33%) FTP
7 5 (0.33%) MPLS
7 5 (0.33%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.27%) 5G
8 4 (0.27%) DHCP
8 4 (0.27%) Internet
8 4 (0.27%) Intrusion Detection
9 3 (0.20%) IPsec
9 3 (0.20%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.20%) SSL
9 3 (0.20%) VLAN
10 2 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (6.22%) Power BI
2 32 (2.14%) SQL Server
3 22 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
4 20 (1.34%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 20 (1.34%) Relational Database
4 20 (1.34%) Tableau
5 17 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (0.87%) Metadata
6 13 (0.87%) MySQL
7 12 (0.80%) Oracle Database
8 9 (0.60%) RDBMS
9 8 (0.54%) Pinecone
9 8 (0.54%) SAP HANA
10 7 (0.47%) Data Lake
10 7 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 6 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
11 6 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
11 6 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 5 (0.33%) DynamoDB
12 5 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 250 (16.72%) JIRA
2 35 (2.34%) Postman
3 34 (2.27%) Selenium
4 22 (1.47%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.34%) Git
5 20 (1.34%) REST Assured
6 16 (1.07%) Cucumber
6 16 (1.07%) GitLab
6 16 (1.07%) TestRail
7 14 (0.94%) Zephyr
8 9 (0.60%) JMeter
8 9 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
9 8 (0.54%) MLflow
10 7 (0.47%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
11 6 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 5 (0.33%) git-flow
13 4 (0.27%) Gatling
13 4 (0.27%) WebDriver
General
1 680 (45.48%) Finance
2 521 (34.85%) Social Skills
3 262 (17.53%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (11.71%) Banking
5 142 (9.50%) Public Sector
6 121 (8.09%) Documentation Skills
7 77 (5.15%) Retail
8 63 (4.21%) Manufacturing
9 48 (3.21%) Investment Banking
9 48 (3.21%) Legal
10 44 (2.94%) Law
11 43 (2.88%) Front Office
12 40 (2.68%) General Ledger
13 35 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
14 33 (2.21%) Marketing
15 31 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
16 29 (1.94%) Local Government
17 22 (1.47%) Back Office
17 22 (1.47%) Billing
18 18 (1.20%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 427 (28.56%) Analyst
2 322 (21.54%) Business Analyst
3 235 (15.72%) Lead
4 198 (13.24%) Consultant
5 114 (7.63%) Senior
6 93 (6.22%) Test Manager
7 80 (5.35%) Architect
7 80 (5.35%) Developer
8 63 (4.21%) Project Manager
9 60 (4.01%) Functional Consultant
10 57 (3.81%) Test Analyst
11 56 (3.75%) Test Leader
12 51 (3.41%) SAP Consultant
13 44 (2.94%) Oracle Consultant
14 41 (2.74%) Senior Analyst
15 38 (2.54%) Lead Architect
16 34 (2.27%) Test Engineer
17 32 (2.14%) Functional Architect
17 32 (2.14%) Tester
18 31 (2.07%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (5.75%) REST
2 54 (3.61%) Middleware
3 48 (3.21%) Oracle Fusion
3 48 (3.21%) SOAP
4 29 (1.94%) JSON
4 29 (1.94%) XML
5 22 (1.47%) Playwright
6 21 (1.40%) .NET
7 20 (1.34%) SAP Fiori
8 18 (1.20%) ADO
8 18 (1.20%) Web Services
9 15 (1.00%) RESTful
9 15 (1.00%) SailPoint
10 13 (0.87%) AngularJS
10 13 (0.87%) OAuth
10 13 (0.87%) Swagger
11 11 (0.74%) React
11 11 (0.74%) Spring
11 11 (0.74%) Spring Boot
12 10 (0.67%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 103 (6.89%) Product Ownership
2 101 (6.76%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (4.41%) Onboarding
4 40 (2.68%) Data Structures
5 39 (2.61%) Management Information System
6 33 (2.21%) Public Cloud
7 31 (2.07%) Derivative
8 29 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (1.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 21 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 20 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 19 (1.27%) Low-Code
13 17 (1.14%) Credit Risk
13 17 (1.14%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.00%) SCADA
15 13 (0.87%) Cloud Native
15 13 (0.87%) Data Centre
16 12 (0.80%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 38 (2.54%) Windows
2 24 (1.61%) Linux
3 6 (0.40%) Unix
4 5 (0.33%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.20%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.20%) VMS
6 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.067%) Android
7 1 (0.067%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 454 (30.37%) Agile
2 428 (28.63%) Migration
3 421 (28.16%) Stakeholder Management
4 356 (23.81%) Validation
5 344 (23.01%) System Integration Testing
6 299 (20.00%) Data Migration
7 271 (18.13%) ERP
8 255 (17.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 241 (16.12%) Problem-Solving
10 214 (14.31%) Workshop Facilitation
11 199 (13.31%) Requirements Gathering
12 197 (13.18%) DevOps
13 193 (12.91%) Continuous Improvement
13 193 (12.91%) Test Automation
14 191 (12.78%) Scenario Testing
14 191 (12.78%) User Stories
15 173 (11.57%) Test Strategy
16 163 (10.90%) Acceptance Criteria
17 156 (10.43%) Defect Management
18 155 (10.37%) Business Analysis
Programming Languages
1 194 (12.98%) SQL
2 73 (4.88%) Python
3 53 (3.55%) Java
4 43 (2.88%) JavaScript
5 20 (1.34%) C#
6 17 (1.14%) Apex Code
7 15 (1.00%) PowerShell
8 14 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 13 (0.87%) TypeScript
10 10 (0.67%) Bash
11 8 (0.54%) ABAP
11 8 (0.54%) PHP
12 6 (0.40%) Korn
13 5 (0.33%) R
13 5 (0.33%) SOQL
13 5 (0.33%) SOSL
14 4 (0.27%) Perl
14 4 (0.27%) Shell Script
15 3 (0.20%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.20%) VB
Qualifications
1 167 (11.17%) Security Cleared
2 130 (8.70%) SC Cleared
3 102 (6.82%) Degree
4 45 (3.01%) ISTQB
5 38 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (2.21%) ACCA
7 31 (2.07%) CIMA
8 26 (1.74%) PMI Certification
9 20 (1.34%) PMP
10 14 (0.94%) IIBA
10 14 (0.94%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
11 12 (0.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 10 (0.67%) CBAP
13 8 (0.54%) DV Cleared
14 7 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 6 (0.40%) ISEB
16 5 (0.33%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (16.59%) QA
2 130 (8.70%) Data Quality
3 62 (4.15%) GDPR
4 24 (1.61%) Accessibility
4 24 (1.61%) IFRS
5 22 (1.47%) GRC
5 22 (1.47%) SLA
6 19 (1.27%) PMO
7 17 (1.14%) ISO 20022
7 17 (1.14%) NIST
8 15 (1.00%) PSD2
9 14 (0.94%) IFRS 17
10 13 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 11 (0.74%) MiFID
12 10 (0.67%) SEPA
13 9 (0.60%) HL7
13 9 (0.60%) ISO 8583
14 7 (0.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 7 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 7 (0.47%) NCSC
System Software
1 31 (2.07%) Active Directory
2 25 (1.67%) Docker
3 12 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
4 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.13%) Firmware
5 2 (0.13%) HDFS
5 2 (0.13%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.067%) Citrix Presentation Server
6 1 (0.067%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.067%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.067%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 30 (2.01%) Kubernetes
2 23 (1.54%) HP ALM
3 16 (1.07%) Terraform
4 15 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (0.47%) Grafana
6 5 (0.33%) HP Quality Center
7 4 (0.27%) Ansible
7 4 (0.27%) Control-M
7 4 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
9 2 (0.13%) Kibana
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.13%) SCCM
10 1 (0.067%) CASB
10 1 (0.067%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.067%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.067%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.067%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.067%) Rundeck
10 1 (0.067%) WSUS
Vendors
1 243 (16.25%) SAP
2 219 (14.65%) Oracle
3 181 (12.11%) Microsoft
4 94 (6.29%) ServiceNow
5 87 (5.82%) Salesforce
6 30 (2.01%) Workday
7 24 (1.61%) HP
8 21 (1.40%) IFS
9 19 (1.27%) Murex
10 17 (1.14%) Blue Prism
11 16 (1.07%) Ariba
11 16 (1.07%) Cisco
12 13 (0.87%) Infor
13 12 (0.80%) Adobe
13 12 (0.80%) MuleSoft
13 12 (0.80%) UiPath
14 11 (0.74%) Bloomberg
14 11 (0.74%) Citrix
14 11 (0.74%) Kronos
14 11 (0.74%) Zscaler