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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 141 119
Rank change year-on-year +54 -22 +30
Contract jobs citing User Acceptance Testing 1,281 589 863
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 1.99% 1.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 2.20% 2.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 809 390 573
10th Percentile £342 £320 £350
25th Percentile £410 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 25
10th Percentile £15.74 £20.48 £15.25
25th Percentile £22.55 £28.50 £25.00
Median hourly rate £33.43 £58.75 £84.50
Median % change year-on-year -43.10% -30.47% +35.20%
75th Percentile £79.50 £69.13 £86.50
90th Percentile £85.33 £87.95 £92.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.61 £62.50 £48.00
% change year-on-year -57.43% +30.21% -23.26%

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 37,084 26,717 38,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.01% 90.37% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,485 17,170 25,048
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £745 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,212 916 2,333
10th Percentile £14.83 £15.26 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.02
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.79 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.85% +0.83% -10.00%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 +45 1,114 £500 - 345
London +43 590 £525 +1.20% 138
UK excluding London +59 545 £475 +5.56% 260
Work from Home +54 395 £525 +5.85% 151
South East +40 151 £550 +22.22% 97
North of England +6 149 £450 -11.11% 54
Midlands +15 126 £475 -2.56% 51
North West -1 97 £425 -17.32% 38
West Midlands +4 84 £490 -16.60% 26
Yorkshire -21 44 £513 +3.54% 12
East Midlands -9 42 £435 +2.35% 25
South West -9 40 £469 +6.29% 30
Scotland +26 34 £416 -4.91% 13
East of England -20 33 £528 +32.17% 12
Northern Ireland +8 14 £475 +26.67% 1
North East -5 8 £508 +51.49% 4
Wales -1 7 £344 -24.84% 3

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 91 (7.10%) Confluence
2 28 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 10 (0.78%) SAS
4 9 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 8 (0.62%) Appian
6 7 (0.55%) CMS
7 6 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.47%) Apache
8 5 (0.39%) GeoServer
8 5 (0.39%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.23%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.23%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.16%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.16%) Camunda
10 2 (0.16%) JBoss
10 2 (0.16%) Mendix
11 1 (0.078%) Apache Airflow
11 1 (0.078%) Cloud Foundry
11 1 (0.078%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.078%) Kentico
Applications
1 54 (4.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (2.65%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (2.58%) MS Visio
4 26 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
6 6 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.078%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.078%) S-PLUS
8 1 (0.078%) Trello
Business Applications
1 81 (6.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (3.75%) Oracle Payables
3 42 (3.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 41 (3.20%) Oracle EBS
4 41 (3.20%) Oracle Receivables
5 29 (2.26%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (2.26%) Oracle General Ledger
6 27 (2.11%) Oracle Assets
7 23 (1.80%) Oracle EBS R12
8 20 (1.56%) Oracle Cash Management
9 18 (1.41%) Oracle ERP
10 16 (1.25%) SAP FI
11 14 (1.09%) iTrent
11 14 (1.09%) SAP CO
12 13 (1.01%) Loan IQ
12 13 (1.01%) Payment Gateway
13 12 (0.94%) SAP FI/CO
14 10 (0.78%) NEC Housing
14 10 (0.78%) Oracle AGIS
15 9 (0.70%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 185 (14.44%) Azure
2 91 (7.10%) Power Platform
3 86 (6.71%) AWS
4 80 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
5 73 (5.70%) Dynamics 365
6 55 (4.29%) OCI
7 32 (2.50%) SaaS
8 31 (2.42%) GCP
9 30 (2.34%) SuccessFactors
10 27 (2.11%) Power Automate
11 24 (1.87%) Entra ID
11 24 (1.87%) GitHub
12 21 (1.64%) Microsoft 365
12 21 (1.64%) PowerApps
13 13 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
14 11 (0.86%) OpenShift
14 11 (0.86%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 10 (0.78%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
15 10 (0.78%) Serverless
16 8 (0.62%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 12 (0.94%) Firewall
1 12 (0.94%) Network Security
2 8 (0.62%) SMS
3 6 (0.47%) LAN
4 5 (0.39%) BGP
4 5 (0.39%) MPLS
5 4 (0.31%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.31%) VPN
5 4 (0.31%) WAN
6 3 (0.23%) SSL
7 2 (0.16%) Cisco ASA
7 2 (0.16%) Cisco IOS
7 2 (0.16%) DNS
7 2 (0.16%) HTTPS
7 2 (0.16%) IPsec
7 2 (0.16%) OSPF
7 2 (0.16%) SIGTRAN
7 2 (0.16%) tcpdump
7 2 (0.16%) VLAN
7 2 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (4.68%) Power BI
2 30 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
3 29 (2.26%) SQL Server
4 21 (1.64%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 20 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 19 (1.48%) MySQL
7 17 (1.33%) Tableau
8 16 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
9 14 (1.09%) Metadata
10 12 (0.94%) SAP HANA
11 10 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 8 (0.62%) Pinecone
13 7 (0.55%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.47%) Electronic Patient Records
14 6 (0.47%) GIS
14 6 (0.47%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 5 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
15 5 (0.39%) QGIS
16 4 (0.31%) Data Lake
16 4 (0.31%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 222 (17.33%) JIRA
2 33 (2.58%) Selenium
3 28 (2.19%) Git
4 27 (2.11%) Postman
5 20 (1.56%) Jenkins
6 17 (1.33%) GitLab
6 17 (1.33%) TestRail
7 13 (1.01%) Zephyr
8 11 (0.86%) Oracle Forms
9 10 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 10 (0.78%) REST Assured
10 9 (0.70%) JMeter
10 9 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
11 8 (0.62%) Cypress.io
11 8 (0.62%) MLflow
12 5 (0.39%) Visual Studio
13 4 (0.31%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.31%) LoadRunner
13 4 (0.31%) SoapUI
13 4 (0.31%) SpecFlow
General
1 552 (43.09%) Finance
2 530 (41.37%) Social Skills
3 237 (18.50%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (12.10%) Banking
5 142 (11.09%) Public Sector
6 92 (7.18%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (5.39%) Manufacturing
8 42 (3.28%) Investment Banking
9 38 (2.97%) Legal
10 36 (2.81%) Presentation Skills
11 34 (2.65%) General Ledger
12 33 (2.58%) Retail
13 32 (2.50%) Marketing
14 30 (2.34%) Front Office
14 30 (2.34%) Local Government
15 29 (2.26%) Law
16 27 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
17 16 (1.25%) Retail Banking
18 14 (1.09%) Back Office
18 14 (1.09%) Billing
Job Titles
1 372 (29.04%) Analyst
2 277 (21.62%) Business Analyst
3 187 (14.60%) Consultant
4 185 (14.44%) Lead
5 80 (6.25%) Test Manager
6 78 (6.09%) Senior
7 76 (5.93%) Developer
8 59 (4.61%) Project Manager
9 57 (4.45%) Architect
9 57 (4.45%) Functional Consultant
10 56 (4.37%) Test Analyst
11 55 (4.29%) SAP Consultant
12 47 (3.67%) Test Leader
13 40 (3.12%) Tester
14 39 (3.04%) Oracle Consultant
15 28 (2.19%) Senior Analyst
16 24 (1.87%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
16 24 (1.87%) Migration Analyst
17 22 (1.72%) Financial Analyst
17 22 (1.72%) SAP Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (6.25%) REST
2 58 (4.53%) Oracle Fusion
3 36 (2.81%) SOAP
4 27 (2.11%) Web Services
5 23 (1.80%) Middleware
6 20 (1.56%) .NET
6 20 (1.56%) RESTful
7 18 (1.41%) Playwright
7 18 (1.41%) Spring
7 18 (1.41%) XML
8 17 (1.33%) HTML
8 17 (1.33%) JSON
8 17 (1.33%) Spring Boot
9 16 (1.25%) CSS
9 16 (1.25%) OAuth
10 13 (1.01%) LDAP
10 13 (1.01%) SailPoint
10 13 (1.01%) Swagger
11 12 (0.94%) ADO
11 12 (0.94%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 95 (7.42%) Product Ownership
2 85 (6.64%) Legacy Systems
3 60 (4.68%) Onboarding
4 34 (2.65%) Management Information System
5 29 (2.26%) Data Structures
6 28 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
7 25 (1.95%) Public Cloud
8 23 (1.80%) Derivative
9 21 (1.64%) Low-Code
10 18 (1.41%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 17 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 17 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
12 14 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.09%) Cloud Native
12 14 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (1.01%) CMDB
13 13 (1.01%) PMI
14 12 (0.94%) Credit Risk
14 12 (0.94%) Fixed Income
14 12 (0.94%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 27 (2.11%) Windows
2 15 (1.17%) Linux
3 6 (0.47%) Windows 10
3 6 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
4 4 (0.31%) Android
4 4 (0.31%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.31%) VMS
5 3 (0.23%) Unix
5 3 (0.23%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.16%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.16%) OpenVMS
6 2 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.078%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 404 (31.54%) Agile
2 371 (28.96%) Stakeholder Management
3 348 (27.17%) Migration
4 246 (19.20%) System Integration Testing
5 234 (18.27%) Validation
6 231 (18.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 224 (17.49%) Problem-Solving
8 215 (16.78%) Data Migration
9 209 (16.32%) Workshop Facilitation
10 194 (15.14%) ERP
11 178 (13.90%) Requirements Gathering
12 164 (12.80%) DevOps
13 158 (12.33%) Business Analysis
14 156 (12.18%) Test Automation
15 154 (12.02%) Continuous Improvement
16 153 (11.94%) Test Strategy
17 146 (11.40%) Scenario Testing
17 146 (11.40%) User Stories
18 121 (9.45%) Change Management
19 118 (9.21%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 189 (14.75%) SQL
2 69 (5.39%) Python
3 53 (4.14%) Java
4 35 (2.73%) JavaScript
5 23 (1.80%) PowerShell
6 20 (1.56%) C#
7 18 (1.41%) TypeScript
8 16 (1.25%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.01%) ABAP
10 9 (0.70%) PHP
11 8 (0.62%) Bash
12 4 (0.31%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.31%) C++
12 4 (0.31%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.23%) Korn
13 3 (0.23%) Scala
13 3 (0.23%) SOQL
13 3 (0.23%) SOSL
13 3 (0.23%) VB
13 3 (0.23%) VB6
Qualifications
1 164 (12.80%) Security Cleared
2 121 (9.45%) SC Cleared
3 119 (9.29%) Degree
4 50 (3.90%) ISTQB
5 36 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 34 (2.65%) PMI Certification
7 23 (1.80%) PMP
8 22 (1.72%) Master's Degree
9 17 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
10 15 (1.17%) CBAP
11 13 (1.01%) ACCA
11 13 (1.01%) CIMA
11 13 (1.01%) IIBA
12 11 (0.86%) DV Cleared
13 9 (0.70%) ISEB
14 8 (0.62%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
16 6 (0.47%) AWS Certification
16 6 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 6 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (18.50%) QA
2 103 (8.04%) Data Quality
3 48 (3.75%) GDPR
4 25 (1.95%) PMO
5 24 (1.87%) PSD2
6 21 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 20 (1.56%) IFRS
7 20 (1.56%) SLA
8 18 (1.41%) ISO 20022
9 16 (1.25%) IFRS 17
10 15 (1.17%) ISO 8583
10 15 (1.17%) MiFID
11 13 (1.01%) SEPA
12 12 (0.94%) PCI DSS
13 10 (0.78%) NIST
14 9 (0.70%) NCSC
15 8 (0.62%) EMIR
16 7 (0.55%) GRC
16 7 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
17 6 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 28 (2.19%) Docker
2 20 (1.56%) Active Directory
3 15 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.23%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 3 (0.23%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.16%) Firmware
7 2 (0.16%) HDFS
8 1 (0.078%) Citrix Presentation Server
8 1 (0.078%) UAG
8 1 (0.078%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 31 (2.42%) Kubernetes
2 28 (2.19%) HP ALM
3 20 (1.56%) Terraform
4 10 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.47%) Grafana
6 5 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.23%) Ansible
7 3 (0.23%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.16%) Kibana
8 2 (0.16%) SCCM
9 1 (0.078%) CASB
9 1 (0.078%) CEMLI
9 1 (0.078%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.078%) Control-M
9 1 (0.078%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.078%) Oracle Identity Management
9 1 (0.078%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.078%) Rundeck
9 1 (0.078%) SCOM
9 1 (0.078%) WSUS
Vendors
1 213 (16.63%) Oracle
2 194 (15.14%) SAP
3 153 (11.94%) Microsoft
4 103 (8.04%) ServiceNow
5 54 (4.22%) Salesforce
6 29 (2.26%) HP
7 18 (1.41%) Murex
8 17 (1.33%) Workday
9 13 (1.01%) Ariba
9 13 (1.01%) Cisco
9 13 (1.01%) UiPath
10 12 (0.94%) IFS
11 11 (0.86%) Citrix
11 11 (0.86%) Splunk
12 10 (0.78%) IBM
12 10 (0.78%) Infor
12 10 (0.78%) NEC
13 9 (0.70%) Adobe
13 9 (0.70%) Bloomberg
14 8 (0.62%) CheckPoint