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 25 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 128 114
Rank change year-on-year +50 -14 +29
Contract jobs citing User Acceptance Testing 1,439 639 872
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.09% 2.16% 2.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.64% 2.38% 2.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 891 419 585
10th Percentile £350 £341 £331
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 10 10
10th Percentile £21.65 £20.83 £12.92
25th Percentile £23.93 £36.06 £14.85
Median hourly rate £30.15 £58.75 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year -48.68% +62.07% -42.00%
75th Percentile £71.00 £64.69 £78.25
90th Percentile £84.45 £86.15 £87.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.38 £58.75 £36.25
% change year-on-year -51.70% +62.07% -42.00%

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 39,506 26,799 37,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.79% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,946 17,322 24,335
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -0.36% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,068 2,432
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £28.00 £35.58
% change year-on-year +49.48% -21.29% -4.62%

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 25 April 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 25 April 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 25 April 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 +41 1,249 £500 - 267
London +33 679 £500 -4.76% 107
UK excluding London +68 595 £475 +5.56% 226
Work from Home +35 428 £525 +5.00% 134
South East +43 179 £502 +21.58% 91
North of England -7 146 £450 -10.00% 40
Midlands +11 131 £485 +4.86% 56
North West -11 95 £425 -16.88% 20
West Midlands +8 89 £488 -1.52% 32
South West -10 53 £469 +4.22% 11
East Midlands -14 41 £463 +8.82% 24
Yorkshire -25 40 £500 +5.82% 17
Scotland +31 38 £506 +15.25% 9
East of England -27 29 £550 +33.33% 9
Northern Ireland +9 15 £475 -8.65% 6
North East -9 11 £500 +49.25% 3
Wales -3 8 £475 +4.86% 4

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 96 (6.67%) Confluence
2 21 (1.46%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.76%) SAS
4 8 (0.56%) Appian
5 7 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 6 (0.42%) Apache
6 6 (0.42%) CMS
7 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.21%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.21%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.14%) Camunda
8 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.14%) JBoss
8 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.14%) Mendix
8 2 (0.14%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.069%) Cloud Foundry
9 1 (0.069%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.069%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.069%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 60 (4.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (2.36%) MS Visio
3 29 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
4 28 (1.95%) Microsoft Project
5 23 (1.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.069%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 92 (6.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (3.13%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (2.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 41 (2.85%) Oracle EBS
5 35 (2.43%) Oracle Receivables
6 34 (2.36%) Dynamics CRM
7 26 (1.81%) Oracle General Ledger
8 22 (1.53%) Oracle Assets
8 22 (1.53%) Oracle EBS R12
9 18 (1.25%) Oracle ERP
10 17 (1.18%) SAP FI
11 16 (1.11%) Oracle Cash Management
12 15 (1.04%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.90%) iTrent
13 13 (0.90%) Loan IQ
13 13 (0.90%) SAP FI/CO
14 11 (0.76%) Aladdin
15 10 (0.69%) NEC Housing
15 10 (0.69%) Payment Gateway
16 9 (0.63%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 207 (14.38%) Azure
2 116 (8.06%) Power Platform
3 106 (7.37%) Azure DevOps
4 101 (7.02%) Dynamics 365
5 85 (5.91%) AWS
6 54 (3.75%) OCI
7 34 (2.36%) SaaS
8 33 (2.29%) Entra ID
8 33 (2.29%) SuccessFactors
9 31 (2.15%) GCP
9 31 (2.15%) Power Automate
10 25 (1.74%) GitHub
10 25 (1.74%) PowerApps
11 24 (1.67%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 20 (1.39%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 17 (1.18%) Microsoft 365
14 14 (0.97%) Serverless
15 13 (0.90%) Azure Data Factory
16 12 (0.83%) OpenShift
17 10 (0.69%) Boomi
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.11%) Firewall
2 14 (0.97%) Network Security
3 8 (0.56%) SMS
4 6 (0.42%) VPN
5 5 (0.35%) BGP
5 5 (0.35%) FTP
5 5 (0.35%) LAN
5 5 (0.35%) MPLS
5 5 (0.35%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.28%) 5G
6 4 (0.28%) DHCP
6 4 (0.28%) DNS
6 4 (0.28%) WAN
7 3 (0.21%) Internet
7 3 (0.21%) IPsec
7 3 (0.21%) SD-WAN
7 3 (0.21%) SSL
7 3 (0.21%) VLAN
8 2 (0.14%) SIGTRAN
8 2 (0.14%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (5.91%) Power BI
2 30 (2.08%) SQL Server
3 29 (2.02%) Oracle Reports
4 23 (1.60%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 22 (1.53%) Relational Database
6 19 (1.32%) Tableau
7 17 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (1.11%) MySQL
9 13 (0.90%) Metadata
10 12 (0.83%) Oracle Database
11 11 (0.76%) SAP HANA
12 8 (0.56%) Pinecone
12 8 (0.56%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 7 (0.49%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.42%) Data Lake
15 5 (0.35%) Electronic Patient Records
15 5 (0.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 4 (0.28%) BigQuery
16 4 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 252 (17.51%) JIRA
2 39 (2.71%) Selenium
3 29 (2.02%) Postman
4 25 (1.74%) Git
5 20 (1.39%) TestRail
6 19 (1.32%) Jenkins
7 17 (1.18%) GitLab
8 16 (1.11%) Zephyr
9 10 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 10 (0.69%) JMeter
9 10 (0.69%) REST Assured
10 9 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.56%) Cypress.io
11 8 (0.56%) MLflow
12 7 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 5 (0.35%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.35%) git-flow
14 5 (0.35%) SoapUI
15 4 (0.28%) SpecFlow
General
1 632 (43.92%) Finance
2 549 (38.15%) Social Skills
3 266 (18.49%) Analytical Skills
4 173 (12.02%) Banking
5 144 (10.01%) Public Sector
6 113 (7.85%) Documentation Skills
7 68 (4.73%) Manufacturing
8 62 (4.31%) Retail
9 49 (3.41%) Law
10 46 (3.20%) Investment Banking
11 45 (3.13%) Presentation Skills
12 41 (2.85%) Legal
13 39 (2.71%) Front Office
14 37 (2.57%) General Ledger
15 35 (2.43%) Marketing
16 31 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
17 28 (1.95%) Local Government
18 23 (1.60%) Back Office
19 19 (1.32%) Billing
20 17 (1.18%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 414 (28.77%) Analyst
2 310 (21.54%) Business Analyst
3 231 (16.05%) Lead
4 195 (13.55%) Consultant
5 100 (6.95%) Test Manager
6 95 (6.60%) Senior
7 78 (5.42%) Developer
8 77 (5.35%) Architect
9 61 (4.24%) Functional Consultant
10 60 (4.17%) Project Manager
11 59 (4.10%) Test Analyst
12 51 (3.54%) SAP Consultant
12 51 (3.54%) Test Leader
13 44 (3.06%) Oracle Consultant
14 39 (2.71%) Tester
15 38 (2.64%) Lead Architect
16 37 (2.57%) Senior Analyst
17 33 (2.29%) Functional Architect
18 26 (1.81%) Senior Business Analyst
18 26 (1.81%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (5.98%) REST
2 46 (3.20%) SOAP
3 43 (2.99%) Oracle Fusion
4 39 (2.71%) Middleware
5 24 (1.67%) XML
6 23 (1.60%) .NET
7 22 (1.53%) Web Services
8 20 (1.39%) JSON
9 17 (1.18%) Playwright
9 17 (1.18%) RESTful
10 16 (1.11%) SailPoint
10 16 (1.11%) Spring
11 15 (1.04%) ADO
11 15 (1.04%) OAuth
11 15 (1.04%) Spring Boot
12 13 (0.90%) Swagger
13 12 (0.83%) AngularJS
13 12 (0.83%) JWT
14 11 (0.76%) NumPy
14 11 (0.76%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 110 (7.64%) Product Ownership
2 95 (6.60%) Legacy Systems
3 65 (4.52%) Onboarding
4 39 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 36 (2.50%) Data Structures
6 31 (2.15%) Public Cloud
7 30 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
7 30 (2.08%) Derivative
8 21 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 21 (1.46%) Low-Code
9 20 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
9 20 (1.39%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 18 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
11 17 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.04%) Cloud Native
12 15 (1.04%) Fixed Income
13 13 (0.90%) Credit Risk
13 13 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (0.83%) CMDB
14 12 (0.83%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (2.22%) Windows
2 16 (1.11%) Linux
3 4 (0.28%) Mac OS
3 4 (0.28%) VMS
3 4 (0.28%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.21%) Unix
5 2 (0.14%) Android
5 2 (0.14%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.14%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.069%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 456 (31.69%) Agile
2 412 (28.63%) Stakeholder Management
3 402 (27.94%) Migration
4 309 (21.47%) Validation
5 288 (20.01%) System Integration Testing
6 275 (19.11%) Data Migration
7 256 (17.79%) ERP
8 253 (17.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 223 (15.50%) Problem-Solving
10 218 (15.15%) Workshop Facilitation
11 200 (13.90%) Requirements Gathering
12 194 (13.48%) Test Automation
13 191 (13.27%) DevOps
14 183 (12.72%) Scenario Testing
15 182 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
16 178 (12.37%) User Stories
17 177 (12.30%) Test Strategy
18 159 (11.05%) Business Analysis
19 144 (10.01%) End-to-End Testing
20 140 (9.73%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 191 (13.27%) SQL
2 74 (5.14%) Python
3 50 (3.47%) Java
4 35 (2.43%) JavaScript
5 24 (1.67%) C#
6 19 (1.32%) PL/SQL
7 17 (1.18%) PowerShell
7 17 (1.18%) TypeScript
8 13 (0.90%) ABAP
9 10 (0.69%) Apex Code
10 9 (0.63%) Bash
11 8 (0.56%) PHP
12 6 (0.42%) Korn
12 6 (0.42%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.35%) R
14 4 (0.28%) Perl
14 4 (0.28%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.28%) SOQL
14 4 (0.28%) SOSL
15 3 (0.21%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 164 (11.40%) Security Cleared
2 122 (8.48%) SC Cleared
3 105 (7.30%) Degree
4 52 (3.61%) ISTQB
5 36 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 28 (1.95%) PMI Certification
7 22 (1.53%) ACCA
7 22 (1.53%) CIMA
8 21 (1.46%) PMP
9 15 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
10 13 (0.90%) IIBA
11 10 (0.69%) DV Cleared
12 9 (0.63%) CBAP
13 8 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.49%) ISEB
15 6 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 6 (0.42%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (18.28%) QA
2 117 (8.13%) Data Quality
3 61 (4.24%) GDPR
4 23 (1.60%) PMO
5 21 (1.46%) Accessibility
6 20 (1.39%) IFRS
6 20 (1.39%) PSD2
7 19 (1.32%) SLA
8 18 (1.25%) ISO 20022
9 16 (1.11%) IFRS 17
9 16 (1.11%) NIST
10 12 (0.83%) SEPA
11 11 (0.76%) GRC
11 11 (0.76%) ISO 8583
12 10 (0.69%) MiFID
13 8 (0.56%) HL7
13 8 (0.56%) NCSC
13 8 (0.56%) PCI DSS
13 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 28 (1.95%) Active Directory
2 25 (1.74%) Docker
3 13 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.21%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.14%) Firmware
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.069%) Citrix Presentation Server
7 1 (0.069%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.069%) UAG
7 1 (0.069%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 29 (2.02%) Kubernetes
2 26 (1.81%) HP ALM
3 17 (1.18%) Terraform
4 15 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.42%) Grafana
5 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.28%) Ansible
6 4 (0.28%) Control-M
7 3 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.14%) ITRS Geneos
8 2 (0.14%) Kibana
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.14%) SCCM
9 1 (0.069%) CASB
9 1 (0.069%) CEMLI
9 1 (0.069%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.069%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.069%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.069%) Rundeck
9 1 (0.069%) WSUS
Vendors
1 218 (15.15%) Oracle
2 199 (13.83%) SAP
3 179 (12.44%) Microsoft
4 103 (7.16%) ServiceNow
5 79 (5.49%) Salesforce
6 27 (1.88%) HP
7 20 (1.39%) Murex
7 20 (1.39%) Workday
8 19 (1.32%) IFS
9 14 (0.97%) Ariba
9 14 (0.97%) Blue Prism
10 13 (0.90%) Adobe
10 13 (0.90%) Infor
10 13 (0.90%) UiPath
11 12 (0.83%) Citrix
12 11 (0.76%) Bloomberg
12 11 (0.76%) Cisco
12 11 (0.76%) Splunk
13 10 (0.69%) NEC
13 10 (0.69%) Zscaler