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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 133 118
Rank change year-on-year +53 -15 +31
Contract jobs citing User Acceptance Testing 1,417 625 861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.08% 2.13% 1.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 2.35% 2.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 879 413 578
10th Percentile £350 £325 £348
25th Percentile £413 £400 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year - -0.40% -4.38%
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 13
10th Percentile £21.65 £20.83 £13.17
25th Percentile £23.93 £36.06 £16.86
Median hourly rate £30.15 £58.75 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.68% +10.85% -15.20%
75th Percentile £78.25 £64.69 £86.50
90th Percentile £84.45 £86.15 -
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 39,116 26,622 37,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.70% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,735 17,238 24,535
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,315 1,028 2,411
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.43 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +23.25% -7.98% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £33.07
% change year-on-year +39.13% -13.05% -7.64%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +45 1,236 £500 - 336
London +29 680 £500 -4.76% 138
UK excluding London +60 579 £475 +5.56% 239
Work from Home +43 422 £525 +6.06% 152
South East +41 174 £514 +23.86% 92
North of England -10 140 £449 -9.58% 59
Midlands +3 130 £475 - 53
North West -5 93 £425 -16.67% 23
West Midlands +10 87 £480 -3.03% 34
South West +3 54 £475 +5.56% 14
East Midlands -13 42 £450 +5.88% 19
Scotland +24 36 £522 +19.37% 4
Yorkshire -24 36 £500 +11.11% 31
East of England -16 29 £550 +37.50% 11
Northern Ireland +10 13 £475 -7.32% 2
North East -9 11 £500 +49.25% 5
Wales -4 8 £413 -8.94% 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 95 (6.70%) Confluence
2 25 (1.76%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.78%) SAS
4 8 (0.56%) Appian
5 6 (0.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 6 (0.42%) Apache
5 6 (0.42%) CMS
6 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.21%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.21%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.14%) Camunda
7 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.14%) JBoss
7 2 (0.14%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.14%) Mendix
7 2 (0.14%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.071%) Cloud Foundry
8 1 (0.071%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.071%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 61 (4.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (2.54%) MS Visio
3 29 (2.05%) Microsoft Project
4 28 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
5 24 (1.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.071%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 92 (6.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (3.18%) Oracle Payables
3 43 (3.03%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 40 (2.82%) Oracle EBS
5 35 (2.47%) Oracle Receivables
6 33 (2.33%) Dynamics CRM
7 26 (1.83%) Oracle General Ledger
8 22 (1.55%) Oracle Assets
8 22 (1.55%) Oracle EBS R12
9 18 (1.27%) Oracle ERP
10 16 (1.13%) Oracle Cash Management
11 14 (0.99%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.92%) iTrent
12 13 (0.92%) Loan IQ
13 12 (0.85%) SAP CO
14 10 (0.71%) Aladdin
14 10 (0.71%) NEC Housing
14 10 (0.71%) Payment Gateway
14 10 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
15 8 (0.56%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 206 (14.54%) Azure
2 121 (8.54%) Power Platform
3 102 (7.20%) Azure DevOps
4 95 (6.70%) Dynamics 365
5 86 (6.07%) AWS
6 51 (3.60%) OCI
7 34 (2.40%) SaaS
8 32 (2.26%) SuccessFactors
9 31 (2.19%) Entra ID
10 30 (2.12%) GCP
10 30 (2.12%) Power Automate
11 26 (1.83%) GitHub
12 24 (1.69%) PowerApps
13 21 (1.48%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 19 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
15 17 (1.20%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
16 13 (0.92%) Azure Data Factory
16 13 (0.92%) Serverless
17 12 (0.85%) OpenShift
18 10 (0.71%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.13%) Firewall
2 14 (0.99%) Network Security
3 8 (0.56%) SMS
4 6 (0.42%) LAN
4 6 (0.42%) VPN
5 5 (0.35%) BGP
5 5 (0.35%) MPLS
6 4 (0.28%) 5G
6 4 (0.28%) DHCP
6 4 (0.28%) DNS
6 4 (0.28%) FTP
6 4 (0.28%) SSL
6 4 (0.28%) TCP/IP
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%) VLAN
8 2 (0.14%) SIGTRAN
8 2 (0.14%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (6.42%) Power BI
2 29 (2.05%) Oracle Reports
3 28 (1.98%) SQL Server
4 22 (1.55%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 22 (1.55%) Relational Database
4 22 (1.55%) Tableau
5 17 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
6 16 (1.13%) MySQL
7 13 (0.92%) Metadata
8 11 (0.78%) Oracle Database
9 10 (0.71%) SAP HANA
10 8 (0.56%) Pinecone
10 8 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 7 (0.49%) DynamoDB
11 7 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
11 7 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 5 (0.35%) Data Lake
12 5 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
12 5 (0.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 4 (0.28%) GIS
Development Applications
1 250 (17.64%) JIRA
2 40 (2.82%) Selenium
3 30 (2.12%) Postman
4 25 (1.76%) Git
5 20 (1.41%) Jenkins
6 19 (1.34%) TestRail
7 18 (1.27%) GitLab
7 18 (1.27%) Zephyr
8 11 (0.78%) REST Assured
9 10 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 10 (0.71%) JMeter
10 9 (0.64%) Cypress.io
10 9 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.56%) MLflow
12 7 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
13 5 (0.35%) Bitbucket
13 5 (0.35%) git-flow
13 5 (0.35%) SoapUI
13 5 (0.35%) Visual Studio
14 4 (0.28%) LoadRunner
General
1 621 (43.82%) Finance
2 548 (38.67%) Social Skills
3 266 (18.77%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (11.93%) Banking
5 148 (10.44%) Public Sector
6 111 (7.83%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (4.87%) Manufacturing
8 58 (4.09%) Retail
9 50 (3.53%) Law
10 46 (3.25%) Investment Banking
11 44 (3.11%) Presentation Skills
12 41 (2.89%) Front Office
13 38 (2.68%) Legal
14 37 (2.61%) General Ledger
15 36 (2.54%) Marketing
16 32 (2.26%) Local Government
17 30 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
18 24 (1.69%) Back Office
19 17 (1.20%) Retail Banking
20 15 (1.06%) Billing
Job Titles
1 406 (28.65%) Analyst
2 307 (21.67%) Business Analyst
3 229 (16.16%) Lead
4 194 (13.69%) Consultant
5 97 (6.85%) Test Manager
6 90 (6.35%) Senior
7 76 (5.36%) Architect
8 75 (5.29%) Developer
9 66 (4.66%) Project Manager
10 61 (4.30%) Test Analyst
11 60 (4.23%) Functional Consultant
12 52 (3.67%) SAP Consultant
12 52 (3.67%) Test Leader
13 43 (3.03%) Oracle Consultant
14 39 (2.75%) Lead Architect
15 38 (2.68%) Tester
16 35 (2.47%) Senior Analyst
17 33 (2.33%) Functional Architect
18 27 (1.91%) Test Engineer
19 25 (1.76%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (5.86%) REST
2 44 (3.11%) SOAP
3 42 (2.96%) Oracle Fusion
4 38 (2.68%) Middleware
5 23 (1.62%) .NET
5 23 (1.62%) Web Services
5 23 (1.62%) XML
6 20 (1.41%) JSON
7 19 (1.34%) Playwright
8 18 (1.27%) RESTful
9 17 (1.20%) SailPoint
10 16 (1.13%) Spring
11 15 (1.06%) OAuth
11 15 (1.06%) Spring Boot
12 13 (0.92%) Swagger
13 12 (0.85%) ADO
13 12 (0.85%) AngularJS
13 12 (0.85%) CSS
13 12 (0.85%) JWT
14 11 (0.78%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 103 (7.27%) Product Ownership
2 96 (6.77%) Legacy Systems
3 62 (4.38%) Onboarding
4 38 (2.68%) Management Information System
5 36 (2.54%) Data Structures
6 32 (2.26%) Public Cloud
7 28 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
7 28 (1.98%) Derivative
8 21 (1.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 20 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 19 (1.34%) Low-Code
10 19 (1.34%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 16 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (1.06%) Cloud Native
12 15 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.06%) Fixed Income
13 12 (0.85%) CMDB
13 12 (0.85%) Credit Risk
13 12 (0.85%) Reference Data
13 12 (0.85%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.19%) Windows
2 17 (1.20%) Linux
3 4 (0.28%) Mac OS
3 4 (0.28%) VMS
3 4 (0.28%) Windows 10
4 3 (0.21%) Unix
4 3 (0.21%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.14%) Android
5 2 (0.14%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.14%) OpenVMS
5 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 446 (31.47%) Agile
2 402 (28.37%) Stakeholder Management
3 393 (27.73%) Migration
4 299 (21.10%) Validation
5 280 (19.76%) System Integration Testing
6 267 (18.84%) Data Migration
7 255 (18.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 248 (17.50%) ERP
9 223 (15.74%) Problem-Solving
10 215 (15.17%) Workshop Facilitation
11 197 (13.90%) Requirements Gathering
12 193 (13.62%) Test Automation
13 184 (12.99%) DevOps
14 182 (12.84%) Continuous Improvement
14 182 (12.84%) Scenario Testing
15 179 (12.63%) Test Strategy
16 170 (12.00%) User Stories
17 155 (10.94%) Business Analysis
18 147 (10.37%) End-to-End Testing
19 137 (9.67%) Defect Management
Programming Languages
1 193 (13.62%) SQL
2 77 (5.43%) Python
3 51 (3.60%) Java
4 37 (2.61%) JavaScript
5 24 (1.69%) C#
6 19 (1.34%) PL/SQL
7 18 (1.27%) TypeScript
8 16 (1.13%) PowerShell
9 12 (0.85%) ABAP
10 9 (0.64%) Bash
11 8 (0.56%) PHP
12 7 (0.49%) Apex Code
13 6 (0.42%) T-SQL
14 5 (0.35%) Korn
14 5 (0.35%) R
15 4 (0.28%) Perl
15 4 (0.28%) Shell Script
16 3 (0.21%) VB
16 3 (0.21%) VB6
16 3 (0.21%) VBA
Qualifications
1 164 (11.57%) Security Cleared
2 124 (8.75%) SC Cleared
3 109 (7.69%) Degree
4 54 (3.81%) ISTQB
5 37 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (2.05%) PMI Certification
7 22 (1.55%) PMP
8 21 (1.48%) ACCA
8 21 (1.48%) CIMA
9 17 (1.20%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
11 12 (0.85%) IIBA
12 10 (0.71%) DV Cleared
13 9 (0.64%) CBAP
14 8 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (0.49%) AWS Certification
15 7 (0.49%) ISEB
16 6 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 6 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (18.21%) QA
2 114 (8.05%) Data Quality
3 56 (3.95%) GDPR
4 25 (1.76%) PMO
5 23 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 20 (1.41%) IFRS
7 19 (1.34%) PSD2
7 19 (1.34%) SLA
8 18 (1.27%) ISO 20022
9 16 (1.13%) IFRS 17
9 16 (1.13%) NIST
10 12 (0.85%) SEPA
11 11 (0.78%) GRC
11 11 (0.78%) ISO 8583
12 10 (0.71%) HL7
12 10 (0.71%) MiFID
13 9 (0.64%) NCSC
14 8 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 8 (0.56%) PCI DSS
14 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 27 (1.91%) Active Directory
2 26 (1.83%) Docker
3 12 (0.85%) 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
7 1 (0.071%) Citrix Presentation Server
7 1 (0.071%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.071%) UAG
7 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 30 (2.12%) Kubernetes
2 27 (1.91%) HP ALM
3 18 (1.27%) Terraform
4 15 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (0.49%) Grafana
6 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.28%) Ansible
7 4 (0.28%) Control-M
8 3 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.14%) ITRS Geneos
9 2 (0.14%) Kibana
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.071%) CASB
10 1 (0.071%) CEMLI
10 1 (0.071%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.071%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.071%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.071%) Rundeck
10 1 (0.071%) SCCM
10 1 (0.071%) WSUS
Vendors
1 213 (15.03%) Oracle
2 194 (13.69%) SAP
3 174 (12.28%) Microsoft
4 106 (7.48%) ServiceNow
5 73 (5.15%) Salesforce
6 28 (1.98%) HP
7 20 (1.41%) Murex
8 19 (1.34%) Workday
9 18 (1.27%) IFS
10 14 (0.99%) Ariba
11 13 (0.92%) Blue Prism
11 13 (0.92%) UiPath
12 12 (0.85%) Adobe
12 12 (0.85%) Citrix
13 11 (0.78%) Bloomberg
13 11 (0.78%) Cisco
13 11 (0.78%) Infor
13 11 (0.78%) Splunk
14 10 (0.71%) NEC
14 10 (0.71%) Zscaler