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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 114 113
Rank change year-on-year +36 -1 +33
Contract jobs citing User Acceptance Testing 1,498 693 846
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 2.41% 1.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 2.65% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 919 458 571
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 £589
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £453 £475
% change year-on-year +1.82% -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 41,377 26,173 36,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 91.02% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,864 16,755 23,656
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -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 2,474 1,096 2,500
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.65 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.76 £74.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +29 1,280 £500 - 278
London +14 708 £525 - 130
UK excluding London +58 615 £461 +1.82% 202
Work from Home +25 471 £500 - 124
South East +42 169 £475 +11.76% 76
Midlands +31 154 £475 +2.70% 35
North of England -19 134 £449 -9.39% 57
West Midlands +23 99 £475 -6.86% 19
North West -13 89 £430 -15.69% 39
South West +3 58 £469 -1.26% 12
East Midlands +2 54 £450 +5.88% 16
Scotland +31 49 £525 +10.53% 9
Yorkshire -24 38 £453 -4.13% 15
East of England -22 25 £575 +35.29% 6
Northern Ireland +8 16 £475 -7.99% 3
Wales -5 13 £468 +3.54% 6
North East -22 7 £355 +5.97% 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 99 (6.61%) Confluence
2 22 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.73%) SAS
4 9 (0.60%) 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
7 3 (0.20%) CMS
8 2 (0.13%) Cloud Foundry
8 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.13%) JBoss
8 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.13%) Kentico
8 2 (0.13%) Mendix
8 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.13%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.067%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.067%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 57 (3.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (2.47%) MS Visio
3 29 (1.94%) 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 (7.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (2.34%) Oracle Payables
2 35 (2.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 34 (2.27%) Dynamics CRM
4 29 (1.94%) Oracle EBS
5 26 (1.74%) Oracle Receivables
6 19 (1.27%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (1.13%) Oracle General Ledger
8 15 (1.00%) Oracle EBS R12
8 15 (1.00%) Payment Gateway
8 15 (1.00%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.87%) Aladdin
9 13 (0.87%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.80%) SAP FI
11 11 (0.73%) Finacle
11 11 (0.73%) Oracle Cash Management
11 11 (0.73%) SAP CO
12 10 (0.67%) Loan IQ
12 10 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
13 9 (0.60%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 210 (14.02%) Azure
2 122 (8.14%) Power Platform
3 116 (7.74%) Azure DevOps
4 100 (6.68%) Dynamics 365
5 81 (5.41%) AWS
6 48 (3.20%) OCI
7 40 (2.67%) SuccessFactors
8 33 (2.20%) SaaS
9 32 (2.14%) Entra ID
10 28 (1.87%) Power Automate
11 26 (1.74%) GitHub
12 24 (1.60%) GCP
13 22 (1.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 21 (1.40%) PowerApps
15 20 (1.34%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
16 17 (1.13%) Boomi
17 15 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
18 12 (0.80%) OpenShift
18 12 (0.80%) Serverless
19 11 (0.73%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.20%) Firewall
2 14 (0.93%) Network Security
3 9 (0.60%) WAN
4 8 (0.53%) 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%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (6.41%) Power BI
2 32 (2.14%) SQL Server
3 22 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
4 21 (1.40%) Relational Database
5 20 (1.34%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 20 (1.34%) Tableau
6 18 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (0.87%) MySQL
7 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
8 12 (0.80%) Metadata
9 10 (0.67%) RDBMS
10 8 (0.53%) Pinecone
10 8 (0.53%) SAP HANA
11 7 (0.47%) Data Lake
12 6 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
12 6 (0.40%) Electronic Patient Records
12 6 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 5 (0.33%) DynamoDB
13 5 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 258 (17.22%) JIRA
2 35 (2.34%) Postman
2 35 (2.34%) Selenium
3 22 (1.47%) Jenkins
4 20 (1.34%) Git
4 20 (1.34%) REST Assured
5 17 (1.13%) TestRail
6 16 (1.07%) Cucumber
6 16 (1.07%) GitLab
6 16 (1.07%) Zephyr
7 9 (0.60%) JMeter
7 9 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
8 8 (0.53%) Cypress.io
8 8 (0.53%) MLflow
9 7 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (0.40%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.33%) git-flow
12 4 (0.27%) Gatling
12 4 (0.27%) LoadRunner
12 4 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 681 (45.46%) Finance
2 525 (35.05%) Social Skills
3 268 (17.89%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (11.68%) Banking
5 141 (9.41%) Public Sector
6 124 (8.28%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (4.94%) Retail
8 62 (4.14%) Manufacturing
9 48 (3.20%) Investment Banking
9 48 (3.20%) Legal
10 44 (2.94%) Law
11 43 (2.87%) Front Office
12 36 (2.40%) General Ledger
13 35 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
14 32 (2.14%) Marketing
15 31 (2.07%) Organisational Skills
16 29 (1.94%) Local Government
17 24 (1.60%) Back Office
17 24 (1.60%) Billing
18 20 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 432 (28.84%) Analyst
2 325 (21.70%) Business Analyst
3 234 (15.62%) Lead
4 197 (13.15%) Consultant
5 114 (7.61%) Senior
6 93 (6.21%) Test Manager
7 82 (5.47%) Developer
8 79 (5.27%) Architect
9 60 (4.01%) Project Manager
10 58 (3.87%) Functional Consultant
10 58 (3.87%) Test Analyst
11 54 (3.60%) Test Leader
12 53 (3.54%) SAP Consultant
13 42 (2.80%) Oracle Consultant
14 41 (2.74%) Senior Analyst
15 38 (2.54%) Lead Architect
16 34 (2.27%) Test Engineer
16 34 (2.27%) Tester
17 32 (2.14%) Functional Architect
18 31 (2.07%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (5.61%) REST
2 54 (3.60%) Middleware
3 48 (3.20%) Oracle Fusion
4 45 (3.00%) SOAP
5 29 (1.94%) JSON
5 29 (1.94%) XML
6 22 (1.47%) Playwright
7 20 (1.34%) .NET
7 20 (1.34%) SAP Fiori
8 19 (1.27%) ADO
9 18 (1.20%) Web Services
10 15 (1.00%) RESTful
10 15 (1.00%) SailPoint
11 13 (0.87%) AngularJS
11 13 (0.87%) OAuth
11 13 (0.87%) Swagger
12 11 (0.73%) Pandas
12 11 (0.73%) React
12 11 (0.73%) Spring
12 11 (0.73%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.94%) Product Ownership
2 99 (6.61%) Legacy Systems
3 65 (4.34%) Onboarding
4 39 (2.60%) Data Structures
5 38 (2.54%) Management Information System
6 33 (2.20%) Public Cloud
7 30 (2.00%) Derivative
7 30 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.54%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 21 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
10 21 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 20 (1.34%) Low-Code
12 18 (1.20%) Credit Risk
13 16 (1.07%) Fixed Income
13 16 (1.07%) SCADA
14 13 (0.87%) Cloud Native
14 13 (0.87%) Data Centre
15 12 (0.80%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 39 (2.60%) Windows
2 24 (1.60%) 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
1 455 (30.37%) Agile
2 431 (28.77%) Migration
3 423 (28.24%) Stakeholder Management
4 358 (23.90%) Validation
5 343 (22.90%) System Integration Testing
6 300 (20.03%) Data Migration
7 268 (17.89%) ERP
8 260 (17.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 247 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
10 216 (14.42%) Workshop Facilitation
11 207 (13.82%) Requirements Gathering
12 197 (13.15%) Test Automation
13 196 (13.08%) DevOps
13 196 (13.08%) User Stories
14 195 (13.02%) Scenario Testing
15 193 (12.88%) Continuous Improvement
16 177 (11.82%) Test Strategy
17 166 (11.08%) Acceptance Criteria
18 157 (10.48%) Defect Management
19 156 (10.41%) Business Analysis
Programming Languages
1 198 (13.22%) SQL
2 75 (5.01%) Python
3 52 (3.47%) Java
4 42 (2.80%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.27%) C#
6 17 (1.13%) Apex Code
7 15 (1.00%) PowerShell
8 14 (0.93%) PL/SQL
9 12 (0.80%) TypeScript
10 10 (0.67%) Bash
11 8 (0.53%) ABAP
11 8 (0.53%) 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%) VB6
15 3 (0.20%) X++
Qualifications
1 161 (10.75%) Security Cleared
2 126 (8.41%) SC Cleared
3 98 (6.54%) Degree
4 46 (3.07%) ISTQB
5 38 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (2.20%) ACCA
7 31 (2.07%) CIMA
8 26 (1.74%) PMI Certification
9 20 (1.34%) PMP
10 14 (0.93%) IIBA
10 14 (0.93%) Master's Degree
11 12 (0.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 11 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (0.67%) CBAP
14 7 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.47%) DV Cleared
14 7 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 5 (0.33%) Azure Certification
16 5 (0.33%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (16.69%) QA
2 130 (8.68%) Data Quality
3 61 (4.07%) GDPR
4 24 (1.60%) Accessibility
4 24 (1.60%) IFRS
5 23 (1.54%) GRC
6 22 (1.47%) SLA
7 19 (1.27%) PMO
8 17 (1.13%) ISO 20022
8 17 (1.13%) NIST
9 15 (1.00%) PSD2
10 14 (0.93%) IFRS 17
11 13 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 11 (0.73%) MiFID
13 10 (0.67%) SEPA
14 9 (0.60%) HL7
14 9 (0.60%) ISO 8583
15 7 (0.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 7 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
15 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 (2.00%) 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
1 241 (16.09%) SAP
2 213 (14.22%) Oracle
3 185 (12.35%) Microsoft
4 92 (6.14%) ServiceNow
5 85 (5.67%) Salesforce
6 28 (1.87%) Workday
7 24 (1.60%) HP
8 21 (1.40%) IFS
9 19 (1.27%) Murex
10 18 (1.20%) Ariba
11 17 (1.13%) Blue Prism
12 16 (1.07%) Cisco
13 13 (0.87%) Infor
13 13 (0.87%) UiPath
14 12 (0.80%) Adobe
14 12 (0.80%) MuleSoft
15 11 (0.73%) Citrix
15 11 (0.73%) Kronos
15 11 (0.73%) Zscaler
16 10 (0.67%) Splunk