Hybrid/Remote Test Engineer Contract Job Trends

Test Engineer
UK > Work from Home

The median Test Engineer daily rate for remote or hybrid work is £381, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 247 249 306
Rank change year-on-year +2 +57 +108
Contract jobs requiring a Test Engineer 61 83 111
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.62% 0.65% 0.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.66% 0.70% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 59 69
10th Percentile £258 £324 £363
25th Percentile £293 £387 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £381 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -19.89% +5.56% -
75th Percentile £444 £569 £538
90th Percentile £495 £608 £601
UK median daily rate £400 £475 £459
% change year-on-year -15.79% +3.54% -3.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 5
10th Percentile £53.75 - £37.35
25th Percentile £55.63 - £41.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 - £52.50
75th Percentile £63.13 - £53.75
90th Percentile £64.25 - £54.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £48.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year +2.56% -7.14% -6.25%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
Work from Home

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies with WFH or hybrid options. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in Work from Home with a recognized job title 9,210 11,890 19,123
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.80% 93.47% 94.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,076 7,604 13,506
10th Percentile £325 £325 £338
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 296 442
10th Percentile £13.30 £19.59 £16.98
25th Percentile £20.50 £31.25 £25.71
Median hourly rate £40.50 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -10.00% +3.63%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.14 £68.75
90th Percentile £68.00 £75.00 £79.19
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%

Test Engineer
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options which featured Test Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Test Engineer trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with Hybrid Work Options

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for remote Test Engineer job vacancies.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for remote Test Engineer job vacancies

Test Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Test Engineer over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Test Engineer daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Test Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend for Jobs with Hybrid Work Options

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for remote Test Engineer job vacancies.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for remote Test Engineer job vacancies

Test Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Job Vacancies with WFH Options

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Test Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract jobs with hybrid or remote work options featuring Test Engineer in the job title.

1 36 (59.02%) Test Automation
2 25 (40.98%) Agile
3 23 (37.70%) Test Scripting
4 22 (36.07%) Security Cleared
4 22 (36.07%) CI/CD
5 20 (32.79%) Selenium
5 20 (32.79%) Cisco
6 19 (31.15%) SC Cleared
7 17 (27.87%) Defect Management
8 15 (24.59%) Telecoms
8 15 (24.59%) Java
9 14 (22.95%) QA
9 14 (22.95%) DevOps
9 14 (22.95%) Case Management
9 14 (22.95%) Public Sector
10 13 (21.31%) Fibre Optics
10 13 (21.31%) Social Skills
10 13 (21.31%) RFC 2544
10 13 (21.31%) API Testing
10 13 (21.31%) Data Centre
10 13 (21.31%) Test Strategy
10 13 (21.31%) Firewall
11 12 (19.67%) Service Management
12 11 (18.03%) Performance Testing
12 11 (18.03%) Jenkins
12 11 (18.03%) REST Assured
13 10 (16.39%) C#
13 10 (16.39%) Accessibility
14 9 (14.75%) JavaScript
14 9 (14.75%) Disaster Recovery

Test Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (3.28%) Confluence
2 1 (1.64%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 9 (14.75%) Azure
2 7 (11.48%) AWS
3 6 (9.84%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (6.56%) GitHub
5 2 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (3.28%) Serverless
6 1 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (1.64%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (1.64%) AWS Direct Connect
6 1 (1.64%) AWS Step Functions
6 1 (1.64%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (1.64%) BrowserStack
6 1 (1.64%) GCP
6 1 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.64%) npm
6 1 (1.64%) Power Platform
6 1 (1.64%) PowerApps
6 1 (1.64%) Route 53
6 1 (1.64%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 13 (21.31%) Firewall
2 6 (9.84%) WAN
3 5 (8.20%) LAN
4 4 (6.56%) Wireshark
5 3 (4.92%) HTTP
6 2 (3.28%) Ethernet
7 1 (1.64%) 3GPP
7 1 (1.64%) 5G
7 1 (1.64%) SD-WAN
7 1 (1.64%) SNMP
7 1 (1.64%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.64%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (1.64%) Parquet
1 1 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.64%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 20 (32.79%) Selenium
2 11 (18.03%) Jenkins
2 11 (18.03%) REST Assured
3 9 (14.75%) Cypress.io
3 9 (14.75%) GitLab
4 8 (13.11%) Cucumber
4 8 (13.11%) JIRA
4 8 (13.11%) Postman
4 8 (13.11%) SpecFlow
5 5 (8.20%) JMeter
6 4 (6.56%) Git
6 4 (6.56%) TestNG
7 3 (4.92%) Maven
8 2 (3.28%) Appium
8 2 (3.28%) Bitbucket
8 2 (3.28%) CircleCI
8 2 (3.28%) JUnit
8 2 (3.28%) TestRail
8 2 (3.28%) Zephyr
9 1 (1.64%) Gradle
General
1 15 (24.59%) Telecoms
2 14 (22.95%) Public Sector
3 13 (21.31%) Social Skills
4 3 (4.92%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (4.92%) Banking
5 2 (3.28%) Electronics
5 2 (3.28%) Finance
6 1 (1.64%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.64%) Investment Banking
6 1 (1.64%) Local Government
6 1 (1.64%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (1.64%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (21.31%) RFC 2544
2 9 (14.75%) Playwright
3 5 (8.20%) CSS
3 5 (8.20%) HTML
3 5 (8.20%) REST
4 4 (6.56%) Node.js
5 3 (4.92%) JSON
6 2 (3.28%) Blazor
6 2 (3.28%) GWT
6 2 (3.28%) Spring Boot
6 2 (3.28%) WireMock
7 1 (1.64%) Gherkin
7 1 (1.64%) Jest
7 1 (1.64%) Kafka
7 1 (1.64%) Matplotlib
7 1 (1.64%) OAuth2
7 1 (1.64%) PyTorch
7 1 (1.64%) Seaborn
7 1 (1.64%) Swagger
7 1 (1.64%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 13 (21.31%) Data Centre
1 13 (21.31%) Fibre Optics
2 5 (8.20%) Cloud Native
3 3 (4.92%) NHS
4 2 (3.28%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.64%) Analogue Electronics
5 1 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.64%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.64%) PKI
5 1 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.64%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (59.02%) Test Automation
2 25 (40.98%) Agile
3 23 (37.70%) Test Scripting
4 22 (36.07%) CI/CD
5 17 (27.87%) Defect Management
6 14 (22.95%) Case Management
6 14 (22.95%) DevOps
7 13 (21.31%) API Testing
7 13 (21.31%) Test Strategy
8 12 (19.67%) Service Management
9 11 (18.03%) Performance Testing
10 9 (14.75%) BDD
10 9 (14.75%) Disaster Recovery
10 9 (14.75%) TDD
11 7 (11.48%) End-to-End Testing
11 7 (11.48%) Scrum
11 7 (11.48%) Software Testing
11 7 (11.48%) Validation
12 6 (9.84%) Coaching
12 6 (9.84%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 15 (24.59%) Java
2 10 (16.39%) C#
3 9 (14.75%) JavaScript
4 8 (13.11%) Python
5 4 (6.56%) SQL
6 3 (4.92%) TypeScript
7 2 (3.28%) Bash
8 1 (1.64%) C++
Qualifications
1 22 (36.07%) Security Cleared
2 19 (31.15%) SC Cleared
3 5 (8.20%) Degree
4 4 (6.56%) Master's Degree
5 3 (4.92%) CCNA
5 3 (4.92%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (4.92%) ISTQB
6 1 (1.64%) CCNP
6 1 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (1.64%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (22.95%) QA
2 10 (16.39%) Accessibility
3 6 (9.84%) WCAG
4 2 (3.28%) Data Quality
System Software
1 8 (13.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (8.20%) HP ALM
2 2 (3.28%) Kibana
2 2 (3.28%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.64%) Terraform
Vendors
1 20 (32.79%) Cisco
2 6 (9.84%) Progress
3 5 (8.20%) HP
3 5 (8.20%) Micro Focus
4 2 (3.28%) Juniper
4 2 (3.28%) Nokia
5 1 (1.64%) AppDynamics
5 1 (1.64%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.64%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.64%) EMC
5 1 (1.64%) Ericsson
5 1 (1.64%) Genesys
5 1 (1.64%) Google
5 1 (1.64%) Mentor Graphics
5 1 (1.64%) Microsoft
5 1 (1.64%) New Relic
5 1 (1.64%) Splunk