Test Automation Contracts

Automated Testing
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Test Automation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Test Automation over the 6 months to 27 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 56 46 47
Rank change year-on-year -10 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,480 2,850 4,477
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.42% 4.77% 5.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.96% 5.30% 5.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 963 2,077 3,214
10th Percentile £363 £383 £381
25th Percentile £425 £460 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £529
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% +3.97% +11.37%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £638
90th Percentile £719 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £490
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.14% +8.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 46 59
10th Percentile £49.00 £39.68 £18.93
25th Percentile £52.50 £51.25 £41.96
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +13.64% +22.22%
75th Percentile £78.75 £77.00 £67.65
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £82.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £58.75 £48.75
% change year-on-year +6.38% +20.51% +18.90%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Test Automation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,374 53,774 80,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.31% 89.91% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,095 37,304 56,474
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +8.25%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,422 1,763 1,928
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.34 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.27% +49.36% -
75th Percentile £59.44 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £36.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year - +80.00% -8.17%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Test Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 27 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 27 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 27 April 2024. 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 -12 1,227 £525 -4.55% 703
London -4 711 £550 -6.38% 232
Work from Home +3 599 £500 -4.76% 324
UK excluding London -24 585 £500 -4.76% 518
South East -10 187 £550 -2.44% 128
North of England -11 158 £475 -9.52% 112
North West +3 87 £500 +5.26% 73
Scotland -35 78 £480 -1.03% 43
Yorkshire -6 66 £450 -14.29% 34
South West -51 50 £550 - 69
Midlands -32 46 £425 -5.56% 77
East of England -28 38 £498 -0.50% 82
West Midlands -15 25 £425 -16.05% 44
Wales +29 22 £509 -2.68% 14
East Midlands -1 21 £419 +11.73% 33
North East -20 5 £405 -28.32% 5
Northern Ireland +10 4 £500 - 8
Isle of Man - 2 - - 1

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 63 (4.26%) Confluence
2 32 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (1.89%) Apache
3 28 (1.89%) nginx
4 23 (1.55%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.81%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.68%) CMS
8 8 (0.54%) Alfresco
9 6 (0.41%) Appian
9 6 (0.41%) Camunda
9 6 (0.41%) SAS
10 4 (0.27%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.20%) CICS
11 3 (0.20%) IIS
11 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 21 (1.42%) Simulink
2 20 (1.35%) Stateflow
3 12 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.54%) Trello
6 4 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.14%) Mingle
9 1 (0.068%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.068%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.068%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.54%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.47%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.41%) Endur
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle BPM
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.20%) IntelliMatch
5 3 (0.20%) ION Anvil
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.14%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.068%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 337 (22.77%) AWS
2 322 (21.76%) Azure
3 165 (11.15%) Azure DevOps
4 128 (8.65%) GitHub
5 93 (6.28%) Serverless
6 55 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
7 54 (3.65%) Amazon S3
8 51 (3.45%) GCP
9 45 (3.04%) PaaS
10 43 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
11 37 (2.50%) SaaS
12 35 (2.36%) Azure Service Bus
13 34 (2.30%) AWS CloudFormation
14 32 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
15 31 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
16 30 (2.03%) Power Platform
17 28 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
17 28 (1.89%) OpenShift
18 27 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
19 26 (1.76%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.69%) Firewall
2 21 (1.42%) VPN
3 20 (1.35%) DNS
4 17 (1.15%) HTTP
5 16 (1.08%) Internet
6 13 (0.88%) BGP
6 13 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
6 13 (0.88%) MPLS
7 12 (0.81%) Radio Access Network
7 12 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.68%) SSL
9 8 (0.54%) 5G
9 8 (0.54%) DHCP
9 8 (0.54%) Kerberos
9 8 (0.54%) TCP/IP
10 5 (0.34%) FTP
10 5 (0.34%) Wireless
11 4 (0.27%) SNA
11 4 (0.27%) VLAN
12 3 (0.20%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (6.01%) NoSQL
2 78 (5.27%) SQL Server
3 73 (4.93%) PostgreSQL
4 60 (4.05%) MongoDB
5 57 (3.85%) Relational Database
6 37 (2.50%) MySQL
7 30 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.96%) Elasticsearch
9 26 (1.76%) Big Data
10 25 (1.69%) KDB
11 19 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
11 19 (1.28%) Azure SQL Database
12 18 (1.22%) Data Lake
13 17 (1.15%) Amazon Aurora
13 17 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (1.15%) Power BI
14 16 (1.08%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.61%) Hadoop
15 9 (0.61%) Kdb+
16 8 (0.54%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 270 (18.24%) Selenium
2 225 (15.20%) Git
3 218 (14.73%) Jenkins
4 213 (14.39%) JIRA
5 159 (10.74%) Cucumber
6 114 (7.70%) Postman
7 113 (7.64%) Cypress.io
8 108 (7.30%) GitLab
9 74 (5.00%) JMeter
10 66 (4.46%) REST Assured
11 64 (4.32%) WebDriver
12 59 (3.99%) SpecFlow
13 55 (3.72%) TestRail
14 54 (3.65%) SonarQube
15 50 (3.38%) JUnit
16 47 (3.18%) Bitbucket
16 47 (3.18%) TeamCity
17 43 (2.91%) Appium
18 39 (2.64%) Visual Studio
19 36 (2.43%) Robot Framework
General
1 318 (21.49%) Social Skills
2 214 (14.46%) Finance
3 133 (8.99%) Banking
4 129 (8.72%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (7.70%) Public Sector
6 50 (3.38%) Front Office
7 47 (3.18%) Investment Banking
8 34 (2.30%) Back Office
9 32 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (2.09%) Law
10 31 (2.09%) Legal
11 29 (1.96%) Telecoms
12 27 (1.82%) Automotive
13 21 (1.42%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.22%) Retail
15 15 (1.01%) Marketing
16 14 (0.95%) Electronics
17 13 (0.88%) Police
18 11 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 333 (22.50%) Developer
2 190 (12.84%) Senior
3 171 (11.55%) Tester
4 146 (9.86%) Test Engineer
5 136 (9.19%) Analyst
6 126 (8.51%) Lead
7 104 (7.03%) Test Analyst
8 99 (6.69%) Automation Tester
9 87 (5.88%) Software Engineer
10 73 (4.93%) Java Developer
11 69 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
12 63 (4.26%) Test Automation Engineer
12 63 (4.26%) Test Manager
13 61 (4.12%) Architect
13 61 (4.12%) Full Stack Developer
14 59 (3.99%) Senior Developer
15 56 (3.78%) QA Engineer
16 47 (3.18%) Test Leader
17 40 (2.70%) C# Developer
18 38 (2.57%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (10.00%) REST
2 137 (9.26%) .NET
3 126 (8.51%) React
4 95 (6.42%) CSS
5 93 (6.28%) HTML
6 86 (5.81%) Node.js
7 79 (5.34%) Kafka
8 68 (4.59%) RESTful
8 68 (4.59%) XML
9 66 (4.46%) AngularJS
10 65 (4.39%) JSON
11 57 (3.85%) .NET Framework
12 54 (3.65%) Web Services
13 51 (3.45%) Spring
14 48 (3.24%) Playwright
15 44 (2.97%) SOAP
15 44 (2.97%) Spring Boot
16 41 (2.77%) .NET Core
17 36 (2.43%) ARM Templates
18 35 (2.36%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 89 (6.01%) Product Ownership
2 48 (3.24%) Algorithms
3 36 (2.43%) Mobile App
4 34 (2.30%) Greenfield Project
5 33 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
6 31 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
6 31 (2.09%) Equities
7 30 (2.03%) Derivative
8 24 (1.62%) Data Structures
9 23 (1.55%) Management Information System
10 22 (1.49%) Cloud Native
10 22 (1.49%) Onboarding
10 22 (1.49%) Public Cloud
11 21 (1.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.35%) PKI
13 18 (1.22%) Data Centre
13 18 (1.22%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (0.88%) Client/Server
15 13 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 159 (10.74%) Linux
2 94 (6.35%) Windows
3 77 (5.20%) Unix
4 37 (2.50%) Android
5 31 (2.09%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.49%) Mac OS X
7 19 (1.28%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.54%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.34%) VMS
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 2000
11 3 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 3 (0.20%) Windows XP
12 1 (0.068%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.068%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 654 (44.19%) Agile
2 461 (31.15%) CI/CD
3 446 (30.14%) DevOps
4 263 (17.77%) Continuous Integration
5 213 (14.39%) Software Engineering
6 204 (13.78%) Scrum
7 194 (13.11%) Software Testing
8 193 (13.04%) TDD
9 184 (12.43%) Microservices
10 182 (12.30%) Problem-Solving
11 162 (10.95%) BDD
12 161 (10.88%) Test Strategy
13 140 (9.46%) Containerisation
14 139 (9.39%) Test Scripting
15 137 (9.26%) Performance Testing
16 116 (7.84%) Full Stack Development
16 116 (7.84%) Unit Testing
17 109 (7.36%) User Acceptance Testing
18 104 (7.03%) Infrastructure as Code
18 104 (7.03%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 418 (28.24%) Java
2 347 (23.45%) Python
3 245 (16.55%) JavaScript
4 243 (16.42%) SQL
5 230 (15.54%) C#
6 120 (8.11%) TypeScript
7 104 (7.03%) PowerShell
8 65 (4.39%) C++
9 52 (3.51%) PHP
10 50 (3.38%) Bash
11 44 (2.97%) C
12 35 (2.36%) Kotlin
13 32 (2.16%) Shell Script
14 29 (1.96%) Go
14 29 (1.96%) Scala
15 21 (1.42%) MATLAB
16 20 (1.35%) Perl
17 16 (1.08%) Ruby
18 15 (1.01%) Groovy
19 14 (0.95%) Rust
Qualifications
1 279 (18.85%) Security Cleared
2 203 (13.72%) SC Cleared
3 111 (7.50%) Degree
4 67 (4.53%) ISTQB
5 50 (3.38%) DV Cleared
6 36 (2.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 31 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 23 (1.55%) ISEB
9 21 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (1.01%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.34%) AAT
11 5 (0.34%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.27%) CTC Cleared
12 4 (0.27%) PMI Certification
12 4 (0.27%) PMP
13 3 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (0.20%) PhD
13 3 (0.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 275 (18.58%) QA
2 95 (6.42%) Accessibility
3 31 (2.09%) Data Quality
4 11 (0.74%) NCSC
4 11 (0.74%) WCAG
5 10 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
6 7 (0.47%) HL7
6 7 (0.47%) RMADS
6 7 (0.47%) SLA
7 5 (0.34%) ISO 9001
7 5 (0.34%) PMO
8 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.20%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.20%) JTAG
9 3 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.14%) GDPR
11 1 (0.068%) GRC
11 1 (0.068%) MISRA
11 1 (0.068%) MISRA C
11 1 (0.068%) NIST
System Software
1 169 (11.42%) Docker
2 50 (3.38%) Active Directory
3 31 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.41%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.27%) VirtualBox
6 4 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.27%) vSphere
6 4 (0.27%) zsh
7 3 (0.20%) KVM
7 3 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 1 (0.068%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.068%) Firmware
9 1 (0.068%) HDFS
9 1 (0.068%) iptables
9 1 (0.068%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.068%) vCloud
9 1 (0.068%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 174 (11.76%) Kubernetes
2 151 (10.20%) Terraform
3 111 (7.50%) Ansible
4 43 (2.91%) Grafana
5 27 (1.82%) Puppet
6 25 (1.69%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.35%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.95%) Kibana
9 13 (0.88%) Docker Swarm
10 12 (0.81%) Podman
11 10 (0.68%) HP ALM
12 9 (0.61%) Packer
13 6 (0.41%) Nagios
14 5 (0.34%) Rancher
14 5 (0.34%) vRealize
14 5 (0.34%) Zipkin
15 4 (0.27%) Consul
15 4 (0.27%) Opsgenie
15 4 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 165 (11.15%) Microsoft
2 82 (5.54%) Oracle
3 41 (2.77%) VMware
4 35 (2.36%) SAP
5 24 (1.62%) Salesforce
6 23 (1.55%) ServiceNow
6 23 (1.55%) Splunk
7 19 (1.28%) IBM
7 19 (1.28%) ION Trading
8 17 (1.15%) Google
9 16 (1.08%) Databricks
10 14 (0.95%) Dynatrace
10 14 (0.95%) HP
10 14 (0.95%) TIBCO
11 12 (0.81%) Atlassian
12 9 (0.61%) Pega
13 8 (0.54%) Cadence
13 8 (0.54%) Informatica
14 7 (0.47%) Red Hat
14 7 (0.47%) Wind River