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 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 56 48 46
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,514 2,751 4,490
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.51% 4.66% 5.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.06% 5.18% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 992 2,012 3,225
10th Percentile £363 £386 £386
25th Percentile £425 £460 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +2.33% +13.16%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
90th Percentile £719 £750 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £495
% change year-on-year -4.76% +6.06% +13.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 42 59
10th Percentile £50.63 £40.21 £17.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £51.56 £39.21
Median hourly rate £61.25 £65.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.84% +19.55% +22.22%
75th Percentile £78.75 £78.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £90.00 £90.00 £82.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £48.75
% change year-on-year - +28.21% +16.07%

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 37,268 53,074 80,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.35% 89.85% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 36,805 56,451
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
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% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,749 1,911
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.95 £35.80 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.42% +43.20% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 -9 1,252 £525 -4.55% 792
London -10 726 £550 -4.35% 292
Work from Home +6 615 £500 -4.76% 398
UK excluding London -22 593 £500 -4.76% 537
South East -2 194 £550 -4.35% 119
North of England -8 160 £475 -13.64% 122
North West +9 85 £500 +5.26% 78
Scotland -30 78 £475 -2.06% 47
Yorkshire -7 70 £450 -18.18% 40
South West -41 54 £550 +0.92% 71
Midlands -30 42 £422 -9.44% 85
East of England -24 39 £498 -0.50% 81
West Midlands -28 23 £425 -15.00% 54
Wales +29 22 £509 -10.79% 15
East Midlands +2 19 £419 +10.26% 31
North East -22 5 £405 -28.32% 4
Northern Ireland +6 2 - - 8
Isle of Man - 2 - -

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 66 (4.36%) Confluence
2 32 (2.11%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (1.85%) Apache
3 28 (1.85%) nginx
4 26 (1.72%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
6 13 (0.86%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.66%) CMS
8 8 (0.53%) Alfresco
9 7 (0.46%) SAS
10 6 (0.40%) Appian
10 6 (0.40%) Camunda
11 4 (0.26%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.20%) IIS
12 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.20%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 21 (1.39%) Simulink
2 20 (1.32%) Stateflow
3 12 (0.79%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.53%) Trello
6 4 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.13%) CPLEX
8 2 (0.13%) Mingle
9 1 (0.066%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.066%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.53%) ION MarketView
2 7 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.40%) Endur
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.26%) SimCorp Dimension
5 3 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.20%) IntelliMatch
5 3 (0.20%) ION Anvil
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.20%) SAP EWM
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.066%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 335 (22.13%) Azure
2 334 (22.06%) AWS
3 172 (11.36%) Azure DevOps
4 128 (8.45%) GitHub
5 91 (6.01%) Serverless
6 61 (4.03%) GCP
7 55 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
8 54 (3.57%) Amazon S3
9 47 (3.10%) PaaS
10 43 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
11 36 (2.38%) SaaS
12 34 (2.25%) Azure Service Bus
13 33 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
14 32 (2.11%) Azure Monitor
15 31 (2.05%) Amazon EC2
15 31 (2.05%) Power Platform
16 28 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
17 27 (1.78%) OpenShift
18 26 (1.72%) Amazon SQS
19 25 (1.65%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.72%) Firewall
2 21 (1.39%) VPN
3 18 (1.19%) DNS
4 17 (1.12%) HTTP
5 14 (0.92%) Internet
6 13 (0.86%) BGP
6 13 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
6 13 (0.86%) MPLS
6 13 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (0.79%) Radio Access Network
8 11 (0.73%) SSL
9 9 (0.59%) 5G
10 8 (0.53%) DHCP
10 8 (0.53%) Kerberos
10 8 (0.53%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.33%) FTP
11 5 (0.33%) Wireless
12 4 (0.26%) SNA
12 4 (0.26%) VLAN
13 3 (0.20%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 90 (5.94%) NoSQL
2 81 (5.35%) SQL Server
3 71 (4.69%) PostgreSQL
4 60 (3.96%) Relational Database
5 59 (3.90%) MongoDB
6 37 (2.44%) MySQL
7 31 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
8 29 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
9 26 (1.72%) Big Data
9 26 (1.72%) KDB
10 23 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
11 19 (1.25%) Data Lake
12 18 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
12 18 (1.19%) Power BI
13 16 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
13 16 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
14 15 (0.99%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.59%) Apache Cassandra
15 9 (0.59%) Kdb+
16 8 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 274 (18.10%) Selenium
2 234 (15.46%) Git
3 217 (14.33%) Jenkins
4 215 (14.20%) JIRA
5 160 (10.57%) Cucumber
6 119 (7.86%) Postman
7 115 (7.60%) Cypress.io
8 110 (7.27%) GitLab
9 77 (5.09%) JMeter
10 66 (4.36%) REST Assured
11 65 (4.29%) WebDriver
12 59 (3.90%) SpecFlow
13 54 (3.57%) SonarQube
13 54 (3.57%) TestRail
14 50 (3.30%) JUnit
15 49 (3.24%) Bitbucket
16 48 (3.17%) TeamCity
17 45 (2.97%) Appium
18 40 (2.64%) Visual Studio
19 37 (2.44%) Robot Framework
General
1 334 (22.06%) Social Skills
2 223 (14.73%) Finance
3 137 (9.05%) Banking
4 130 (8.59%) Analytical Skills
5 112 (7.40%) Public Sector
6 53 (3.50%) Front Office
7 49 (3.24%) Investment Banking
8 38 (2.51%) Back Office
9 32 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 32 (2.11%) Legal
10 31 (2.05%) Law
11 29 (1.92%) Automotive
12 26 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 19 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 17 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (1.06%) Retail
16 13 (0.86%) Electronics
16 13 (0.86%) Marketing
16 13 (0.86%) Police
17 11 (0.73%) Prime Brokerage
Job Titles
1 355 (23.45%) Developer
2 203 (13.41%) Senior
3 173 (11.43%) Tester
4 148 (9.78%) Test Engineer
5 135 (8.92%) Analyst
6 128 (8.45%) Lead
7 104 (6.87%) Test Analyst
8 102 (6.74%) Automation Tester
9 88 (5.81%) Software Engineer
10 83 (5.48%) Java Developer
11 70 (4.62%) Full Stack Developer
12 69 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
12 69 (4.56%) Test Manager
13 63 (4.16%) Test Automation Engineer
14 61 (4.03%) Senior Developer
15 59 (3.90%) Architect
16 54 (3.57%) QA Engineer
17 45 (2.97%) Test Leader
18 41 (2.71%) C# Developer
19 40 (2.64%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 157 (10.37%) REST
2 149 (9.84%) .NET
3 130 (8.59%) React
4 100 (6.61%) CSS
5 97 (6.41%) HTML
6 86 (5.68%) Node.js
7 82 (5.42%) Kafka
8 71 (4.69%) RESTful
9 70 (4.62%) AngularJS
10 69 (4.56%) XML
11 64 (4.23%) JSON
11 64 (4.23%) Web Services
12 60 (3.96%) Spring
13 58 (3.83%) .NET Framework
14 52 (3.43%) Spring Boot
15 51 (3.37%) Playwright
16 44 (2.91%) SOAP
17 43 (2.84%) .NET Core
18 38 (2.51%) Laravel
19 36 (2.38%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 98 (6.47%) Product Ownership
2 47 (3.10%) Algorithms
3 41 (2.71%) Mobile App
4 36 (2.38%) Greenfield Project
5 35 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
6 32 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
6 32 (2.11%) Derivative
6 32 (2.11%) Equities
7 24 (1.59%) Onboarding
8 23 (1.52%) Public Cloud
9 22 (1.45%) Cloud Native
9 22 (1.45%) Data Structures
9 22 (1.45%) PKI
10 21 (1.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 21 (1.39%) Management Information System
11 19 (1.25%) Fixed Income
12 18 (1.19%) Data Centre
13 16 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
14 14 (0.92%) Hedge funds
15 13 (0.86%) Client/Server
Operating Systems
1 162 (10.70%) Linux
2 94 (6.21%) Windows
3 80 (5.28%) Unix
4 41 (2.71%) Android
5 31 (2.05%) Windows Server
6 22 (1.45%) Mac OS X
7 20 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
10 5 (0.33%) 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 (0.066%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.066%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (44.45%) Agile
2 476 (31.44%) CI/CD
3 460 (30.38%) DevOps
4 271 (17.90%) Continuous Integration
5 218 (14.40%) Software Engineering
6 208 (13.74%) Scrum
6 208 (13.74%) TDD
7 206 (13.61%) Software Testing
8 192 (12.68%) Microservices
8 192 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
9 170 (11.23%) Test Strategy
10 166 (10.96%) BDD
11 142 (9.38%) Performance Testing
12 137 (9.05%) Containerisation
13 135 (8.92%) Test Scripting
14 129 (8.52%) Unit Testing
15 123 (8.12%) Full Stack Development
16 114 (7.53%) Infrastructure as Code
17 109 (7.20%) User Acceptance Testing
18 104 (6.87%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 427 (28.20%) Java
2 345 (22.79%) Python
3 249 (16.45%) SQL
4 247 (16.31%) JavaScript
5 240 (15.85%) C#
6 128 (8.45%) TypeScript
7 105 (6.94%) PowerShell
8 66 (4.36%) C++
9 56 (3.70%) PHP
10 55 (3.63%) Bash
11 45 (2.97%) C
12 41 (2.71%) Kotlin
13 32 (2.11%) Scala
13 32 (2.11%) Shell Script
14 29 (1.92%) Go
15 21 (1.39%) MATLAB
16 20 (1.32%) Perl
17 16 (1.06%) Groovy
18 14 (0.92%) Ruby
18 14 (0.92%) Rust
Qualifications
1 272 (17.97%) Security Cleared
2 199 (13.14%) SC Cleared
3 121 (7.99%) Degree
4 66 (4.36%) ISTQB
5 47 (3.10%) DV Cleared
6 39 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 34 (2.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 24 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.52%) ISEB
10 15 (0.99%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.40%) AAT
12 4 (0.26%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.26%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.20%) CISSP
13 3 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PhD
13 3 (0.20%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.20%) PMP
13 3 (0.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 2 (0.13%) ISEB Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 275 (18.16%) QA
2 96 (6.34%) Accessibility
3 31 (2.05%) Data Quality
4 11 (0.73%) HL7
4 11 (0.73%) NCSC
5 10 (0.66%) Disclosure Scotland
5 10 (0.66%) WCAG
6 7 (0.46%) RMADS
7 6 (0.40%) SLA
8 5 (0.33%) ISO 9001
8 5 (0.33%) PMO
9 4 (0.26%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.20%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.20%) JTAG
10 3 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
11 2 (0.13%) GDPR
12 1 (0.066%) GRC
12 1 (0.066%) MISRA
12 1 (0.066%) MISRA C
12 1 (0.066%) NIST
System Software
1 172 (11.36%) Docker
2 52 (3.43%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.40%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.26%) VirtualBox
6 4 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.26%) vSphere
6 4 (0.26%) zsh
7 3 (0.20%) KVM
7 3 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.13%) Firmware
9 1 (0.066%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.066%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.066%) HDFS
9 1 (0.066%) iptables
9 1 (0.066%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.066%) vCloud
9 1 (0.066%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 173 (11.43%) Kubernetes
2 156 (10.30%) Terraform
3 115 (7.60%) Ansible
4 45 (2.97%) Grafana
5 27 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 26 (1.72%) Puppet
7 20 (1.32%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
9 12 (0.79%) Kibana
9 12 (0.79%) Podman
10 9 (0.59%) Packer
10 9 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.53%) HP ALM
12 6 (0.40%) Nagios
12 6 (0.40%) Zipkin
13 5 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.33%) Rancher
13 5 (0.33%) vRealize
14 4 (0.26%) Consul
14 4 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 167 (11.03%) Microsoft
2 83 (5.48%) Oracle
3 42 (2.77%) VMware
4 34 (2.25%) SAP
5 26 (1.72%) Google
5 26 (1.72%) Salesforce
6 24 (1.59%) Splunk
7 22 (1.45%) ServiceNow
8 20 (1.32%) ION Trading
9 18 (1.19%) Databricks
10 15 (0.99%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.92%) TIBCO
12 13 (0.86%) Atlassian
12 13 (0.86%) IBM
13 12 (0.79%) HP
14 9 (0.59%) Cadence
14 9 (0.59%) Pega
15 8 (0.53%) Informatica
15 8 (0.53%) Red Hat
16 7 (0.46%) Wind River