Test Automation Contract Job Trends in South Wales

Automated Testing
Wales > South Wales

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in South Wales requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 24 27
Rank change year-on-year +3 +3 +11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 20 19 16
As % of all contract jobs in South Wales 5.87% 6.15% 4.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.63% 6.96% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 15 14
10th Percentile £381 £180 £154
25th Percentile £425 £269 £167
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £538 £350
Median % change year-on-year -5.30% +53.57% -44.88%
75th Percentile £713 £550 £397
90th Percentile £733 £595 £547
Wales median daily rate £509 £520 £273
% change year-on-year -2.12% +90.83% -55.51%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South Wales

Test Automation 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 in South Wales.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 262 273 286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in South Wales 76.83% 88.35% 85.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 165 213
10th Percentile £208 £182 £168
25th Percentile £290 £244 £257
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.94% - -12.82%
75th Percentile £515 £586 £575
90th Percentile £650 £688 £667
Wales median daily rate £413 £425 £418
% change year-on-year -2.94% +1.80% -12.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 31 24
10th Percentile £12.82 £15.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £15.96 £20.12 £21.32
Median hourly rate £19.19 £22.00 £29.83
Median % change year-on-year -12.77% -26.25% +49.84%
75th Percentile £27.89 £28.13 £54.13
90th Percentile £85.00 £41.25 £56.13
Wales median hourly rate £18.18 £22.50 £29.83
% change year-on-year -19.20% -24.58% +49.84%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in South Wales

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in South Wales.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in South Wales

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend in South Wales

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in South Wales citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in South Wales citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram in South Wales

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation in South Wales over the 6 months to 24 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in South Wales

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend in South Wales

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in South Wales citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in South Wales citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Contract Job Locations in South Wales

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 South Wales region over the 6 months to 24 January 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
Cardiff -6 12 £468 -10.10% 28
Newport +5 8 £675 +11.34% 27
Test Automation
Wales

Test Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in South Wales 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:

Cloud Services
1 14 (70.00%) Azure
2 13 (65.00%) GitHub
3 12 (60.00%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (30.00%) Dynamics 365
5 5 (25.00%) GitHub Actions
5 5 (25.00%) Power Platform
6 2 (10.00%) BrowserStack
6 2 (10.00%) GCP
7 1 (5.00%) AWS
7 1 (5.00%) Azure App Service
7 1 (5.00%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (5.00%) Cloud Functions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (10.00%) BigQuery
1 2 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (10.00%) RDBMS
1 2 (10.00%) Relational Database
2 1 (5.00%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 10 (50.00%) Selenium
2 9 (45.00%) Cucumber
2 9 (45.00%) JMeter
3 7 (35.00%) MSTest
3 7 (35.00%) Postman
4 6 (30.00%) Visual Studio
5 4 (20.00%) GitLab
5 4 (20.00%) Jenkins
5 4 (20.00%) JIRA
5 4 (20.00%) Zephyr
6 3 (15.00%) Git
7 2 (10.00%) Bitbucket
7 2 (10.00%) SpecFlow
7 2 (10.00%) WebDriver
General
1 3 (15.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (10.00%) Finance
2 2 (10.00%) Public Sector
3 1 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (5.00%) Local Government
3 1 (5.00%) Military
Job Titles
1 8 (40.00%) Automation Tester
1 8 (40.00%) Tester
2 7 (35.00%) Senior
2 7 (35.00%) Test Engineer
3 5 (25.00%) Quality Engineer
3 5 (25.00%) Senior Automation Tester
3 5 (25.00%) Senior Tester
4 4 (20.00%) Test Automation Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) Data Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) DevOps Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) Senior DevOps
5 2 (10.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) Automation Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) DevOps Automation Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) Lead
6 1 (5.00%) Lead Test Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) QA Automation Tester
6 1 (5.00%) QA Test Engineer
6 1 (5.00%) QA Tester
6 1 (5.00%) Senior Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (35.00%) Playwright
2 6 (30.00%) Web Services
3 3 (15.00%) Node.js
4 2 (10.00%) PySpark
5 1 (5.00%) .NET
5 1 (5.00%) CSS
5 1 (5.00%) HTML
5 1 (5.00%) React
5 1 (5.00%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (20.00%) Product Ownership
2 1 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (5.00%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (5.00%) NHS
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (90.00%) Agile
2 12 (60.00%) DevOps
2 12 (60.00%) Test Strategy
3 11 (55.00%) CI/CD
4 8 (40.00%) Non-Functional Testing
5 6 (30.00%) Architectural Design
5 6 (30.00%) Design Patterns
5 6 (30.00%) Regression Testing
5 6 (30.00%) Scrum
5 6 (30.00%) SDLC
6 5 (25.00%) AI
6 5 (25.00%) Data Modelling
6 5 (25.00%) Kanban
7 4 (20.00%) BDD
7 4 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 4 (20.00%) Machine Learning
7 4 (20.00%) Manual Testing
7 4 (20.00%) Unit Testing
8 3 (15.00%) Acceptance Criteria
8 3 (15.00%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 10 (50.00%) JavaScript
2 9 (45.00%) SQL
3 8 (40.00%) C#
3 8 (40.00%) Python
4 5 (25.00%) Ruby
5 2 (10.00%) Java
5 2 (10.00%) TypeScript
6 1 (5.00%) Bash
6 1 (5.00%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 7 (35.00%) Security Cleared
2 5 (25.00%) ISTQB
2 5 (25.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
2 5 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 4 (20.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (45.00%) QA
2 6 (30.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
2 6 (30.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (10.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (25.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (5.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 2 (10.00%) Oracle