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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 18 16 41
Rank change year-on-year -2 +25 -11
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 17 27 8
As % of all contract jobs advertised in South Wales 6.54% 7.83% 2.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.36% 9.57% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 22 6
10th Percentile £305 £416 £396
25th Percentile £310 £489 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £394 £525 £619
Median % change year-on-year -25.04% -15.11% +3.13%
75th Percentile £478 £550 £667
90th Percentile £522 £551 £681
Wales median daily rate £394 £525 £600
% change year-on-year -25.00% -12.50% -

All Process and 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 231 282 351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in South Wales 88.85% 81.74% 87.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 147 266
10th Percentile £190 £154 £193
25th Percentile £287 £210 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £403 £400 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.63% -15.79% -9.52%
75th Percentile £499 £547 £597
90th Percentile £653 £638 £650
Wales median daily rate £403 £425 £450
% change year-on-year -5.29% -5.56% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 40 22
10th Percentile - £15.48 £16.98
25th Percentile £13.08 £20.12 £21.25
Median hourly rate £14.61 £25.36 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.39% -2.46% +30.00%
75th Percentile £20.75 £47.81 £47.19
90th Percentile - £53.88 £54.98
Wales median hourly rate £20.50 £25.36 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.16% -2.46% +44.44%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in South Wales

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

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 17 £394 -25.00% 8
Test Automation
Wales

Test Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in South Wales 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:

Business Applications
1 1 (5.88%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 5 (29.41%) Azure
2 3 (17.65%) AWS
2 3 (17.65%) GCP
3 1 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (5.88%) BrowserStack
3 1 (5.88%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 1 (5.88%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (17.65%) MongoDB
1 3 (17.65%) MySQL
1 3 (17.65%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (11.76%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (35.29%) Postman
1 6 (35.29%) Selenium
2 5 (29.41%) SpecFlow
3 3 (17.65%) Git
4 2 (11.76%) Cypress.io
4 2 (11.76%) JIRA
4 2 (11.76%) Zephyr
5 1 (5.88%) Bitbucket
5 1 (5.88%) Cucumber
5 1 (5.88%) GitLab
5 1 (5.88%) Jenkins
5 1 (5.88%) WebDriver
General
1 7 (41.18%) Finance
2 6 (35.29%) Public Sector
3 2 (11.76%) Social Skills
4 1 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (5.88%) Electronics
4 1 (5.88%) Local Government
4 1 (5.88%) Manufacturing
4 1 (5.88%) Marketing
4 1 (5.88%) Organisational Skills
4 1 (5.88%) Presentation Skills
4 1 (5.88%) Telecoms
4 1 (5.88%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 6 (35.29%) Lead
1 6 (35.29%) Test Engineer
2 5 (29.41%) Analyst
2 5 (29.41%) Business Test Analyst
2 5 (29.41%) Test Analyst
3 4 (23.53%) Lead Test Engineer
4 3 (17.65%) Payments Analyst
5 2 (11.76%) Developer
5 2 (11.76%) Java Developer
6 1 (5.88%) AWS Developer
6 1 (5.88%) Desktop Support
6 1 (5.88%) Desktop Support Technician
6 1 (5.88%) Desktop Technician
6 1 (5.88%) Installation Technician
6 1 (5.88%) SC Cleared Java Developer
6 1 (5.88%) Support Technician
6 1 (5.88%) Technical Leader
6 1 (5.88%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (29.41%) CSS
1 5 (29.41%) HTML
1 5 (29.41%) JSON
1 5 (29.41%) REST
1 5 (29.41%) SOAP
1 5 (29.41%) XML
2 3 (17.65%) Blazor
2 3 (17.65%) GWT
2 3 (17.65%) Spring
2 3 (17.65%) Spring Boot
3 2 (11.76%) .NET
3 2 (11.76%) .NET Core
3 2 (11.76%) .NET Framework
3 2 (11.76%) Entity Framework
3 2 (11.76%) Jest
3 2 (11.76%) Next.js
3 2 (11.76%) React
3 2 (11.76%) Spring Cloud
4 1 (5.88%) Node.js
4 1 (5.88%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 5 (29.41%) Data Protection Act
1 5 (29.41%) SWIFT Messaging Network
2 4 (23.53%) NHS
3 3 (17.65%) Onboarding
4 2 (11.76%) Client/Server
5 1 (5.88%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (70.59%) Test Strategy
2 11 (64.71%) Agile
3 7 (41.18%) Mentoring
4 6 (35.29%) CI/CD
5 5 (29.41%) Business Strategy
5 5 (29.41%) Coaching
5 5 (29.41%) Computer Science
5 5 (29.41%) Data Protection
5 5 (29.41%) Open Source
5 5 (29.41%) Product Management
5 5 (29.41%) Product Requirements
5 5 (29.41%) Scenario Testing
5 5 (29.41%) Software Testing
5 5 (29.41%) Test Scripting
5 5 (29.41%) Translating Business Requirements
5 5 (29.41%) User Acceptance Testing
6 4 (23.53%) Code Quality
6 4 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
6 4 (23.53%) Unit Testing
7 3 (17.65%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 5 (29.41%) C#
2 3 (17.65%) Java
2 3 (17.65%) TypeScript
3 2 (11.76%) JavaScript
3 2 (11.76%) SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (52.94%) Degree
2 5 (29.41%) Computer Science Degree
2 5 (29.41%) ISEB
2 5 (29.41%) ISTQB
3 4 (23.53%) Master's Degree
4 2 (11.76%) Security Cleared
5 1 (5.88%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (29.41%) SEPA
2 3 (17.65%) QA
3 2 (11.76%) Accessibility
3 2 (11.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (5.88%) Docker
Vendors
1 2 (11.76%) Google
2 1 (5.88%) Microsoft
2 1 (5.88%) SAP