Test Automation Engineer Contracts in the UK excluding London

Automation Test Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Automation Test Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 June 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
23 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 337 366 394
Rank change year-on-year +29 +28 +63
Contract jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 16 26 46
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.12% 0.12% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.13% 0.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 22 41
10th Percentile £198 £392 £373
25th Percentile £361 £416 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -12.20% +2.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £488 £579 £575
90th Percentile £564 £590 £625
UK median daily rate £435 £463 £520
% change year-on-year -5.95% -11.06% -0.95%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 12,358 19,738 21,522
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.36% 92.42% 94.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,721 11,728 14,888
10th Percentile £220 £213 £230
25th Percentile £363 £363 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.60% -1.45% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £600
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 965 2,554 1,115
10th Percentile £13.50 £12.63 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.84 £15.97 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -1.23% +102.50%
75th Percentile £58.58 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.37 £75.50
UK median hourly rate £27.36 £37.50 £44.00
% change year-on-year -27.03% -14.77% +76.00%

Test Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Test Automation Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 23 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK excluding London

Test Automation Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 23 June 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
North of England +14 7 £463 +2.78% 15
Yorkshire +3 4 £450 -18.18% 2
Midlands - 4 £450 - 2
West Midlands - 3 £450 - 1
Wales +4 2 £375 -1.64% 3
North West 0 2 £550 +25.71% 12
South East - 2 £196 - 21
South West +37 1 £694 +17.63% 3
North East - 1 £450 - 1
East Midlands - 1 £200 - 1
Test Automation Engineer
UK

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 23 June 2025, Test Automation 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 job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Test Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 16 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 10 (62.50%) Agile
2 10 (62.50%) CI/CD
3 9 (56.25%) Selenium
4 7 (43.75%) API Testing
5 6 (37.50%) BDD
6 5 (31.25%) JIRA
6 5 (31.25%) Java
6 5 (31.25%) Playwright
7 4 (25.00%) Cucumber
7 4 (25.00%) GitHub
7 4 (25.00%) Jenkins
7 4 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (25.00%) TypeScript
7 4 (25.00%) Git
7 4 (25.00%) Cypress.io
8 3 (18.75%) Azure
8 3 (18.75%) Test Strategy
8 3 (18.75%) QA
8 3 (18.75%) Performance Testing
8 3 (18.75%) Test Scripting
8 3 (18.75%) JavaScript
8 3 (18.75%) TDD
8 3 (18.75%) C#
8 3 (18.75%) DevOps
8 3 (18.75%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
8 3 (18.75%) Public Sector
8 3 (18.75%) Social Skills
9 2 (12.50%) GitHub Actions

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (12.50%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 4 (25.00%) GitHub
2 3 (18.75%) Azure
2 3 (18.75%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (6.25%) AWS
4 1 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (6.25%) GCP
4 1 (6.25%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (6.25%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (6.25%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (56.25%) Selenium
2 5 (31.25%) JIRA
3 4 (25.00%) Cucumber
3 4 (25.00%) Cypress.io
3 4 (25.00%) Git
3 4 (25.00%) Jenkins
4 2 (12.50%) Appium
4 2 (12.50%) Postman
4 2 (12.50%) REST Assured
4 2 (12.50%) WebDriver
5 1 (6.25%) GitLab
5 1 (6.25%) JMeter
5 1 (6.25%) JUnit
5 1 (6.25%) NUnit
5 1 (6.25%) TestNG
5 1 (6.25%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (18.75%) Public Sector
2 3 (18.75%) Social Skills
3 2 (12.50%) Banking
3 2 (12.50%) Health Technology
4 1 (6.25%) Automotive
4 1 (6.25%) Aviation
4 1 (6.25%) Electronics
4 1 (6.25%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (31.25%) Playwright
2 2 (12.50%) RESTful
3 1 (6.25%) .NET
3 1 (6.25%) Chai
3 1 (6.25%) DOM
3 1 (6.25%) HTML
3 1 (6.25%) jQuery
3 1 (6.25%) JSON
3 1 (6.25%) Kafka
3 1 (6.25%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (6.25%) RAML
3 1 (6.25%) REST
3 1 (6.25%) SOAP
3 1 (6.25%) Web Services
3 1 (6.25%) XML
3 1 (6.25%) XSD
3 1 (6.25%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (12.50%) NHS
2 1 (6.25%) Mobile App
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 10 (62.50%) Agile
2 10 (62.50%) CI/CD
3 7 (43.75%) API Testing
4 6 (37.50%) BDD
5 3 (18.75%) DevOps
5 3 (18.75%) Performance Testing
5 3 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (18.75%) TDD
5 3 (18.75%) Test Scripting
5 3 (18.75%) Test Strategy
6 2 (12.50%) Continuous Delivery
6 2 (12.50%) Continuous Integration
6 2 (12.50%) Manual Testing
6 2 (12.50%) Microservices
6 2 (12.50%) Root Cause Analysis
6 2 (12.50%) Security Testing
6 2 (12.50%) Test Planning
7 1 (6.25%) Agile Testing
7 1 (6.25%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 5 (31.25%) Java
2 4 (25.00%) TypeScript
3 3 (18.75%) C#
3 3 (18.75%) JavaScript
4 2 (12.50%) Python
5 1 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 1 (6.25%) XPath
Qualifications
1 2 (12.50%) SC Cleared
1 2 (12.50%) Security Cleared
2 1 (6.25%) DBS Check
2 1 (6.25%) Degree
2 1 (6.25%) ISEB
2 1 (6.25%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (18.75%) QA
2 1 (6.25%) Accessibility
2 1 (6.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 1 (6.25%) Docker
Vendors
1 2 (12.50%) Brio
2 1 (6.25%) Atlassian
2 1 (6.25%) Google
2 1 (6.25%) MuleSoft