Automation Tester Contract Job Trends

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £419, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 479 424 478
Rank change year-on-year -55 +54 +96
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 118 101 126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.33% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.35% 0.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 66 108
10th Percentile £325 £330 £347
25th Percentile £360 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £419 £448 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.42% -0.56% -2.70%
75th Percentile £502 £500 £550
90th Percentile £597 £561 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £400 £431
% change year-on-year -6.25% -7.25% -3.09%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 35,739 28,752 41,680
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.51% 92.94% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,524 17,628 27,555
10th Percentile £300 £293 £275
25th Percentile £405 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £493
% change year-on-year -0.21% -3.45% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,144 847 2,284
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.92 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.55 £21.25 £16.63
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -5.71% -
75th Percentile £61.52 £62.50 £61.55
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £31.76 £36.00
% change year-on-year -11.84% -11.78% +11.63%

Automation Tester
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Automation Tester' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Automation Tester job vacancy trend in the UK

Automation Tester
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the UK

Automation Tester
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Automation Tester over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Automation Tester in the UK

Automation Tester
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Automation Tester job vacancies in the UK

Automation Tester
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Automation Tester within the UK over the 6 months to 4 February 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
England -77 86 £413 -11.19% 9
London -30 55 £430 -9.47% 5
Work from Home -13 41 £425 +9.32% 7
UK excluding London -61 35 £375 -6.25% 7
North of England -54 14 £375 -11.24% 2
South East -35 10 £383 -10.00% 2
Yorkshire -43 8 £375 -25.00% 2
Wales - 8 £700 - 1
East Midlands - 6 £543 - 1
Midlands - 6 £543 - 1
North West -32 4 £333 -16.88%
North East - 2 £488 -

Automation Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 4 February 2026, Automation Tester contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Automation Tester in the job title.

1 118 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 58 (49.15%) Agile
3 55 (46.61%) Selenium
4 48 (40.68%) CI/CD
5 46 (38.98%) Playwright
6 40 (33.90%) Azure
6 40 (33.90%) Python
7 39 (33.05%) C#
8 35 (29.66%) Test Scripting
9 34 (28.81%) DevOps
10 33 (27.97%) SQL
11 32 (27.12%) API Testing
12 31 (26.27%) Security Cleared
13 30 (25.42%) Java
14 28 (23.73%) Azure DevOps
14 28 (23.73%) JavaScript
14 28 (23.73%) Test Strategy
15 27 (22.88%) QA
16 26 (22.03%) Cucumber
16 26 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
16 26 (22.03%) SC Cleared
17 25 (21.19%) Cypress.io
17 25 (21.19%) Postman
17 25 (21.19%) TypeScript
18 23 (19.49%) Jenkins
19 22 (18.64%) AWS
19 22 (18.64%) Performance Testing
20 21 (17.80%) GitHub
20 21 (17.80%) JMeter
21 20 (16.95%) REST Assured

Automation Tester Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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:

Application Platforms
1 7 (5.93%) Confluence
2 2 (1.69%) Apache
Business Applications
1 8 (6.78%) Aladdin
2 2 (1.69%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.85%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 40 (33.90%) Azure
2 28 (23.73%) Azure DevOps
3 22 (18.64%) AWS
4 21 (17.80%) GitHub
5 12 (10.17%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (8.47%) Dynamics 365
7 9 (7.63%) Power Platform
8 8 (6.78%) Snowflake
9 5 (4.24%) GCP
10 3 (2.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (2.54%) Amazon S3
11 2 (1.69%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 2 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
11 2 (1.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 1 (0.85%) Amazon EventBridge
12 1 (0.85%) Azure AKS
12 1 (0.85%) Azure Service Bus
12 1 (0.85%) BlazeMeter
12 1 (0.85%) Google Analytics
12 1 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.39%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (1.69%) Relational Database
2 1 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.85%) MongoDB
2 1 (0.85%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 55 (46.61%) Selenium
2 26 (22.03%) Cucumber
3 25 (21.19%) Cypress.io
3 25 (21.19%) Postman
4 23 (19.49%) Jenkins
5 21 (17.80%) JMeter
6 20 (16.95%) REST Assured
7 19 (16.10%) GitLab
8 18 (15.25%) SpecFlow
9 17 (14.41%) JIRA
10 11 (9.32%) Git
11 9 (7.63%) MSTest
12 8 (6.78%) JUnit
12 8 (6.78%) WebDriver
13 7 (5.93%) Gatling
13 7 (5.93%) Zephyr
14 6 (5.08%) Visual Studio
15 5 (4.24%) TestRail
16 4 (3.39%) Bitbucket
17 3 (2.54%) Appium
General
1 21 (17.80%) Social Skills
2 17 (14.41%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (11.02%) Finance
4 9 (7.63%) Banking
5 8 (6.78%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.54%) Automotive
6 3 (2.54%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.85%) Billing
7 1 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.85%) Retail Banking
7 1 (0.85%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (38.98%) Playwright
2 16 (13.56%) REST
3 11 (9.32%) .NET
4 9 (7.63%) RESTful
4 9 (7.63%) Web Services
5 6 (5.08%) JSON
5 6 (5.08%) pytest
5 6 (5.08%) XML
6 4 (3.39%) Node.js
6 4 (3.39%) SOAP
7 3 (2.54%) Gherkin
7 3 (2.54%) React
7 3 (2.54%) WebdriverIO
8 2 (1.69%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (1.69%) Kafka
8 2 (1.69%) Puppeteer
8 2 (1.69%) Spring
8 2 (1.69%) Spring Boot
8 2 (1.69%) Swagger
8 2 (1.69%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.78%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (3.39%) Mobile App
3 3 (2.54%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.69%) Product Ownership
5 1 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (0.85%) Client/Server
5 1 (0.85%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
5 1 (0.85%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.39%) Windows
2 2 (1.69%) Linux
3 1 (0.85%) Android
3 1 (0.85%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.85%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 58 (49.15%) Agile
3 48 (40.68%) CI/CD
4 35 (29.66%) Test Scripting
5 34 (28.81%) DevOps
6 32 (27.12%) API Testing
7 28 (23.73%) Test Strategy
8 26 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
9 22 (18.64%) Performance Testing
10 18 (15.25%) Non-Functional Testing
11 16 (13.56%) TDD
12 15 (12.71%) Regression Testing
13 14 (11.86%) Scrum
14 13 (11.02%) Validation
15 12 (10.17%) Continuous Improvement
15 12 (10.17%) SDLC
16 11 (9.32%) AI
16 11 (9.32%) Test Management
17 10 (8.47%) Continuous Integration
17 10 (8.47%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 40 (33.90%) Python
2 39 (33.05%) C#
3 33 (27.97%) SQL
4 30 (25.42%) Java
5 28 (23.73%) JavaScript
6 25 (21.19%) TypeScript
7 5 (4.24%) XPath
8 3 (2.54%) Bash
9 2 (1.69%) C
9 2 (1.69%) Scala
10 1 (0.85%) C++
10 1 (0.85%) Go
10 1 (0.85%) Ruby
10 1 (0.85%) Rust
10 1 (0.85%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 31 (26.27%) Security Cleared
2 26 (22.03%) SC Cleared
3 14 (11.86%) ISTQB
4 11 (9.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (4.24%) Degree
6 3 (2.54%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (22.88%) QA
2 12 (10.17%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.08%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.69%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.85%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (15.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 4 (3.39%) Terraform
3 3 (2.54%) Grafana
4 1 (0.85%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (7.63%) Databricks
2 6 (5.08%) Microsoft
2 6 (5.08%) Oracle
3 4 (3.39%) Wind River
4 3 (2.54%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.69%) SAP
6 1 (0.85%) Conga
6 1 (0.85%) Optimizely
6 1 (0.85%) Splunk
6 1 (0.85%) Workday