Automation Tester Contracts

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £443, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 437 482 543
Rank change year-on-year +45 +61 -37
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 83 100 175
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.28% 0.23% 0.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.25% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 60 79 133
10th Percentile £281 £348 £363
25th Percentile £355 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £443 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.11% -6.74% -
75th Percentile £500 £538 £530
90th Percentile £575 £688 £585
UK excluding London median daily rate £418 £413 £428
% change year-on-year +1.21% -3.62% -4.89%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Automation Tester
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Automation Tester in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Automation Tester in the UK

Automation Tester
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Automation Tester.

Daily rate trend for Automation Tester in the UK

Automation Tester
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Automation Tester over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Automation Tester in the UK

Automation Tester
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Automation Tester.

Hourly rate trend for Automation Tester in the UK

Automation Tester
Top 12 Contract 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 1 May 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
England +43 63 £465 -2.21% 16
London +32 40 £465 -7.10% 6
Work from Home +23 31 £388 -8.82% 10
UK excluding London +52 28 £418 +1.21% 10
North of England +9 11 £500 +13.64% 4
South East +53 10 £350 -22.22% 2
Scotland +13 6 £375 -
North West +15 5 £500 +17.65%
Yorkshire 0 5 £550 +20.22% 4
Midlands +17 1 £250 -35.90% 2
East Midlands +6 1 £250 -37.50% 1
North East 0 1 £390 +25.81%

Automation Tester Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Automation Tester 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 featuring Automation Tester in the job title.

1 83 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 35 (42.17%) Selenium
3 32 (38.55%) Security Cleared
4 31 (37.35%) Cypress.io
4 31 (37.35%) Agile
4 31 (37.35%) Java
5 30 (36.14%) SC Cleared
6 29 (34.94%) CI/CD
7 26 (31.33%) QA
8 21 (25.30%) Test Scripting
8 21 (25.30%) AWS
9 20 (24.10%) Postman
10 19 (22.89%) Playwright
10 19 (22.89%) API Testing
10 19 (22.89%) JavaScript
11 18 (21.69%) Jenkins
12 17 (20.48%) Problem-Solving
12 17 (20.48%) Performance Testing
12 17 (20.48%) JIRA
13 16 (19.28%) Cucumber
13 16 (19.28%) Azure
13 16 (19.28%) Git
13 16 (19.28%) Test Strategy
14 14 (16.87%) TypeScript
14 14 (16.87%) DevOps
14 14 (16.87%) REST Assured
14 14 (16.87%) Social Skills
14 14 (16.87%) Software Testing
15 13 (15.66%) Python
15 13 (15.66%) Finance

Automation Tester Skill Set
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 4 (4.82%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 21 (25.30%) AWS
2 16 (19.28%) Azure
3 10 (12.05%) GitHub
4 8 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (8.43%) GCP
6 4 (4.82%) BrowserStack
6 4 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (3.61%) Sauce Labs
8 2 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 2 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
8 2 (2.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 2 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (1.20%) BlazeMeter
9 1 (1.20%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 5 (6.02%) BGP
1 5 (6.02%) MPLS
1 5 (6.02%) TCP/IP
1 5 (6.02%) VLAN
2 2 (2.41%) 802.11
2 2 (2.41%) Bluetooth
2 2 (2.41%) Broadband
2 2 (2.41%) DOCSIS
2 2 (2.41%) SSH
2 2 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (2.41%) Wireless
2 2 (2.41%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.41%) Azure SQL Database
1 2 (2.41%) Relational Database
2 1 (1.20%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.20%) Data Mart
2 1 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (1.20%) DynamoDB
2 1 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 35 (42.17%) Selenium
2 31 (37.35%) Cypress.io
3 20 (24.10%) Postman
4 18 (21.69%) Jenkins
5 17 (20.48%) JIRA
6 16 (19.28%) Cucumber
6 16 (19.28%) Git
7 14 (16.87%) REST Assured
8 12 (14.46%) JMeter
9 9 (10.84%) GitLab
10 8 (9.64%) JUnit
11 5 (6.02%) Gatling
11 5 (6.02%) Maven
11 5 (6.02%) Robot Framework
12 4 (4.82%) Bitbucket
12 4 (4.82%) HP UFT
12 4 (4.82%) IntelliJ
12 4 (4.82%) TestComplete
13 3 (3.61%) SpecFlow
14 2 (2.41%) Gradle
General
1 14 (16.87%) Social Skills
2 13 (15.66%) Finance
3 12 (14.46%) Public Sector
4 8 (9.64%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (9.64%) Telecoms
5 7 (8.43%) Banking
6 4 (4.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (3.61%) Manufacturing
8 2 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.41%) Electronics
8 2 (2.41%) Marketing
9 1 (1.20%) Law
9 1 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (22.89%) Playwright
2 6 (7.23%) .NET
3 5 (6.02%) Kafka
3 5 (6.02%) WireMock
4 4 (4.82%) Gherkin
4 4 (4.82%) REST
5 3 (3.61%) HTML
5 3 (3.61%) Puppeteer
5 3 (3.61%) RESTful
6 2 (2.41%) 802.1X
6 2 (2.41%) DOM
6 2 (2.41%) jQuery
6 2 (2.41%) Node.js
6 2 (2.41%) PySpark
6 2 (2.41%) WebdriverIO
7 1 (1.20%) CSS
7 1 (1.20%) Nightwatchjs
7 1 (1.20%) pytest
7 1 (1.20%) SOAP
7 1 (1.20%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 6 (7.23%) Cloud Native
1 6 (7.23%) Onboarding
2 5 (6.02%) Product Ownership
2 5 (6.02%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (3.61%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (1.20%) Client/Server
4 1 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.20%) IoT
4 1 (1.20%) Mainframe
4 1 (1.20%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.20%) Mobile Banking
4 1 (1.20%) NHS
4 1 (1.20%) Online Banking
4 1 (1.20%) Smart Home
Operating Systems
1 6 (7.23%) Windows
2 4 (4.82%) Android
2 4 (4.82%) Apple iOS
2 4 (4.82%) Linux
3 1 (1.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 31 (37.35%) Agile
3 29 (34.94%) CI/CD
4 21 (25.30%) Test Scripting
5 19 (22.89%) API Testing
6 17 (20.48%) Performance Testing
6 17 (20.48%) Problem-Solving
7 16 (19.28%) Test Strategy
8 14 (16.87%) DevOps
8 14 (16.87%) Software Testing
9 11 (13.25%) BDD
10 8 (9.64%) Containerisation
11 7 (8.43%) End-to-End Testing
11 7 (8.43%) Manual Testing
11 7 (8.43%) Regression Testing
12 6 (7.23%) Code Quality
12 6 (7.23%) Continuous Integration
12 6 (7.23%) Scrum
12 6 (7.23%) System Testing
12 6 (7.23%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 31 (37.35%) Java
2 19 (22.89%) JavaScript
3 14 (16.87%) TypeScript
4 13 (15.66%) Python
5 9 (10.84%) C#
6 6 (7.23%) SQL
7 1 (1.20%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.20%) RPG
7 1 (1.20%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 32 (38.55%) Security Cleared
2 30 (36.14%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.61%) Degree
4 2 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.20%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (31.33%) QA
2 6 (7.23%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.61%) Data Quality
4 2 (2.41%) WCAG
5 1 (1.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 11 (13.25%) Docker
2 1 (1.20%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 10 (12.05%) Kubernetes
2 6 (7.23%) Ansible
3 1 (1.20%) Kibana
3 1 (1.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 6 (7.23%) Microsoft
2 5 (6.02%) Virgin Media
3 4 (4.82%) Bloomberg
3 4 (4.82%) Reuters
4 3 (3.61%) SAP
4 3 (3.61%) Splunk
5 2 (2.41%) CyberArk
5 2 (2.41%) Databricks
5 2 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.20%) Oracle
6 1 (1.20%) ServiceNow