Automation Tester Contract Job Trends

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £425, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 February 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 483 430 470
Rank change year-on-year -53 +40 +100
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 117 95 129
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.31% 0.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.33% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 90 65 111
10th Percentile £324 £299 £360
25th Percentile £363 £356 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -2.70%
75th Percentile £507 £500 £550
90th Percentile £611 £562 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.30%

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 37,174 28,501 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.66% 92.92% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,390 17,648 27,150
10th Percentile £305 £288 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,257 809 2,323
10th Percentile £14.57 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.82 £21.46 £16.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.11 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.05% -2.54% -9.09%
75th Percentile £61.84 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £35.58
% change year-on-year -8.92% -8.64% +1.64%

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 18 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 13 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 18 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 -71 83 £425 -5.56% 9
London -24 56 £430 -5.29% 5
Work from Home -13 43 £425 +9.68% 6
UK excluding London -76 34 £425 +6.25% 8
North of England -55 12 £400 - 3
Wales - 10 £592 - 2
Midlands - 9 £425 -
South East -41 6 £725 +70.59% 3
Yorkshire -47 6 £463 -7.50% 2
East Midlands - 5 £725 -
North West -33 4 £333 -16.88%
West Midlands - 4 £413 -
North East -11 2 £488 +25.00% 1

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 117 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 57 (48.72%) Agile
3 52 (44.44%) Selenium
4 51 (43.59%) CI/CD
5 48 (41.03%) Playwright
6 44 (37.61%) Azure
7 38 (32.48%) Python
8 36 (30.77%) C#
9 35 (29.91%) DevOps
10 34 (29.06%) Security Cleared
10 34 (29.06%) Test Scripting
11 32 (27.35%) SQL
12 31 (26.50%) Java
12 31 (26.50%) JavaScript
13 30 (25.64%) API Testing
13 30 (25.64%) Test Strategy
14 29 (24.79%) Azure DevOps
14 29 (24.79%) SC Cleared
15 28 (23.93%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (23.93%) TypeScript
16 27 (23.08%) Cucumber
16 27 (23.08%) QA
17 26 (22.22%) GitHub
17 26 (22.22%) Postman
18 25 (21.37%) Cypress.io
18 25 (21.37%) JMeter
19 24 (20.51%) AWS
20 23 (19.66%) Jenkins
21 22 (18.80%) Performance Testing
22 20 (17.09%) Docker

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 8 (6.84%) Confluence
2 2 (1.71%) Apache
3 1 (0.85%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 9 (7.69%) Aladdin
2 2 (1.71%) 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 44 (37.61%) Azure
2 29 (24.79%) Azure DevOps
3 26 (22.22%) GitHub
4 24 (20.51%) AWS
5 14 (11.97%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (8.55%) Dynamics 365
7 9 (7.69%) Power Platform
7 9 (7.69%) Snowflake
8 7 (5.98%) GCP
9 3 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (2.56%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.71%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (1.71%) Azure Data Factory
10 2 (1.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 1 (0.85%) Amazon EventBridge
11 1 (0.85%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.85%) Azure Service Bus
11 1 (0.85%) BlazeMeter
11 1 (0.85%) Tricentis Tosca
11 1 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.42%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (4.27%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (1.71%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.85%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.85%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 52 (44.44%) Selenium
2 27 (23.08%) Cucumber
3 26 (22.22%) Postman
4 25 (21.37%) Cypress.io
4 25 (21.37%) JMeter
5 23 (19.66%) Jenkins
6 20 (17.09%) SpecFlow
7 19 (16.24%) GitLab
8 17 (14.53%) REST Assured
9 16 (13.68%) JIRA
10 14 (11.97%) Git
11 12 (10.26%) JUnit
12 11 (9.40%) WebDriver
13 9 (7.69%) MSTest
14 7 (5.98%) Gatling
14 7 (5.98%) Zephyr
15 6 (5.13%) Visual Studio
16 5 (4.27%) TestRail
17 3 (2.56%) Appium
17 3 (2.56%) Serenity BDD
General
1 21 (17.95%) Social Skills
2 17 (14.53%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (7.69%) Banking
3 9 (7.69%) Finance
4 8 (6.84%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.42%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (0.85%) Automotive
6 1 (0.85%) Billing
6 1 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (0.85%) Retail Banking
6 1 (0.85%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (41.03%) Playwright
2 12 (10.26%) REST
3 9 (7.69%) Web Services
4 8 (6.84%) .NET
5 6 (5.13%) JSON
5 6 (5.13%) RESTful
5 6 (5.13%) XML
6 5 (4.27%) pytest
6 5 (4.27%) Spring
6 5 (4.27%) WireMock
7 4 (3.42%) Gherkin
7 4 (3.42%) Node.js
8 3 (2.56%) React
8 3 (2.56%) WebdriverIO
9 2 (1.71%) Apache NiFi
9 2 (1.71%) Kafka
9 2 (1.71%) Puppeteer
9 2 (1.71%) Spring Boot
10 1 (0.85%) Express.js
10 1 (0.85%) React Native
Miscellaneous
1 10 (8.55%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (3.42%) Mobile App
3 3 (2.56%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.71%) Product Ownership
5 1 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (0.85%) Distributed Applications
5 1 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (0.85%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.71%) Linux
1 2 (1.71%) Windows
2 1 (0.85%) Android
2 1 (0.85%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.85%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 57 (48.72%) Agile
3 51 (43.59%) CI/CD
4 35 (29.91%) DevOps
5 34 (29.06%) Test Scripting
6 30 (25.64%) API Testing
6 30 (25.64%) Test Strategy
7 28 (23.93%) Problem-Solving
8 22 (18.80%) Performance Testing
9 18 (15.38%) Non-Functional Testing
10 17 (14.53%) TDD
11 16 (13.68%) Validation
12 14 (11.97%) Scrum
13 13 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
14 12 (10.26%) AI
14 12 (10.26%) BDD
15 11 (9.40%) End-to-End Testing
15 11 (9.40%) Regression Testing
15 11 (9.40%) SDLC
16 10 (8.55%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 38 (32.48%) Python
2 36 (30.77%) C#
3 32 (27.35%) SQL
4 31 (26.50%) Java
4 31 (26.50%) JavaScript
5 28 (23.93%) TypeScript
6 5 (4.27%) XPath
7 3 (2.56%) Bash
8 2 (1.71%) C
8 2 (1.71%) Scala
9 1 (0.85%) C++
9 1 (0.85%) Go
9 1 (0.85%) Ruby
9 1 (0.85%) Rust
9 1 (0.85%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (29.06%) Security Cleared
2 29 (24.79%) SC Cleared
3 14 (11.97%) ISTQB
4 11 (9.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 5 (4.27%) Degree
6 3 (2.56%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (23.08%) QA
2 12 (10.26%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.71%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.85%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (17.09%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 5 (4.27%) Grafana
3 4 (3.42%) Terraform
4 3 (2.56%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (8.55%) Databricks
2 6 (5.13%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.42%) Wind River
4 3 (2.56%) Oracle
5 2 (1.71%) SAP
6 1 (0.85%) Avaloq
6 1 (0.85%) Conga
6 1 (0.85%) Google
6 1 (0.85%) Optimizely
6 1 (0.85%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.85%) ServiceNow
6 1 (0.85%) Splunk
6 1 (0.85%) Workday