Automation Tester Contract Job Trends

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £400, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 September 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
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 466 454 536
Rank change year-on-year -12 +82 +45
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 102 105 115
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.31% 0.27% 0.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.34% 0.29% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 75 69 85
10th Percentile £250 £310 £327
25th Percentile £336 £370 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -5.26% +2.70%
75th Percentile £491 £570 £550
90th Percentile £538 £606 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £340 £425 £475
% change year-on-year -20.00% -10.53% +2.70%

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 30,003 35,798 46,379
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.06% 92.95% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,960 22,064 31,748
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,577 1,684 1,483
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% +4.65% +95.45%

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
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 September 2025.

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 15 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 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
England +16 85 £375 -21.05% 11
UK excluding London -8 44 £340 -20.00% 7
London +15 42 £475 -1.30% 6
Work from Home +26 36 £400 -2.14% 5
Midlands +1 19 £268 -15.86%
East Midlands +14 18 £268 -15.86%
North of England -20 13 £375 -6.25% 3
South East +20 8 £365 -30.14% 3
Yorkshire -18 7 £375 -25.00%
North West -17 5 £340 -15.00% 3
South West +24 3 - - 1
Scotland -9 2 - -
North East -2 1 £425 +15.65%
West Midlands - 1 - -
East of England - 1 £200 -

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

For the 6 months to 18 September 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.

1 102 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 64 (62.75%) Selenium
3 46 (45.10%) Java
4 39 (38.24%) CI/CD
5 37 (36.27%) Agile
6 35 (34.31%) Jenkins
7 31 (30.39%) QA
8 30 (29.41%) API Testing
9 29 (28.43%) Cucumber
10 27 (26.47%) Cypress.io
11 26 (25.49%) Security Cleared
11 26 (25.49%) DevOps
12 25 (24.51%) Test Strategy
13 24 (23.53%) Playwright
13 24 (23.53%) Test Scripting
14 22 (21.57%) JIRA
15 21 (20.59%) SC Cleared
15 21 (20.59%) Problem-Solving
16 19 (18.63%) REST Assured
16 19 (18.63%) Postman
16 19 (18.63%) Azure
16 19 (18.63%) Software Testing
16 19 (18.63%) Performance Testing
16 19 (18.63%) JavaScript
16 19 (18.63%) C#
16 19 (18.63%) Python
17 18 (17.65%) Finance
17 18 (17.65%) AWS
17 18 (17.65%) Social Skills
18 17 (16.67%) REST

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 7 (6.86%) Confluence
2 3 (2.94%) CICS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.98%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 19 (18.63%) Azure
2 18 (17.65%) AWS
3 14 (13.73%) Azure DevOps
4 8 (7.84%) GitHub
5 5 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (2.94%) GCP
7 2 (1.96%) Amazon S3
7 2 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (1.96%) Serverless
8 1 (0.98%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.98%) OCI
8 1 (0.98%) SaaS
8 1 (0.98%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.96%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (4.90%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.94%) DB2
3 2 (1.96%) Oracle Database
3 2 (1.96%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.98%) Big Data
4 1 (0.98%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 64 (62.75%) Selenium
2 35 (34.31%) Jenkins
3 29 (28.43%) Cucumber
4 27 (26.47%) Cypress.io
5 22 (21.57%) JIRA
6 19 (18.63%) Postman
6 19 (18.63%) REST Assured
7 17 (16.67%) Git
7 17 (16.67%) JUnit
8 12 (11.76%) GitLab
9 8 (7.84%) TestNG
10 7 (6.86%) JMeter
11 5 (4.90%) Gatling
11 5 (4.90%) IntelliJ
11 5 (4.90%) Maven
11 5 (4.90%) TestRail
11 5 (4.90%) Zephyr
12 4 (3.92%) Bitbucket
12 4 (3.92%) HP UFT
12 4 (3.92%) TestComplete
General
1 18 (17.65%) Finance
1 18 (17.65%) Social Skills
2 15 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (13.73%) Banking
4 6 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (3.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (2.94%) Automotive
7 2 (1.96%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.98%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (23.53%) Playwright
2 17 (16.67%) REST
3 15 (14.71%) RESTful
4 13 (12.75%) .NET
5 10 (9.80%) jQuery
6 9 (8.82%) SOAP
7 7 (6.86%) HTML
7 7 (6.86%) Web Services
8 6 (5.88%) DOM
8 6 (5.88%) Gherkin
9 5 (4.90%) Kafka
10 4 (3.92%) Node.js
10 4 (3.92%) WireMock
11 3 (2.94%) Spring
11 3 (2.94%) Spring Boot
12 2 (1.96%) Puppeteer
12 2 (1.96%) pytest
12 2 (1.96%) Swagger
13 1 (0.98%) React
13 1 (0.98%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 8 (7.84%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.94%) Algorithms
2 3 (2.94%) Mainframe
2 3 (2.94%) VSAM
3 2 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.96%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (0.98%) Client/Server
4 1 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.98%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.98%) NHS
4 1 (0.98%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.98%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 9 (8.82%) Linux
2 8 (7.84%) Windows
3 3 (2.94%) Unix
4 1 (0.98%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 39 (38.24%) CI/CD
3 37 (36.27%) Agile
4 30 (29.41%) API Testing
5 26 (25.49%) DevOps
6 25 (24.51%) Test Strategy
7 24 (23.53%) Test Scripting
8 21 (20.59%) Problem-Solving
9 19 (18.63%) Performance Testing
9 19 (18.63%) Software Testing
10 14 (13.73%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (11.76%) Regression Testing
11 12 (11.76%) Scenario Testing
12 11 (10.78%) Acceptance Criteria
12 11 (10.78%) Continuous Integration
13 10 (9.80%) BDD
13 10 (9.80%) SDLC
13 10 (9.80%) TDD
13 10 (9.80%) Validation
14 9 (8.82%) Test Management
Programming Languages
1 46 (45.10%) Java
2 19 (18.63%) C#
2 19 (18.63%) JavaScript
2 19 (18.63%) Python
3 17 (16.67%) SQL
4 4 (3.92%) Bash
4 4 (3.92%) TypeScript
5 3 (2.94%) COBOL
5 3 (2.94%) JCL
5 3 (2.94%) Ruby
6 2 (1.96%) Scala
7 1 (0.98%) Go
7 1 (0.98%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 26 (25.49%) Security Cleared
2 21 (20.59%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.90%) ISTQB
4 3 (2.94%) Degree
4 3 (2.94%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.98%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (30.39%) QA
2 6 (5.88%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.96%) SLA
4 1 (0.98%) Data Quality
System Software
1 3 (2.94%) Docker
2 1 (0.98%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 4 (3.92%) Ansible
1 4 (3.92%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.96%) Terraform
3 1 (0.98%) Grafana
3 1 (0.98%) Kibana
3 1 (0.98%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.98%) Puppet
Vendors
1 8 (7.84%) Oracle
2 7 (6.86%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.92%) Bloomberg
3 4 (3.92%) Reuters
3 4 (3.92%) UiPath
4 3 (2.94%) Duck Creek
4 3 (2.94%) Guidewire
4 3 (2.94%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.96%) Splunk
6 1 (0.98%) Google
6 1 (0.98%) SAP
6 1 (0.98%) ServiceNow
6 1 (0.98%) Virgin Media