Automation Tester Contract Job Trends

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £410, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 November 2025.

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

6 months to
9 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 458 446 504
Rank change year-on-year -12 +58 +64
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 116 104 118
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.34% 0.29% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.37% 0.31% 0.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 66 101
10th Percentile £270 £330 £340
25th Percentile £360 £376 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £410 £438 £440
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% -0.57% -4.86%
75th Percentile £513 £570 £538
90th Percentile £620 £588 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £355 £400 £440
% change year-on-year -11.25% -9.09% -4.86%

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 31,437 33,659 44,190
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.90% 92.87% 93.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,931 20,297 30,010
10th Percentile £278 £300 £292
25th Percentile £402 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,808 1,253 1,556
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.10 £15.14
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.25 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.65% -20.79% +53.98%
75th Percentile £51.31 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +85.42%

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 9 November 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 16 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 9 November 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 -24 88 £400 -17.95% 18
UK excluding London -33 48 £355 -11.25% 16
London +6 46 £475 -4.04% 3
Work from Home +21 44 £425 +6.25% 6
Midlands -8 16 £270 -15.23% 1
East Midlands +5 15 £270 -15.23% 1
North of England -36 13 £375 -6.25% 4
South East -1 10 £375 -28.23% 11
North West -14 6 £340 -15.00% 3
Wales - 6 £725 -
Yorkshire -30 5 £375 -23.08%
South West +6 3 - -
North East -9 2 £488 +14.71% 1
Scotland -11 2 - -
West Midlands - 1 - -
East of England - 1 £200 -

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

For the 6 months to 9 November 2025, 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.

1 116 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 71 (61.21%) Selenium
3 48 (41.38%) Agile
4 45 (38.79%) CI/CD
5 40 (34.48%) Java
6 38 (32.76%) DevOps
7 37 (31.90%) Azure
8 33 (28.45%) Jenkins
9 32 (27.59%) Python
10 31 (26.72%) API Testing
10 31 (26.72%) C#
10 31 (26.72%) Test Strategy
11 30 (25.86%) Playwright
11 30 (25.86%) Security Cleared
11 30 (25.86%) SQL
12 29 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
13 28 (24.14%) Cucumber
13 28 (24.14%) Cypress.io
13 28 (24.14%) QA
14 24 (20.69%) Postman
14 24 (20.69%) Test Scripting
15 23 (19.83%) JavaScript
15 23 (19.83%) SC Cleared
16 21 (18.10%) AWS
17 20 (17.24%) JIRA
17 20 (17.24%) Non-Functional Testing
17 20 (17.24%) Problem-Solving
18 19 (16.38%) Performance Testing
19 18 (15.52%) JMeter
19 18 (15.52%) JUnit

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 (6.03%) Confluence
2 2 (1.72%) CICS
3 1 (0.86%) Apache
Business Applications
1 1 (0.86%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 37 (31.90%) Azure
2 29 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
3 21 (18.10%) AWS
4 17 (14.66%) GitHub
5 9 (7.76%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (7.76%) Power Platform
6 7 (6.03%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (2.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (2.59%) Amazon S3
7 3 (2.59%) GCP
8 2 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.72%) Serverless
8 2 (1.72%) Snowflake
9 1 (0.86%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.86%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.86%) Azure AKS
9 1 (0.86%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.86%) OCI
9 1 (0.86%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.59%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.45%) Relational Database
2 2 (1.72%) DB2
2 2 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.86%) Big Data
3 1 (0.86%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.86%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.86%) RDBMS
3 1 (0.86%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 71 (61.21%) Selenium
2 33 (28.45%) Jenkins
3 28 (24.14%) Cucumber
3 28 (24.14%) Cypress.io
4 24 (20.69%) Postman
5 20 (17.24%) JIRA
6 18 (15.52%) JMeter
6 18 (15.52%) JUnit
7 17 (14.66%) REST Assured
8 16 (13.79%) GitLab
9 15 (12.93%) Git
10 10 (8.62%) SpecFlow
10 10 (8.62%) Zephyr
11 9 (7.76%) MSTest
12 7 (6.03%) TestNG
13 6 (5.17%) TestRail
13 6 (5.17%) Visual Studio
14 4 (3.45%) Bitbucket
14 4 (3.45%) Gatling
14 4 (3.45%) WebDriver
General
1 21 (18.10%) Social Skills
2 16 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
2 16 (13.79%) Finance
3 14 (12.07%) Banking
4 8 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.59%) Automotive
7 1 (0.86%) Billing
7 1 (0.86%) Health Technology
7 1 (0.86%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.86%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (25.86%) Playwright
2 18 (15.52%) REST
3 16 (13.79%) RESTful
4 15 (12.93%) Web Services
5 14 (12.07%) .NET
6 9 (7.76%) SOAP
7 7 (6.03%) Gherkin
8 6 (5.17%) HTML
8 6 (5.17%) jQuery
9 5 (4.31%) DOM
10 4 (3.45%) JSON
10 4 (3.45%) pytest
10 4 (3.45%) XML
11 3 (2.59%) Node.js
11 3 (2.59%) React
12 2 (1.72%) .NET Framework
12 2 (1.72%) Spring
12 2 (1.72%) Spring Boot
12 2 (1.72%) Swagger
12 2 (1.72%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.17%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.59%) Algorithms
2 3 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.72%) Mainframe
3 2 (1.72%) VSAM
4 1 (0.86%) Client/Server
4 1 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.86%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.86%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.17%) Linux
2 4 (3.45%) Windows
3 2 (1.72%) Unix
4 1 (0.86%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 48 (41.38%) Agile
3 45 (38.79%) CI/CD
4 38 (32.76%) DevOps
5 31 (26.72%) API Testing
5 31 (26.72%) Test Strategy
6 24 (20.69%) Test Scripting
7 20 (17.24%) Non-Functional Testing
7 20 (17.24%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (16.38%) Performance Testing
9 16 (13.79%) Continuous Improvement
10 15 (12.93%) Continuous Integration
10 15 (12.93%) Validation
11 14 (12.07%) Acceptance Criteria
11 14 (12.07%) Regression Testing
11 14 (12.07%) SDLC
11 14 (12.07%) Software Testing
12 13 (11.21%) Test Management
13 12 (10.34%) Manual Testing
14 11 (9.48%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 40 (34.48%) Java
2 32 (27.59%) Python
3 31 (26.72%) C#
4 30 (25.86%) SQL
5 23 (19.83%) JavaScript
6 5 (4.31%) TypeScript
7 4 (3.45%) Bash
8 3 (2.59%) XPath
9 2 (1.72%) COBOL
9 2 (1.72%) JCL
9 2 (1.72%) Ruby
9 2 (1.72%) Scala
10 1 (0.86%) C
10 1 (0.86%) Go
10 1 (0.86%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 30 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 23 (19.83%) SC Cleared
3 15 (12.93%) ISTQB
4 9 (7.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 8 (6.90%) Degree
6 5 (4.31%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (24.14%) QA
2 9 (7.76%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.59%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.72%) SLA
6 1 (0.86%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.86%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (10.34%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.31%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.59%) Ansible
2 3 (2.59%) Terraform
3 2 (1.72%) Grafana
4 1 (0.86%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (5.17%) Oracle
2 5 (4.31%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.45%) UiPath
3 4 (3.45%) Wind River
4 3 (2.59%) Duck Creek
4 3 (2.59%) Guidewire
4 3 (2.59%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.72%) Databricks
6 1 (0.86%) Conga
6 1 (0.86%) Google
6 1 (0.86%) SAP
6 1 (0.86%) Splunk