Automation Tester Contract Job Trends

Automation Tester
UK

The median Automation Tester daily rate in the UK is £418, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 November 2025.

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

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 471 457 515
Rank change year-on-year -14 +58 +63
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 115 107 116
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.29% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.32% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 86 66 100
10th Percentile £306 £330 £340
25th Percentile £366 £376 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £438 £440
Median % change year-on-year -4.57% -0.57% -4.86%
75th Percentile £513 £570 £538
90th Percentile £650 £588 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £360 £400 £440
% change year-on-year -10.00% -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 32,121 33,965 44,165
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.96% 92.87% 93.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,371 20,492 29,993
10th Percentile £278 £300 £294
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 1,875 1,270 1,571
10th Percentile £14.22 £15.10 £15.12
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +58.28%
75th Percentile £53.99 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +85.11%

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 16 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 16 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 -21 86 £410 -15.90% 21
London -4 47 £465 -6.01% 6
Work from Home +23 45 £425 +6.25% 15
UK excluding London -37 45 £360 -10.00% 26
Midlands -21 13 £345 +8.32%
North of England -40 13 £375 -6.25% 4
East Midlands +2 12 £345 +8.32%
South East -3 10 £375 -28.23% 13
North West -25 6 £340 -15.00% 3
Wales - 6 £725 - 9
Yorkshire -42 5 £375 -23.08%
South West +5 3 - -
North East -9 2 £488 +14.71% 1
Scotland -14 2 - -
West Midlands - 1 - -
East of England - 1 £200 -

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

For the 6 months to 16 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.

1 115 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 68 (59.13%) Selenium
3 46 (40.00%) Agile
4 45 (39.13%) CI/CD
5 39 (33.91%) DevOps
6 37 (32.17%) Azure
6 37 (32.17%) Java
7 32 (27.83%) Python
7 32 (27.83%) Test Strategy
8 31 (26.96%) API Testing
8 31 (26.96%) C#
8 31 (26.96%) Playwright
8 31 (26.96%) Security Cleared
9 30 (26.09%) Azure DevOps
9 30 (26.09%) Jenkins
9 30 (26.09%) SQL
10 29 (25.22%) QA
11 28 (24.35%) Cypress.io
12 26 (22.61%) Cucumber
13 25 (21.74%) Test Scripting
14 24 (20.87%) JavaScript
14 24 (20.87%) Postman
14 24 (20.87%) SC Cleared
15 20 (17.39%) AWS
15 20 (17.39%) JIRA
15 20 (17.39%) Non-Functional Testing
16 19 (16.52%) Performance Testing
17 18 (15.65%) JMeter
17 18 (15.65%) REST
18 17 (14.78%) Continuous Improvement

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 (6.09%) Confluence
2 2 (1.74%) CICS
3 1 (0.87%) Apache
Business Applications
1 1 (0.87%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 37 (32.17%) Azure
2 30 (26.09%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (17.39%) AWS
4 17 (14.78%) GitHub
5 9 (7.83%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (7.83%) Power Platform
6 7 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 3 (2.61%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.74%) GCP
8 2 (1.74%) Serverless
8 2 (1.74%) Snowflake
9 1 (0.87%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.87%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.87%) Azure AKS
9 1 (0.87%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.87%) OCI
9 1 (0.87%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.61%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.48%) Relational Database
2 2 (1.74%) DB2
2 2 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.87%) Big Data
3 1 (0.87%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.87%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.87%) RDBMS
3 1 (0.87%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 68 (59.13%) Selenium
2 30 (26.09%) Jenkins
3 28 (24.35%) Cypress.io
4 26 (22.61%) Cucumber
5 24 (20.87%) Postman
6 20 (17.39%) JIRA
7 18 (15.65%) JMeter
8 17 (14.78%) GitLab
8 17 (14.78%) JUnit
8 17 (14.78%) REST Assured
9 15 (13.04%) Git
10 10 (8.70%) SpecFlow
10 10 (8.70%) Zephyr
11 9 (7.83%) MSTest
12 6 (5.22%) TestNG
12 6 (5.22%) TestRail
12 6 (5.22%) Visual Studio
13 4 (3.48%) Bitbucket
13 4 (3.48%) Gatling
13 4 (3.48%) WebDriver
General
1 20 (17.39%) Social Skills
2 17 (14.78%) Finance
3 13 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (10.43%) Banking
5 8 (6.96%) Public Sector
6 4 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.61%) Automotive
8 1 (0.87%) Billing
8 1 (0.87%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.87%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.87%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (26.96%) Playwright
2 18 (15.65%) REST
3 16 (13.91%) RESTful
4 15 (13.04%) Web Services
5 14 (12.17%) .NET
6 9 (7.83%) SOAP
7 6 (5.22%) Gherkin
8 4 (3.48%) JSON
8 4 (3.48%) Node.js
8 4 (3.48%) pytest
8 4 (3.48%) XML
9 3 (2.61%) HTML
9 3 (2.61%) jQuery
9 3 (2.61%) React
10 2 (1.74%) .NET Framework
10 2 (1.74%) DOM
10 2 (1.74%) Spring
10 2 (1.74%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.74%) Swagger
10 2 (1.74%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.22%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.61%) Algorithms
2 3 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 2 (1.74%) Mainframe
3 2 (1.74%) VSAM
4 1 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (0.87%) Client/Server
4 1 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.87%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.87%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.22%) Linux
2 4 (3.48%) Windows
3 2 (1.74%) Unix
4 1 (0.87%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 46 (40.00%) Agile
3 45 (39.13%) CI/CD
4 39 (33.91%) DevOps
5 32 (27.83%) Test Strategy
6 31 (26.96%) API Testing
7 25 (21.74%) Test Scripting
8 20 (17.39%) Non-Functional Testing
9 19 (16.52%) Performance Testing
10 17 (14.78%) Continuous Improvement
10 17 (14.78%) Problem-Solving
11 15 (13.04%) Acceptance Criteria
11 15 (13.04%) Continuous Integration
11 15 (13.04%) Software Testing
12 14 (12.17%) Regression Testing
12 14 (12.17%) SDLC
12 14 (12.17%) Test Management
12 14 (12.17%) Validation
13 13 (11.30%) Manual Testing
14 11 (9.57%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 37 (32.17%) Java
2 32 (27.83%) Python
3 31 (26.96%) C#
4 30 (26.09%) SQL
5 24 (20.87%) JavaScript
6 6 (5.22%) TypeScript
7 4 (3.48%) Bash
8 3 (2.61%) XPath
9 2 (1.74%) COBOL
9 2 (1.74%) JCL
9 2 (1.74%) Ruby
9 2 (1.74%) Scala
10 1 (0.87%) C
10 1 (0.87%) Go
10 1 (0.87%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 31 (26.96%) Security Cleared
2 24 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 15 (13.04%) ISTQB
4 9 (7.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 8 (6.96%) Degree
6 5 (4.35%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (25.22%) QA
2 9 (7.83%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.61%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.74%) SLA
6 1 (0.87%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.87%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (10.43%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (4.35%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.61%) Ansible
2 3 (2.61%) Terraform
3 2 (1.74%) Grafana
4 1 (0.87%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (5.22%) Oracle
2 5 (4.35%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.48%) UiPath
3 4 (3.48%) Wind River
4 3 (2.61%) Duck Creek
4 3 (2.61%) Guidewire
4 3 (2.61%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.74%) Databricks
6 1 (0.87%) Conga
6 1 (0.87%) SAP
6 1 (0.87%) Splunk