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 6 December 2025.

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

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 474 433 494
Rank change year-on-year -41 +61 +66
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 120 116 108
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.32% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.35% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 72 95
10th Percentile £330 £330 £340
25th Percentile £372 £368 £372
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £419 £440
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -4.83% -4.86%
75th Percentile £514 £525 £531
90th Percentile £634 £580 £585
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £400 £440
% change year-on-year -6.25% -9.09% -2.22%

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 33,145 33,385 42,274
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.93% 92.77% 93.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,040 20,359 28,495
10th Percentile £285 £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 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,927 1,147 1,515
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.36 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.75 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.27% +39.88%
75th Percentile £57.25 £63.93 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +78.00%

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 6 December 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 6 December 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 -23 89 £413 -8.74% 9
London -1 53 £450 -5.26% 5
Work from Home +3 44 £438 +9.38% 8
UK excluding London -61 42 £375 -6.25% 6
North of England -51 14 £375 -6.25% 2
South East -13 11 £383 -26.79% 2
Midlands - 10 £360 - 1
East Midlands - 9 £360 - 1
Wales - 8 £700 - 1
Yorkshire -33 7 £375 -14.29%
North West -32 5 £325 -18.75% 1
North East -1 2 £488 +14.71% 1
South West -5 1 - -
Scotland -9 1 - -
West Midlands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 6 December 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.

1 120 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 63 (52.50%) Selenium
3 52 (43.33%) Agile
4 46 (38.33%) CI/CD
5 39 (32.50%) Playwright
6 38 (31.67%) DevOps
7 36 (30.00%) Azure
7 36 (30.00%) Python
8 34 (28.33%) Security Cleared
8 34 (28.33%) Test Strategy
9 33 (27.50%) Java
10 32 (26.67%) C#
11 30 (25.00%) API Testing
11 30 (25.00%) QA
12 29 (24.17%) Azure DevOps
12 29 (24.17%) Test Scripting
13 28 (23.33%) Cypress.io
13 28 (23.33%) SC Cleared
13 28 (23.33%) SQL
14 26 (21.67%) Cucumber
14 26 (21.67%) Jenkins
15 24 (20.00%) JavaScript
16 22 (18.33%) Performance Testing
17 21 (17.50%) AWS
17 21 (17.50%) JIRA
17 21 (17.50%) Postman
18 20 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
19 19 (15.83%) GitHub
19 19 (15.83%) Non-Functional Testing
20 18 (15.00%) GitLab

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 (5.83%) Confluence
2 2 (1.67%) Apache
3 1 (0.83%) CICS
Business Applications
1 3 (2.50%) Aladdin
2 2 (1.67%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.83%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.83%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.83%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.83%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.83%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 36 (30.00%) Azure
2 29 (24.17%) Azure DevOps
3 21 (17.50%) AWS
4 19 (15.83%) GitHub
5 10 (8.33%) Dynamics 365
5 10 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
6 9 (7.50%) Power Platform
7 4 (3.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (3.33%) Amazon S3
8 3 (2.50%) Snowflake
9 2 (1.67%) GCP
10 1 (0.83%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (0.83%) Amazon EventBridge
10 1 (0.83%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.83%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.83%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (0.83%) BlazeMeter
10 1 (0.83%) Google Analytics
10 1 (0.83%) Serverless
10 1 (0.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.33%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (2.50%) Relational Database
2 2 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.83%) Big Data
3 1 (0.83%) DB2
3 1 (0.83%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.83%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 63 (52.50%) Selenium
2 28 (23.33%) Cypress.io
3 26 (21.67%) Cucumber
3 26 (21.67%) Jenkins
4 21 (17.50%) JIRA
4 21 (17.50%) Postman
5 18 (15.00%) GitLab
5 18 (15.00%) JMeter
6 15 (12.50%) REST Assured
7 14 (11.67%) JUnit
8 13 (10.83%) SpecFlow
9 11 (9.17%) Git
10 10 (8.33%) Zephyr
11 9 (7.50%) MSTest
12 6 (5.00%) TestRail
12 6 (5.00%) Visual Studio
13 4 (3.33%) Bitbucket
14 3 (2.50%) Gatling
14 3 (2.50%) SoapUI
14 3 (2.50%) TestNG
General
1 20 (16.67%) Finance
1 20 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 12 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (9.17%) Banking
4 9 (7.50%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.50%) Automotive
6 2 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.83%) Billing
7 1 (0.83%) Retail Banking
7 1 (0.83%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (32.50%) Playwright
2 17 (14.17%) REST
3 13 (10.83%) RESTful
3 13 (10.83%) Web Services
4 12 (10.00%) .NET
5 7 (5.83%) SOAP
6 6 (5.00%) JSON
6 6 (5.00%) XML
7 5 (4.17%) Gherkin
7 5 (4.17%) pytest
8 4 (3.33%) Node.js
9 3 (2.50%) React
9 3 (2.50%) WebdriverIO
10 2 (1.67%) Apache NiFi
10 2 (1.67%) jQuery
10 2 (1.67%) Kafka
10 2 (1.67%) Puppeteer
10 2 (1.67%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.67%) Swagger
10 2 (1.67%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 5 (4.17%) Product Ownership
2 4 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (0.83%) Algorithms
4 1 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (0.83%) Client/Server
4 1 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (0.83%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (0.83%) Mainframe
4 1 (0.83%) Mobile App
4 1 (0.83%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 1 (0.83%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 5 (4.17%) Linux
2 4 (3.33%) Windows
3 2 (1.67%) Unix
4 1 (0.83%) Android
4 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.83%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 52 (43.33%) Agile
3 46 (38.33%) CI/CD
4 38 (31.67%) DevOps
5 34 (28.33%) Test Strategy
6 30 (25.00%) API Testing
7 29 (24.17%) Test Scripting
8 22 (18.33%) Performance Testing
9 20 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
10 19 (15.83%) Non-Functional Testing
11 17 (14.17%) Regression Testing
12 16 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (13.33%) SDLC
13 14 (11.67%) Acceptance Criteria
13 14 (11.67%) Test Management
14 13 (10.83%) Manual Testing
14 13 (10.83%) Software Testing
14 13 (10.83%) Validation
15 12 (10.00%) Continuous Integration
15 12 (10.00%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 36 (30.00%) Python
2 33 (27.50%) Java
3 32 (26.67%) C#
4 28 (23.33%) SQL
5 24 (20.00%) JavaScript
6 16 (13.33%) TypeScript
7 5 (4.17%) XPath
8 3 (2.50%) Bash
8 3 (2.50%) Ruby
9 2 (1.67%) Scala
10 1 (0.83%) C
10 1 (0.83%) COBOL
10 1 (0.83%) Go
10 1 (0.83%) JCL
10 1 (0.83%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (28.33%) Security Cleared
2 28 (23.33%) SC Cleared
3 14 (11.67%) ISTQB
4 9 (7.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 8 (6.67%) Degree
6 4 (3.33%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (25.00%) QA
2 12 (10.00%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.67%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.67%) SLA
5 1 (0.83%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.83%) WCAG
System Software
1 13 (10.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (3.33%) Kubernetes
1 4 (3.33%) Terraform
2 3 (2.50%) Grafana
3 1 (0.83%) Ansible
3 1 (0.83%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (6.67%) Microsoft
2 7 (5.83%) Oracle
3 4 (3.33%) Databricks
3 4 (3.33%) UiPath
3 4 (3.33%) Wind River
4 3 (2.50%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.67%) SAP
6 1 (0.83%) Conga
6 1 (0.83%) Duck Creek
6 1 (0.83%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.83%) Optimizely
6 1 (0.83%) Splunk
6 1 (0.83%) Workday