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 24 July 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 574 471 486
Rank change year-on-year -103 +15 +45
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 91 84 99
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.26% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.19% 0.28% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 59 74
10th Percentile £313 £229 £313
25th Percentile £363 £269 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £385 £450
Median % change year-on-year +10.39% -14.44% -5.26%
75th Percentile £470 £500 £574
90th Percentile £525 £569 £635
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £280 £400
% change year-on-year +51.79% -30.00% -9.86%

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 48,872 29,931 38,007
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 91.58% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,492 19,056 24,610
10th Percentile £328 £283 £298
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £727 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,302 1,437 2,371
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.60
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.17
Median hourly rate £43.55 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +73.17% -38.57% -6.42%
75th Percentile £67.89 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.92 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.91
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.39% +7.28%

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 24 July 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 14 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 24 July 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 -114 66 £425 +15.18% 5
UK excluding London -100 45 £425 +51.79% 3
London -83 32 £447 -1.87% 2
Work from Home -56 31 £425 +25.00% 4
West Midlands -51 11 £425 -
Midlands -57 11 £425 +61.90%
South West -36 8 - - 1
North of England -68 8 £426 +9.23% 2
Scotland -8 6 £313 -16.53%
Wales - 6 £450 -
North East -31 5 £485 +24.36% 1
South East -62 5 £375 +7.14%
North West -45 3 £351 +3.24%
East of England -19 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 24 July 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 91 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 49 (53.85%) CI/CD
3 39 (42.86%) Azure
4 36 (39.56%) Selenium
5 34 (37.36%) Agile
6 33 (36.26%) Playwright
7 28 (30.77%) Python
8 27 (29.67%) GitHub
8 27 (29.67%) Security Cleared
9 26 (28.57%) Test Strategy
10 25 (27.47%) Cucumber
10 25 (27.47%) DevOps
10 25 (27.47%) SC Cleared
11 23 (25.27%) BDD
11 23 (25.27%) Jenkins
11 23 (25.27%) Validation
12 22 (24.18%) API Testing
12 22 (24.18%) AWS
13 21 (23.08%) Azure DevOps
13 21 (23.08%) Java
13 21 (23.08%) SQL
14 20 (21.98%) GitLab
14 20 (21.98%) Test Scripting
15 19 (20.88%) Continuous Improvement
15 19 (20.88%) Git
15 19 (20.88%) GitHub Actions
15 19 (20.88%) Kubernetes
15 19 (20.88%) TypeScript
16 18 (19.78%) JavaScript
16 18 (19.78%) Performance Testing

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 12 (13.19%) Confluence
2 1 (1.10%) Apache
2 1 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.10%) Camunda
2 1 (1.10%) SAS
2 1 (1.10%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 4 (4.40%) Aladdin
2 2 (2.20%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 39 (42.86%) Azure
2 27 (29.67%) GitHub
3 22 (24.18%) AWS
4 21 (23.08%) Azure DevOps
5 19 (20.88%) GitHub Actions
6 13 (14.29%) GCP
7 4 (4.40%) Snowflake
8 3 (3.30%) Azure API Management
8 3 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.30%) Power Automate
8 3 (3.30%) SaaS
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (2.20%) Power Platform
10 1 (1.10%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
10 1 (1.10%) AWS CodePipeline
10 1 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 1 (1.10%) PowerApps
10 1 (1.10%) Tricentis Tosca
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (10.99%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.10%) Apache Hive
3 1 (1.10%) Base SAS
3 1 (1.10%) Big Data
3 1 (1.10%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.10%) Power BI
3 1 (1.10%) SAS Data Integration Studio
3 1 (1.10%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 1 (1.10%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 36 (39.56%) Selenium
2 25 (27.47%) Cucumber
3 23 (25.27%) Jenkins
4 20 (21.98%) GitLab
5 19 (20.88%) Git
6 18 (19.78%) Postman
7 17 (18.68%) JIRA
7 17 (18.68%) JMeter
7 17 (18.68%) REST Assured
8 14 (15.38%) WebDriver
9 13 (14.29%) JUnit
10 9 (9.89%) SpecFlow
11 7 (7.69%) Cypress.io
12 4 (4.40%) Bitbucket
12 4 (4.40%) Maven
12 4 (4.40%) TeamCity
12 4 (4.40%) TestNG
13 3 (3.30%) Appium
13 3 (3.30%) Bugzilla
13 3 (3.30%) PyCharm
General
1 21 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 13 (14.29%) Finance
3 9 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (8.79%) Banking
5 6 (6.59%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.30%) Pharmaceutical
7 2 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.10%) Military
8 1 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (36.26%) Playwright
2 15 (16.48%) WireMock
3 12 (13.19%) Spring
4 9 (9.89%) REST
5 5 (5.49%) pytest
6 4 (4.40%) Gherkin
6 4 (4.40%) Kafka
7 3 (3.30%) Node.js
7 3 (3.30%) Swagger
8 2 (2.20%) Django
8 2 (2.20%) Web Services
9 1 (1.10%) Great Expectations
9 1 (1.10%) Jest
9 1 (1.10%) ODBC
9 1 (1.10%) Pandas
9 1 (1.10%) React
9 1 (1.10%) RESTful
9 1 (1.10%) WebdriverIO
9 1 (1.10%) XML
9 1 (1.10%) XML Schema
Miscellaneous
1 10 (10.99%) Distributed Systems
2 7 (7.69%) Data Protection Act
2 7 (7.69%) Distributed Architecture
3 3 (3.30%) Product Ownership
4 2 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.10%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.10%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.10%) Distributed Applications
5 1 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.10%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 49 (53.85%) CI/CD
3 34 (37.36%) Agile
4 26 (28.57%) Test Strategy
5 25 (27.47%) DevOps
6 23 (25.27%) BDD
6 23 (25.27%) Validation
7 22 (24.18%) API Testing
8 20 (21.98%) Test Scripting
9 19 (20.88%) Continuous Improvement
10 18 (19.78%) Performance Testing
11 17 (18.68%) Data Validation
12 15 (16.48%) Regression Testing
12 15 (16.48%) TDD
13 14 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
14 13 (14.29%) End-to-End Testing
15 11 (12.09%) Microservices
16 10 (10.99%) Load Testing
17 9 (9.89%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 9 (9.89%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 28 (30.77%) Python
2 21 (23.08%) Java
2 21 (23.08%) SQL
3 19 (20.88%) TypeScript
4 18 (19.78%) JavaScript
5 16 (17.58%) C#
6 5 (5.49%) Kotlin
7 4 (4.40%) Bash
7 4 (4.40%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.10%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 27 (29.67%) Security Cleared
2 25 (27.47%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (5.49%) Degree
3 5 (5.49%) ISTQB
4 4 (4.40%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (19.78%) QA
2 3 (3.30%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
2 3 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.10%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.10%) GDPR
3 1 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 16 (17.58%) Docker
Systems Management
1 19 (20.88%) Kubernetes
2 8 (8.79%) Grafana
2 8 (8.79%) Prometheus
3 4 (4.40%) HP ALM
4 1 (1.10%) Control-M
4 1 (1.10%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (7.69%) Microsoft
2 5 (5.49%) Databricks
3 4 (4.40%) HP
4 2 (2.20%) Talend
5 1 (1.10%) Avaloq
5 1 (1.10%) Google
5 1 (1.10%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.10%) SAP
5 1 (1.10%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.10%) Veracode