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 20 October 2025.

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

6 months to
20 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 452 453 513
Rank change year-on-year +1 +60 +72
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Tester 109 104 123
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.28% 0.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.30% 0.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 67 101
10th Percentile £268 £330 £340
25th Percentile £346 £373 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -5.26% +2.70%
75th Percentile £513 £573 £550
90th Percentile £584 £593 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £340 £400 £450
% change year-on-year -15.00% -11.11% -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 30,142 34,441 45,147
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.84% 92.92% 93.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,024 20,756 30,859
10th Percentile £277 £300 £300
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,674 1,385 1,538
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.04 £14.64
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +66.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.62 £40.33 £43.83
% change year-on-year -38.95% -7.99% +94.78%

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 20 October 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 20 October 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 +2 84 £400 -17.10% 14
UK excluding London -9 49 £340 -15.00% 12
London +13 41 £488 -2.50% 5
Work from Home +31 40 £413 -8.33% 9
Midlands -2 19 £269 -15.54% 2
East Midlands +4 18 £269 -15.54% 2
North of England -30 13 £375 -6.25% 4
South East +7 8 £375 -28.23% 5
North West -16 6 £340 -15.00% 3
Wales - 6 £725 -
Yorkshire -33 5 £375 -25.00%
South West +8 3 - - 1
North East -2 2 £488 +14.71% 1
Scotland -5 2 - -
West Midlands - 1 - -
East of England - 1 £200 -

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

For the 6 months to 20 October 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.

1 109 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 66 (60.55%) Selenium
3 42 (38.53%) Agile
4 40 (36.70%) CI/CD
5 38 (34.86%) Java
6 32 (29.36%) DevOps
7 31 (28.44%) Test Strategy
8 29 (26.61%) Azure
8 29 (26.61%) Jenkins
8 29 (26.61%) Security Cleared
9 28 (25.69%) API Testing
9 28 (25.69%) Cucumber
10 26 (23.85%) QA
10 26 (23.85%) SQL
11 25 (22.94%) Cypress.io
11 25 (22.94%) Python
12 23 (21.10%) C#
12 23 (21.10%) Playwright
12 23 (21.10%) SC Cleared
13 21 (19.27%) AWS
13 21 (19.27%) Azure DevOps
14 19 (17.43%) JavaScript
14 19 (17.43%) Postman
14 19 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
15 18 (16.51%) Test Scripting
16 17 (15.60%) JUnit
16 17 (15.60%) Performance Testing
16 17 (15.60%) REST
16 17 (15.60%) REST Assured
17 16 (14.68%) 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 6 (5.50%) Confluence
2 3 (2.75%) CICS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 29 (26.61%) Azure
2 21 (19.27%) AWS
2 21 (19.27%) Azure DevOps
3 12 (11.01%) GitHub
4 7 (6.42%) Dynamics 365
4 7 (6.42%) Power Platform
5 3 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 3 (2.75%) Amazon S3
5 3 (2.75%) GCP
5 3 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (1.83%) Serverless
7 1 (0.92%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.92%) Amazon EventBridge
7 1 (0.92%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (0.92%) OCI
7 1 (0.92%) SaaS
7 1 (0.92%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (4.59%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.75%) DB2
3 2 (1.83%) Oracle Database
3 2 (1.83%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.92%) Big Data
4 1 (0.92%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.92%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 66 (60.55%) Selenium
2 29 (26.61%) Jenkins
3 28 (25.69%) Cucumber
4 25 (22.94%) Cypress.io
5 19 (17.43%) Postman
6 17 (15.60%) JUnit
6 17 (15.60%) REST Assured
7 16 (14.68%) JIRA
8 15 (13.76%) JMeter
9 13 (11.93%) Git
9 13 (11.93%) GitLab
10 8 (7.34%) MSTest
11 6 (5.50%) TestNG
11 6 (5.50%) Visual Studio
12 5 (4.59%) SpecFlow
12 5 (4.59%) Zephyr
13 4 (3.67%) Bitbucket
13 4 (3.67%) Gatling
13 4 (3.67%) WebDriver
14 3 (2.75%) Maven
General
1 19 (17.43%) Social Skills
2 17 (15.60%) Finance
3 14 (12.84%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (11.93%) Banking
5 7 (6.42%) Public Sector
6 4 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.75%) Automotive
8 1 (0.92%) Billing
8 1 (0.92%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.92%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (21.10%) Playwright
2 17 (15.60%) REST
3 14 (12.84%) RESTful
4 13 (11.93%) Web Services
5 12 (11.01%) .NET
6 9 (8.26%) jQuery
6 9 (8.26%) SOAP
7 6 (5.50%) Gherkin
8 5 (4.59%) DOM
8 5 (4.59%) HTML
8 5 (4.59%) pytest
9 3 (2.75%) Node.js
9 3 (2.75%) Spring
9 3 (2.75%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.83%) Kafka
10 2 (1.83%) Puppeteer
10 2 (1.83%) React
10 2 (1.83%) Swagger
10 2 (1.83%) WireMock
11 1 (0.92%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 6 (5.50%) Product Ownership
2 3 (2.75%) Algorithms
2 3 (2.75%) Mainframe
2 3 (2.75%) VSAM
3 2 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (0.92%) Client/Server
4 1 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (0.92%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (0.92%) Management Information System
4 1 (0.92%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.92%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 7 (6.42%) Linux
2 4 (3.67%) Windows
3 2 (1.83%) Unix
4 1 (0.92%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 42 (38.53%) Agile
3 40 (36.70%) CI/CD
4 32 (29.36%) DevOps
5 31 (28.44%) Test Strategy
6 28 (25.69%) API Testing
7 19 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (16.51%) Test Scripting
9 17 (15.60%) Performance Testing
10 16 (14.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 16 (14.68%) Non-Functional Testing
10 16 (14.68%) Software Testing
11 14 (12.84%) Acceptance Criteria
12 12 (11.01%) Continuous Integration
12 12 (11.01%) Regression Testing
13 11 (10.09%) BDD
13 11 (10.09%) Manual Testing
13 11 (10.09%) Scenario Testing
13 11 (10.09%) SDLC
13 11 (10.09%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 38 (34.86%) Java
2 26 (23.85%) SQL
3 25 (22.94%) Python
4 23 (21.10%) C#
5 19 (17.43%) JavaScript
6 4 (3.67%) Bash
7 3 (2.75%) COBOL
7 3 (2.75%) JCL
7 3 (2.75%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.83%) Ruby
8 2 (1.83%) Scala
9 1 (0.92%) C
9 1 (0.92%) Go
9 1 (0.92%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 29 (26.61%) Security Cleared
2 23 (21.10%) SC Cleared
3 13 (11.93%) ISTQB
4 8 (7.34%) Degree
5 7 (6.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (3.67%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (23.85%) QA
2 8 (7.34%) Accessibility
3 6 (5.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 6 (5.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.83%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.83%) SLA
5 1 (0.92%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (9.17%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (3.67%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.75%) Ansible
3 2 (1.83%) Terraform
4 1 (0.92%) Grafana
4 1 (0.92%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (6.42%) Oracle
2 5 (4.59%) Microsoft
3 4 (3.67%) UiPath
4 3 (2.75%) Duck Creek
4 3 (2.75%) Guidewire
4 3 (2.75%) Salesforce
4 3 (2.75%) Wind River
5 1 (0.92%) Conga
5 1 (0.92%) Google
5 1 (0.92%) SAP
5 1 (0.92%) Splunk
5 1 (0.92%) Virgin Media