QA Automation Contracts

Quality Assurance (QA) Automation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring QA Automation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited QA Automation over the 6 months leading up to 27 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 529 543 625
Rank change year-on-year +14 +82 +108
Contract jobs citing QA Automation 30 29 52
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.091% 0.072% 0.096%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.10% 0.085% 0.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 22 25 42
10th Percentile £326 £358 £314
25th Percentile £415 £406 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £470 £463
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% +1.62% -2.63%
75th Percentile £533 £500 £542
90th Percentile £580 £533 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £444 £433
% change year-on-year +9.27% +2.54% -6.43%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

QA Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 29,844 34,314 48,537
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.41% 85.44% 89.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,720 22,065 33,352
10th Percentile £300 £308 £320
25th Percentile £404 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,619 2,025 1,595
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.55 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% +60.38%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.05 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -42.38% - +83.65%

QA Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing QA Automation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for QA Automation in the UK

QA Automation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Automation.

Daily rate trend for QA Automation in the UK

QA Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Automation over the 6 months to 27 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA Automation in the UK

QA Automation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Automation.

Hourly rate trend for QA Automation in the UK

QA Automation
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 27 July 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 +25 25 £450 -2.70% 24
UK excluding London +36 13 £485 +9.27% 18
London +8 12 £473 +0.80% 12
Work from Home +22 10 £422 -8.76% 16
North of England +5 9 £520 +3.95% 2
Yorkshire -6 5 £520 -
North West -6 3 £422 -15.60% 1
Wales +5 1 £525 +7.14%
Midlands -5 1 - - 3
North East - 1 £450 - 1
West Midlands - 1 - - 1
South West - 1 £450 - 1
East of England - 1 £450 - 2

QA Automation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (16.67%) Confluence
2 1 (3.33%) CMS
2 1 (3.33%) Headless CMS
2 1 (3.33%) Strapi
2 1 (3.33%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 2 (6.67%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (3.33%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (3.33%) SAP CRM
2 1 (3.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 8 (26.67%) AWS
2 5 (16.67%) GitHub
3 3 (10.00%) SAP Commerce Cloud
4 2 (6.67%) Amazon EventBridge
4 2 (6.67%) Amazon SQS
4 2 (6.67%) Azure
4 2 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (3.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 1 (3.33%) Amazon Kinesis
5 1 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
5 1 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
5 1 (3.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 1 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (3.33%) Power Platform
5 1 (3.33%) Serverless
5 1 (3.33%) Storyblok
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.33%) Network Security
1 1 (3.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (3.33%) BusinessObjects
2 1 (3.33%) Crystal Reports
2 1 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (3.33%) Delta Lake
2 1 (3.33%) Power BI
2 1 (3.33%) SAP Data Services
2 1 (3.33%) SQL Server
2 1 (3.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 17 (56.67%) Selenium
2 9 (30.00%) Cucumber
3 7 (23.33%) Jenkins
3 7 (23.33%) Postman
4 6 (20.00%) JIRA
5 5 (16.67%) Git
6 4 (13.33%) Cypress.io
6 4 (13.33%) JUnit
7 3 (10.00%) Gradle
7 3 (10.00%) HP UFT
7 3 (10.00%) IntelliJ
7 3 (10.00%) JMeter
7 3 (10.00%) Maven
8 2 (6.67%) GitLab
8 2 (6.67%) SpecFlow
9 1 (3.33%) Gatling
9 1 (3.33%) REST Assured
9 1 (3.33%) Serenity BDD
9 1 (3.33%) SonarQube
9 1 (3.33%) Zephyr
General
1 9 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 7 (23.33%) Finance
3 3 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (6.67%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (3.33%) Banking
5 1 (3.33%) Billing
5 1 (3.33%) Games
5 1 (3.33%) Public Sector
5 1 (3.33%) Retail
5 1 (3.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (40.00%) QA Engineer
2 10 (33.33%) QA Automation Engineer
3 9 (30.00%) Automation Engineer
4 5 (16.67%) Tester
5 4 (13.33%) Automation Tester
5 4 (13.33%) Senior
6 3 (10.00%) Junior
6 3 (10.00%) Test Engineer
6 3 (10.00%) Test Manager
7 2 (6.67%) Junior QA Engineer
7 2 (6.67%) Performance Engineer
7 2 (6.67%) Performance Test Engineer
7 2 (6.67%) QA Automation Tester
7 2 (6.67%) QA Tester
7 2 (6.67%) Senior QA Engineer
8 1 (3.33%) Data Engineer
8 1 (3.33%) Python Engineer
8 1 (3.33%) QA Automation Analyst
8 1 (3.33%) Senior Automation Engineer
8 1 (3.33%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (13.33%) RESTful
2 3 (10.00%) Playwright
3 2 (6.67%) .NET
3 2 (6.67%) Gherkin
3 2 (6.67%) REST
4 1 (3.33%) .NET Framework
4 1 (3.33%) Next.js
4 1 (3.33%) Pandas
4 1 (3.33%) PySpark
4 1 (3.33%) pytest
4 1 (3.33%) React
4 1 (3.33%) SOAP
4 1 (3.33%) Spring
4 1 (3.33%) Spring Boot
4 1 (3.33%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 4 (13.33%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (3.33%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (3.33%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.33%) Data Centre
2 1 (3.33%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (3.33%) Mobile App
2 1 (3.33%) Product Ownership
2 1 (3.33%) Renewable Energy
2 1 (3.33%) Solar Panel
Operating Systems
1 1 (3.33%) Linux
1 1 (3.33%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (93.33%) Test Automation
2 12 (40.00%) CI/CD
3 11 (36.67%) Agile
4 9 (30.00%) DevOps
5 8 (26.67%) BDD
5 8 (26.67%) Scrum
5 8 (26.67%) Software Testing
6 7 (23.33%) API Testing
6 7 (23.33%) Test Strategy
7 6 (20.00%) Analytics
7 6 (20.00%) Performance Testing
7 6 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
7 6 (20.00%) SDLC
8 5 (16.67%) Computer Science
8 5 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 5 (16.67%) Exploratory Testing
8 5 (16.67%) TDD
9 4 (13.33%) Case Management
9 4 (13.33%) Code Quality
9 4 (13.33%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 15 (50.00%) Java
2 6 (20.00%) Python
3 5 (16.67%) SQL
4 4 (13.33%) TypeScript
5 3 (10.00%) JavaScript
6 2 (6.67%) C#
7 1 (3.33%) ABAP
7 1 (3.33%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 7 (23.33%) Degree
2 2 (6.67%) SC Cleared
2 2 (6.67%) Security Cleared
3 1 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (3.33%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (100.00%) QA
2 1 (3.33%) Accessibility
2 1 (3.33%) Data Quality
2 1 (3.33%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (6.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (3.33%) HP Quality Center
1 1 (3.33%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 4 (13.33%) SAP
2 1 (3.33%) Databricks
2 1 (3.33%) Informatica
2 1 (3.33%) Splunk