Test Automation Engineer Contracts

Automation Test Engineer
UK

The median Automation Test Engineer daily rate in the UK is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 473 518 595
Rank change year-on-year +45 +77 +88
Contract jobs requiring a Test Automation Engineer 47 64 123
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.16% 0.15% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.17% 0.16% 0.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 52 108
10th Percentile £332 £356 £354
25th Percentile £360 £379 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £428 £514
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -16.79% +3.27%
75th Percentile £538 £509 £600
90th Percentile £606 £580 £691
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £425 £513
% change year-on-year +23.53% -17.07% +13.89%

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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Test Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Test Automation Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Test Automation Engineer in the UK

Test Automation Engineer
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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 +50 41 £475 +6.74% 28
London +38 26 £423 -6.11% 7
UK excluding London +53 17 £525 +23.53% 23
Work from Home +16 11 £475 +18.75% 17
North of England +10 4 £475 +11.76% 5
South East +47 3 - - 5
South West +43 3 £610 +3.39% 8
Midlands +24 3 £450 +2.27% 2
Yorkshire +3 3 £475 +15.15% 1
Wales -2 2 £375 +3.45%
West Midlands - 2 £488 -
East of England - 2 £525 - 2
North West +13 1 £550 +25.71% 3
East Midlands +10 1 £200 -54.55% 2

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Test Automation Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Test Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 47 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 27 (57.45%) CI/CD
3 22 (46.81%) Agile
4 20 (42.55%) Selenium
5 18 (38.30%) API Testing
6 16 (34.04%) Jenkins
6 16 (34.04%) Cypress.io
7 15 (31.91%) Postman
8 14 (29.79%) DevOps
8 14 (29.79%) Git
8 14 (29.79%) Python
9 13 (27.66%) Security Cleared
10 12 (25.53%) Test Scripting
10 12 (25.53%) Azure
11 11 (23.40%) AWS
11 11 (23.40%) Test Strategy
11 11 (23.40%) SC Cleared
11 11 (23.40%) Java
11 11 (23.40%) Problem-Solving
12 10 (21.28%) JIRA
13 9 (19.15%) QA
13 9 (19.15%) SQL
14 8 (17.02%) JavaScript
14 8 (17.02%) Performance Testing
14 8 (17.02%) REST Assured
14 8 (17.02%) Playwright
14 8 (17.02%) Social Skills
15 7 (14.89%) Public Sector
15 7 (14.89%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (14.89%) TypeScript

Test Automation Engineer Skill Set
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 3 (6.38%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (4.26%) NEC Housing
2 1 (2.13%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 12 (25.53%) Azure
2 11 (23.40%) AWS
3 7 (14.89%) Azure DevOps
4 3 (6.38%) Dynamics 365
5 2 (4.26%) Azure Data Factory
5 2 (4.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 2 (4.26%) GCP
5 2 (4.26%) GitHub
5 2 (4.26%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (2.13%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.13%) BrowserStack
6 1 (2.13%) Power Platform
6 1 (2.13%) PowerApps
6 1 (2.13%) Sauce Labs
6 1 (2.13%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.13%) 3GPP
1 1 (2.13%) BGP
1 1 (2.13%) Ethernet VPN
1 1 (2.13%) HTTP
1 1 (2.13%) MPLS
1 1 (2.13%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.51%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (4.26%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (2.13%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (2.13%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.13%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 20 (42.55%) Selenium
2 16 (34.04%) Cypress.io
2 16 (34.04%) Jenkins
3 15 (31.91%) Postman
4 14 (29.79%) Git
5 10 (21.28%) JIRA
6 8 (17.02%) REST Assured
7 6 (12.77%) Cucumber
8 5 (10.64%) Appium
8 5 (10.64%) NUnit
9 4 (8.51%) JMeter
9 4 (8.51%) WebDriver
10 2 (4.26%) Bitbucket
10 2 (4.26%) MSTest
10 2 (4.26%) NSubstitute
10 2 (4.26%) SpecFlow
10 2 (4.26%) Visual Studio
10 2 (4.26%) Visual Studio Coded UI
11 1 (2.13%) GitLab
11 1 (2.13%) Zephyr
General
1 8 (17.02%) Social Skills
2 7 (14.89%) Public Sector
3 6 (12.77%) Finance
4 5 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (8.51%) Telecoms
6 3 (6.38%) Banking
6 3 (6.38%) Electronics
6 3 (6.38%) Law
6 3 (6.38%) Manufacturing
6 3 (6.38%) Marketing
7 2 (4.26%) Health Technology
7 2 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (2.13%) Aviation
8 1 (2.13%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (17.02%) Playwright
2 7 (14.89%) REST
3 5 (10.64%) .NET
3 5 (10.64%) Kafka
3 5 (10.64%) RESTful
4 4 (8.51%) pytest
5 3 (6.38%) Gherkin
5 3 (6.38%) GraphQL
5 3 (6.38%) React
5 3 (6.38%) Web Services
6 2 (4.26%) AngularJS
6 2 (4.26%) Jest
6 2 (4.26%) JSON
6 2 (4.26%) PySpark
6 2 (4.26%) SOAP
6 2 (4.26%) XML
6 2 (4.26%) YAML
7 1 (2.13%) NETCONF
7 1 (2.13%) RESTCONF
7 1 (2.13%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 3 (6.38%) Mobile App
2 2 (4.26%) Housing Association
2 2 (4.26%) NHS
2 2 (4.26%) Virtual Team
3 1 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (6.38%) Windows
2 2 (4.26%) Android
2 2 (4.26%) Apple iOS
2 2 (4.26%) Linux
2 2 (4.26%) Unix
3 1 (2.13%) AIX
3 1 (2.13%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (100.00%) Test Automation
2 27 (57.45%) CI/CD
3 22 (46.81%) Agile
4 18 (38.30%) API Testing
5 14 (29.79%) DevOps
6 12 (25.53%) Test Scripting
7 11 (23.40%) Problem-Solving
7 11 (23.40%) Test Strategy
8 8 (17.02%) Performance Testing
9 7 (14.89%) Validation
10 6 (12.77%) BDD
10 6 (12.77%) Scrum
11 5 (10.64%) Continuous Integration
11 5 (10.64%) SDET
11 5 (10.64%) Security Testing
11 5 (10.64%) Software Testing
12 4 (8.51%) Component Testing
12 4 (8.51%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 4 (8.51%) Software Delivery
12 4 (8.51%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 14 (29.79%) Python
2 11 (23.40%) Java
3 9 (19.15%) SQL
4 8 (17.02%) JavaScript
5 7 (14.89%) TypeScript
6 2 (4.26%) C#
6 2 (4.26%) Shell Script
7 1 (2.13%) PowerShell
7 1 (2.13%) XPath
Qualifications
1 13 (27.66%) Security Cleared
2 11 (23.40%) SC Cleared
3 3 (6.38%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (6.38%) Degree
4 2 (4.26%) DV Cleared
4 2 (4.26%) ISTQB
5 1 (2.13%) DBS Check
5 1 (2.13%) ISEB
5 1 (2.13%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (19.15%) QA
2 4 (8.51%) Accessibility
3 2 (4.26%) Data Quality
4 1 (2.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 3 (6.38%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (4.26%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.13%) Kibana
Vendors
1 3 (6.38%) Salesforce
1 3 (6.38%) SAP
2 2 (4.26%) Brio
2 2 (4.26%) Databricks
2 2 (4.26%) MuleSoft
2 2 (4.26%) NEC
3 1 (2.13%) Atlassian
3 1 (2.13%) Cisco
3 1 (2.13%) Google
3 1 (2.13%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.13%) Perfecto Mobile
3 1 (2.13%) UiPath