Test Automation Contract Job Trends

Automated Testing
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Test Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 50 44
Rank change year-on-year +5 -6 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,404 1,472 1,572
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.41% 4.50% 4.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.21% 4.97% 4.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,533 1,005 1,053
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £700 £698
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -4.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 37 18
10th Percentile £40.00 £28.42 £40.88
25th Percentile £59.13 £46.25 £43.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -17.71%
75th Percentile - £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £71.10 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +18.94% -1.30% -11.11%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Test 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 46,106 29,609 32,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.64% 90.43% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,135 18,363 20,196
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,994 1,772 1,501
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.23 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £40.03 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.17% -41.51% +1.96%
75th Percentile £67.84 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £22.60 £43.00
% change year-on-year +85.18% -47.44% +7.50%

Test Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Test Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Test Automation job vacancy trend in the UK

Test Automation
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Test Automation

Test Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Test Automation over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Test Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 9 September 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 +4 2,021 £475 -5.00% 2,137
UK excluding London -2 1,172 £453 -4.63% 1,278
London +6 924 £500 - 1,180
Work from Home -3 648 £486 +2.26% 912
North of England +3 409 £460 +0.05% 259
Midlands +10 252 £450 -2.70% 137
West Midlands +24 236 £450 -12.62% 84
South East -18 228 £450 -10.00% 274
Yorkshire -9 163 £470 -6.00% 68
North West -10 147 £492 +16.17% 155
South West -1 115 £475 -5.00% 217
North East +13 106 £425 -4.49% 36
Scotland -24 85 £475 -5.00% 197
East of England +16 82 £450 +17.65% 141
Wales -4 31 £500 +33.33% 23
East Midlands -41 16 £418 +17.61% 53
Northern Ireland +9 11 £488 +323.91% 47
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

Test Automation
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
1 193 (8.03%) Confluence
2 53 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (1.96%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.87%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.58%) SAS
6 25 (1.04%) Apache
7 15 (0.62%) CMS
8 12 (0.50%) Camunda
8 12 (0.50%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 6 (0.25%) nginx
10 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) ColdFusion
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.12%) Kentico
13 2 (0.083%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 24 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.17%) Simulink
5 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.12%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.12%) Trello
6 2 (0.083%) Mingle
6 2 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 28 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.46%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.33%) Findur
7 7 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
7 7 (0.29%) SAP GRC
8 6 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.25%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.12%) Finacle
10 3 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 2 (0.083%) BambooHR
11 2 (0.083%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.083%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.083%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 741 (30.82%) AWS
2 713 (29.66%) Azure
3 430 (17.89%) GitHub
4 337 (14.02%) Azure DevOps
5 262 (10.90%) GitHub Actions
6 180 (7.49%) Serverless
7 174 (7.24%) GCP
8 136 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
9 108 (4.49%) Power Platform
10 104 (4.33%) Amazon S3
11 84 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 75 (3.12%) Amazon ECS
13 73 (3.04%) OpenShift
14 69 (2.87%) GitHub Copilot
15 67 (2.79%) Amazon EKS
16 65 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
17 59 (2.45%) dbt
18 56 (2.33%) Snowflake
19 51 (2.12%) Amazon EC2
20 45 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.08%) HTTP
2 23 (0.96%) Firewall
3 22 (0.92%) DNS
4 19 (0.79%) 4G
5 18 (0.75%) 5G
6 17 (0.71%) Network Security
6 17 (0.71%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.67%) 2G
7 16 (0.67%) 3G
7 16 (0.67%) Diameter Protocol
7 16 (0.67%) SIGTRAN
7 16 (0.67%) SS7
8 15 (0.62%) WAN
9 13 (0.54%) LAN
9 13 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.42%) BGP
10 10 (0.42%) DHCP
11 9 (0.37%) SAN
12 8 (0.33%) VXLAN
12 8 (0.33%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.24%) Data Warehouse
3 121 (5.03%) MongoDB
4 111 (4.62%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.45%) NoSQL
6 94 (3.91%) SQL Server
7 82 (3.41%) Power BI
8 49 (2.04%) Metadata
9 48 (2.00%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
11 38 (1.58%) MySQL
12 36 (1.50%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.46%) Amazon Athena
13 35 (1.46%) Big Data
14 32 (1.33%) Pentaho
15 31 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
16 30 (1.25%) Redis
17 25 (1.04%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 509 (21.17%) Git
2 403 (16.76%) JIRA
3 389 (16.18%) Jenkins
4 323 (13.44%) GitLab
5 309 (12.85%) Selenium
6 169 (7.03%) Postman
7 151 (6.28%) Cucumber
8 135 (5.62%) JUnit
9 128 (5.32%) Cypress.io
10 108 (4.49%) REST Assured
11 105 (4.37%) JMeter
12 84 (3.49%) SonarQube
13 65 (2.70%) Zephyr
14 61 (2.54%) Gatling
14 61 (2.54%) Maven
15 58 (2.41%) Gradle
16 56 (2.33%) WebDriver
17 55 (2.29%) Mockito
18 42 (1.75%) Bitbucket
19 29 (1.21%) Appium
General
1 665 (27.66%) Social Skills
2 441 (18.34%) Finance
3 341 (14.18%) Public Sector
4 332 (13.81%) Analytical Skills
5 211 (8.78%) Banking
6 77 (3.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (1.83%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.79%) Front Office
9 40 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
10 36 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 34 (1.41%) Retail
12 33 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
13 28 (1.16%) Military
14 24 (1.00%) Financial Institution
15 20 (0.83%) Law
16 19 (0.79%) Back Office
17 18 (0.75%) Aerospace
17 18 (0.75%) Marketing
18 17 (0.71%) Manufacturing
19 14 (0.58%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 542 (22.55%) Developer
2 404 (16.81%) Senior
3 241 (10.02%) Lead
4 233 (9.69%) Test Engineer
5 206 (8.57%) Tester
6 175 (7.28%) Java Developer
7 143 (5.95%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.32%) Software Engineer
9 127 (5.28%) Analyst
10 123 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
11 119 (4.95%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.37%) Test Automation Engineer
13 100 (4.16%) Architect
13 100 (4.16%) QA Engineer
14 91 (3.79%) Automation Tester
15 84 (3.49%) Test Analyst
16 79 (3.29%) Test Leader
17 78 (3.24%) Full-Stack Developer
18 70 (2.91%) Test Manager
19 69 (2.87%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 394 (16.39%) REST
2 340 (14.14%) Terraform
3 281 (11.69%) Playwright
4 241 (10.02%) RESTful
5 236 (9.82%) Kafka
6 234 (9.73%) Spring
7 220 (9.15%) React
8 202 (8.40%) Spring Boot
9 168 (6.99%) .NET
10 137 (5.70%) HTML
11 127 (5.28%) Node.js
12 118 (4.91%) CSS
13 108 (4.49%) AngularJS
14 81 (3.37%) OAuth
15 72 (3.00%) JSON
16 65 (2.70%) pytest
17 60 (2.50%) OAuth2
17 60 (2.50%) XML
18 59 (2.45%) Middleware
19 55 (2.29%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 364 (15.14%) Cloud Native
2 204 (8.49%) Product Ownership
3 170 (7.07%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (4.12%) Enterprise Software
5 66 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 62 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 57 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
8 54 (2.25%) AI Agents
9 53 (2.20%) Mobile App
10 50 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
11 39 (1.62%) Virtual Team
12 27 (1.12%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.00%) Data Structures
14 22 (0.92%) Life Science
14 22 (0.92%) Management Information System
15 21 (0.87%) Data Centre
15 21 (0.87%) Embedded Systems
15 21 (0.87%) NHS
16 20 (0.83%) Distributed Architecture
16 20 (0.83%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 162 (6.74%) Linux
2 98 (4.08%) Unix
3 94 (3.91%) Windows
4 45 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 43 (1.79%) Android
6 32 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.29%) Solaris
9 5 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.21%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.17%) AIX
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.17%) Mac OS X
10 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,434 (59.65%) CI/CD
2 1,138 (47.34%) Agile
3 893 (37.15%) DevOps
4 460 (19.13%) Microservices
5 456 (18.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 456 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
6 438 (18.22%) Software Engineering
7 416 (17.30%) Infrastructure as Code
8 403 (16.76%) Scrum
9 393 (16.35%) Validation
10 368 (15.31%) AI
11 360 (14.98%) Test Strategy
12 342 (14.23%) Containerisation
13 315 (13.10%) Observability
14 306 (12.73%) TDD
15 291 (12.10%) SDLC
16 275 (11.44%) Software Testing
17 261 (10.86%) Stakeholder Management
18 253 (10.52%) End-to-End Testing
19 234 (9.73%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 665 (27.66%) Python
2 657 (27.33%) Java
3 597 (24.83%) SQL
4 359 (14.93%) JavaScript
5 267 (11.11%) TypeScript
6 202 (8.40%) C#
7 105 (4.37%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.83%) Bash
9 53 (2.20%) Bicep
10 52 (2.16%) Kotlin
11 46 (1.91%) C++
12 35 (1.46%) Scala
13 33 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 30 (1.25%) Go
15 28 (1.16%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.12%) Shell Script
17 25 (1.04%) C
18 23 (0.96%) Ruby
19 22 (0.92%) Perl
20 17 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 784 (32.61%) Security Cleared
2 663 (27.58%) SC Cleared
3 130 (5.41%) Degree
4 121 (5.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 110 (4.58%) ISTQB
6 87 (3.62%) DV Cleared
7 73 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 40 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 34 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 31 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 19 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.58%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.50%) ISEB
14 11 (0.46%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.37%) CISSP
16 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 618 (25.71%) QA
2 206 (8.57%) Accessibility
3 167 (6.95%) Data Quality
4 94 (3.91%) WCAG
5 43 (1.79%) GDPR
6 21 (0.87%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.58%) GRC
8 14 (0.58%) NCSC
8 14 (0.58%) SLA
9 11 (0.46%) NIST
10 7 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.25%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.21%) FATCA
12 5 (0.21%) HL7
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
13 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 475 (19.76%) Docker
2 37 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 35 (1.46%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.46%) Firmware
6 9 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.083%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.042%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.042%) KVM
11 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 464 (19.30%) Kubernetes
2 125 (5.20%) Ansible
3 123 (5.12%) Grafana
4 92 (3.83%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.71%) Argo
6 22 (0.92%) Progress Chef
6 22 (0.92%) Puppet
7 16 (0.67%) Kibana
8 15 (0.62%) HP ALM
9 12 (0.50%) Control-M
10 11 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.29%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
12 6 (0.25%) Istio
12 6 (0.25%) SCCM
13 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
13 5 (0.21%) Packer
13 5 (0.21%) WMI
Vendors
1 228 (9.48%) Microsoft
2 199 (8.28%) Oracle
3 90 (3.74%) Databricks
4 88 (3.66%) Salesforce
5 70 (2.91%) Google
6 64 (2.66%) Red Hat
7 62 (2.58%) IBM
8 59 (2.45%) Talend
9 56 (2.33%) ServiceNow
10 54 (2.25%) SAP
11 53 (2.20%) Splunk
12 44 (1.83%) VMware
13 43 (1.79%) Informatica
14 42 (1.75%) Denodo
15 39 (1.62%) Dynatrace
16 31 (1.29%) Cisco
16 31 (1.29%) MuleSoft
17 27 (1.12%) UiPath
18 20 (0.83%) HP
19 19 (0.79%) OpenAI