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 5 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 50 43
Rank change year-on-year +5 -7 +8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,364 1,469 1,575
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.38% 4.52% 4.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.18% 5.00% 4.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,519 1,008 1,057
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -4.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 36 20
10th Percentile £39.18 £26.77 £41.13
25th Percentile £59.81 £45.94 £46.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -2.22% -19.50%
75th Percentile - £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.15 £71.75 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.86 £55.88 £57.50
% change year-on-year +21.45% -2.83% -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 45,646 29,409 32,455
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.41% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,256 20,327
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
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 2,932 1,750 1,541
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.88
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.35% +3.33%
75th Percentile £67.85 £45.79 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.03 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 1,987 £475 -5.00% 1,817
UK excluding London -2 1,154 £453 -4.63% 1,110
London +6 906 £500 - 971
Work from Home -3 640 £482 +1.47% 827
North of England +1 405 £460 +0.11% 228
Midlands +10 248 £450 -2.70% 119
West Midlands +19 233 £450 -12.62% 72
South East -20 224 £450 -10.00% 245
Yorkshire -11 160 £473 -5.50% 58
North West -13 146 £492 +15.76% 134
South West +1 112 £475 -5.00% 210
North East +15 106 £425 -4.49% 37
Scotland -30 84 £475 -5.00% 144
East of England +18 81 £450 +17.65% 117
Wales -4 30 £500 +26.98% 17
East Midlands -44 15 £418 +17.61% 47
Northern Ireland +10 11 £488 +323.91% 48
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
1 191 (8.08%) Confluence
2 53 (2.24%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 43 (1.82%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.61%) SAS
6 25 (1.06%) Apache
7 15 (0.63%) CMS
8 12 (0.51%) Camunda
8 12 (0.51%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.25%) nginx
9 6 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
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 (0.13%) Kentico
13 2 (0.085%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 23 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.25%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.085%) Mingle
7 2 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 28 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.47%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.34%) Findur
7 7 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
7 7 (0.30%) 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 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.13%) Finacle
10 3 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 2 (0.085%) BambooHR
11 2 (0.085%) Infor CloudSuite
11 2 (0.085%) Infor LN
11 2 (0.085%) Infor M3
11 2 (0.085%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 731 (30.92%) AWS
2 707 (29.91%) Azure
3 425 (17.98%) GitHub
4 336 (14.21%) Azure DevOps
5 257 (10.87%) GitHub Actions
6 177 (7.49%) Serverless
7 171 (7.23%) GCP
8 133 (5.63%) AWS Lambda
9 106 (4.48%) Power Platform
10 101 (4.27%) Amazon S3
11 82 (3.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 73 (3.09%) OpenShift
13 72 (3.05%) Amazon ECS
14 69 (2.92%) GitHub Copilot
15 65 (2.75%) Amazon EKS
15 65 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.50%) dbt
17 56 (2.37%) Snowflake
18 49 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
19 45 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.10%) HTTP
2 23 (0.97%) Firewall
3 22 (0.93%) DNS
4 19 (0.80%) 4G
5 18 (0.76%) 5G
6 17 (0.72%) Network Security
6 17 (0.72%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.68%) 2G
7 16 (0.68%) 3G
7 16 (0.68%) Diameter Protocol
7 16 (0.68%) SIGTRAN
7 16 (0.68%) SS7
8 15 (0.63%) WAN
9 13 (0.55%) LAN
9 13 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.42%) BGP
10 10 (0.42%) DHCP
11 9 (0.38%) SAN
12 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
12 8 (0.34%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
3 121 (5.12%) MongoDB
4 107 (4.53%) NoSQL
5 106 (4.48%) Relational Database
6 93 (3.93%) SQL Server
7 81 (3.43%) Power BI
8 49 (2.07%) Metadata
9 48 (2.03%) DynamoDB
10 39 (1.65%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.57%) MySQL
12 36 (1.52%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.48%) Amazon Athena
14 33 (1.40%) Big Data
15 32 (1.35%) Pentaho
16 31 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
17 30 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
17 30 (1.27%) Redis
18 29 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
19 25 (1.06%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 497 (21.02%) Git
2 399 (16.88%) JIRA
3 380 (16.07%) Jenkins
4 321 (13.58%) GitLab
5 300 (12.69%) Selenium
6 166 (7.02%) Postman
7 147 (6.22%) Cucumber
8 130 (5.50%) JUnit
9 126 (5.33%) Cypress.io
10 105 (4.44%) JMeter
10 105 (4.44%) REST Assured
11 84 (3.55%) SonarQube
12 65 (2.75%) Zephyr
13 61 (2.58%) Gatling
14 60 (2.54%) Maven
15 58 (2.45%) Gradle
16 55 (2.33%) WebDriver
17 54 (2.28%) Mockito
18 42 (1.78%) Bitbucket
19 29 (1.23%) Appium
General
1 655 (27.71%) Social Skills
2 431 (18.23%) Finance
3 341 (14.42%) Public Sector
4 329 (13.92%) Analytical Skills
5 205 (8.67%) Banking
6 77 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (1.86%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.69%) Front Office
9 35 (1.48%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.44%) Retail
11 33 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.18%) Military
13 23 (0.97%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.85%) Law
15 19 (0.80%) Back Office
16 18 (0.76%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.76%) Marketing
17 15 (0.63%) Manufacturing
18 14 (0.59%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 533 (22.55%) Developer
2 398 (16.84%) Senior
3 239 (10.11%) Lead
4 227 (9.60%) Test Engineer
5 204 (8.63%) Tester
6 173 (7.32%) Java Developer
7 142 (6.01%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.41%) Software Engineer
9 124 (5.25%) Analyst
10 123 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
11 117 (4.95%) Senior Developer
12 103 (4.36%) Test Automation Engineer
13 99 (4.19%) Architect
14 97 (4.10%) QA Engineer
15 89 (3.76%) Automation Tester
16 83 (3.51%) Test Analyst
17 80 (3.38%) Test Leader
18 78 (3.30%) Full-Stack Developer
19 69 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
20 68 (2.88%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 385 (16.29%) REST
2 339 (14.34%) Terraform
3 276 (11.68%) Playwright
4 236 (9.98%) RESTful
5 235 (9.94%) Kafka
6 228 (9.64%) Spring
7 220 (9.31%) React
8 196 (8.29%) Spring Boot
9 165 (6.98%) .NET
10 136 (5.75%) HTML
11 127 (5.37%) Node.js
12 117 (4.95%) CSS
13 105 (4.44%) AngularJS
14 81 (3.43%) OAuth
15 72 (3.05%) JSON
16 65 (2.75%) pytest
17 60 (2.54%) OAuth2
17 60 (2.54%) XML
18 59 (2.50%) Middleware
19 54 (2.28%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 357 (15.10%) Cloud Native
2 201 (8.50%) Product Ownership
3 168 (7.11%) Distributed Systems
4 99 (4.19%) Enterprise Software
5 66 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 60 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
7 57 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
8 52 (2.20%) Mobile App
9 51 (2.16%) AI Agents
10 50 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
11 37 (1.57%) Virtual Team
12 26 (1.10%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.02%) Data Structures
14 22 (0.93%) Management Information System
15 21 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
15 21 (0.89%) Life Science
15 21 (0.89%) NHS
16 20 (0.85%) Data Centre
16 20 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.80%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 160 (6.77%) Linux
2 98 (4.15%) Unix
3 90 (3.81%) Windows
4 44 (1.86%) Apple iOS
5 42 (1.78%) Android
6 30 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.89%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.30%) 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 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.13%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,409 (59.60%) CI/CD
2 1,122 (47.46%) Agile
3 884 (37.39%) DevOps
4 452 (19.12%) Microservices
5 450 (19.04%) Problem-Solving
6 445 (18.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 428 (18.10%) Software Engineering
8 410 (17.34%) Infrastructure as Code
9 396 (16.75%) Scrum
10 386 (16.33%) Validation
11 361 (15.27%) AI
12 353 (14.93%) Test Strategy
13 334 (14.13%) Containerisation
14 310 (13.11%) Observability
15 302 (12.77%) TDD
16 284 (12.01%) SDLC
17 265 (11.21%) Software Testing
18 256 (10.83%) Stakeholder Management
19 250 (10.58%) End-to-End Testing
20 230 (9.73%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 650 (27.50%) Python
2 643 (27.20%) Java
3 580 (24.53%) SQL
4 354 (14.97%) JavaScript
5 262 (11.08%) TypeScript
6 199 (8.42%) C#
7 102 (4.31%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.89%) Bash
9 52 (2.20%) Bicep
10 51 (2.16%) Kotlin
11 45 (1.90%) C++
12 34 (1.44%) Scala
13 33 (1.40%) PL/SQL
14 29 (1.23%) Go
15 28 (1.18%) Apex Code
16 27 (1.14%) Shell Script
17 25 (1.06%) C
18 23 (0.97%) Ruby
19 21 (0.89%) Perl
20 17 (0.72%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 772 (32.66%) Security Cleared
2 654 (27.66%) SC Cleared
3 127 (5.37%) Degree
4 120 (5.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 109 (4.61%) ISTQB
6 82 (3.47%) DV Cleared
7 72 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (1.61%) AWS Certification
9 32 (1.35%) Azure Certification
10 31 (1.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 19 (0.80%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.59%) Master's Degree
13 13 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 12 (0.51%) ISEB
15 11 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
16 10 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
16 10 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.38%) CISSP
17 9 (0.38%) DBS Check
18 8 (0.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 608 (25.72%) QA
2 203 (8.59%) Accessibility
3 164 (6.94%) Data Quality
4 94 (3.98%) WCAG
5 42 (1.78%) GDPR
6 21 (0.89%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.59%) GRC
8 14 (0.59%) NCSC
8 14 (0.59%) SLA
9 11 (0.47%) NIST
10 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.30%) 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
1 470 (19.88%) Docker
2 36 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (1.35%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.47%) Firmware
6 9 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.21%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.085%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.042%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.042%) KVM
10 1 (0.042%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 460 (19.46%) Kubernetes
2 125 (5.29%) Ansible
3 123 (5.20%) Grafana
4 92 (3.89%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.73%) Argo
6 22 (0.93%) Progress Chef
6 22 (0.93%) Puppet
7 16 (0.68%) Kibana
8 15 (0.63%) HP ALM
9 12 (0.51%) Control-M
10 10 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.30%) 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
1 224 (9.48%) Microsoft
2 197 (8.33%) Oracle
3 88 (3.72%) Databricks
4 87 (3.68%) Salesforce
5 69 (2.92%) Google
6 62 (2.62%) IBM
6 62 (2.62%) Red Hat
7 59 (2.50%) Talend
8 55 (2.33%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.24%) SAP
9 53 (2.24%) Splunk
10 43 (1.82%) Informatica
10 43 (1.82%) VMware
11 42 (1.78%) Denodo
12 39 (1.65%) Dynatrace
13 31 (1.31%) Cisco
13 31 (1.31%) MuleSoft
14 27 (1.14%) UiPath
15 20 (0.85%) HP
16 18 (0.76%) OpenAI