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 16 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 49 44 51
Rank change year-on-year -5 +7 -10
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,541 1,593 1,986
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.63% 4.24% 4.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.12% 4.92% 4.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,062 1,079 1,450
10th Percentile £321 £340 £369
25th Percentile £400 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -7.08%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £690 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -1.06% -1.20% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 15 60
10th Percentile £36.75 £41.75 £45.79
25th Percentile £44.63 £45.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -23.33% +25.00%
75th Percentile £67.00 £71.88 £90.00
90th Percentile £72.60 £80.80 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £73.75
% change year-on-year +4.35% -22.03% +18.00%

All Process and 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 30,120 32,351 42,343
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.53% 86.01% 88.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,720 19,487 28,729
10th Percentile £296 £308 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,911 1,239 1,585
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.12 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +36.92%
75th Percentile £42.79 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.27 £40.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -44.34% -8.88% +65.99%

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 16 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 -7 1,305 £500 -0.99% 752
UK excluding London +3 753 £489 -1.06% 640
London -11 601 £513 -2.38% 278
Work from Home +2 483 £500 - 573
North of England +2 264 £475 +3.26% 135
South East -17 133 £492 -4.00% 253
Midlands +21 128 £475 +6.03% 74
Yorkshire -4 124 £513 +7.89% 31
North West -1 109 £422 -6.22% 75
Scotland +5 89 £500 +5.26% 40
West Midlands +15 86 £523 +2.85% 50
South West +15 75 £550 - 66
East of England +28 54 £444 +10.94% 60
East Midlands +16 42 £350 -6.67% 21
North East +11 34 £481 +13.24% 30
Wales +5 18 £475 -9.61% 15
Northern Ireland +1 9 £115 -77.83% 7

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 80 (5.19%) Confluence
2 23 (1.49%) Apache Spark
3 20 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.30%) SAS
4 16 (1.04%) Apache
5 12 (0.78%) SharePoint
6 7 (0.45%) Oracle Application Server
7 6 (0.39%) CICS
7 6 (0.39%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Anypoint
8 5 (0.32%) JBoss
8 5 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.32%) WordPress
9 4 (0.26%) Drupal
9 4 (0.26%) nginx
9 4 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
11 2 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 23 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.78%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.26%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.26%) Simulink
4 4 (0.26%) Windchill
5 3 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.13%) Trello
7 1 (0.065%) CATIA
7 1 (0.065%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 9 (0.58%) Aladdin
1 9 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.26%) SAP PLM
3 2 (0.13%) Eagle PACE
3 2 (0.13%) Markit EDM
3 2 (0.13%) Maximo
3 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.13%) SAP HR
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
3 2 (0.13%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.065%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.065%) ION Anvil
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.065%) Sage X3
4 1 (0.065%) SAP Payroll
4 1 (0.065%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 422 (27.38%) Azure
2 412 (26.74%) AWS
3 193 (12.52%) GitHub
4 173 (11.23%) Azure DevOps
5 137 (8.89%) GCP
6 115 (7.46%) Serverless
7 99 (6.42%) GitHub Actions
8 53 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
9 43 (2.79%) Power Platform
10 41 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
11 40 (2.60%) Amazon S3
12 37 (2.40%) SaaS
13 32 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 30 (1.95%) Azure AKS
14 30 (1.95%) OpenShift
15 26 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
15 26 (1.69%) Snowflake
16 22 (1.43%) Amazon ECS
16 22 (1.43%) PaaS
16 22 (1.43%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.86%) Firewall
2 31 (2.01%) HTTP
2 31 (2.01%) Wireshark
3 25 (1.62%) HTTPS
4 20 (1.30%) SSL
5 15 (0.97%) TCP/IP
6 14 (0.91%) VPN
7 12 (0.78%) Multicast
7 12 (0.78%) Network Security
8 11 (0.71%) SD-WAN
9 10 (0.65%) WAN
10 9 (0.58%) DNS
10 9 (0.58%) Ethernet
11 5 (0.32%) Internet
11 5 (0.32%) VLAN
12 4 (0.26%) 5G
12 4 (0.26%) AMQP
12 4 (0.26%) BGP
12 4 (0.26%) MPLS
12 4 (0.26%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (6.55%) PostgreSQL
2 97 (6.29%) NoSQL
3 88 (5.71%) MongoDB
4 67 (4.35%) SQL Server
5 65 (4.22%) Relational Database
6 41 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
7 24 (1.56%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (1.56%) Power BI
8 21 (1.36%) Data Lake
9 20 (1.30%) Big Data
10 19 (1.23%) DynamoDB
11 16 (1.04%) MySQL
11 16 (1.04%) Pentaho
12 15 (0.97%) Apache Cassandra
13 14 (0.91%) Oracle Database
14 13 (0.84%) BigQuery
15 12 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
15 12 (0.78%) DB2
15 12 (0.78%) RDBMS
16 11 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 284 (18.43%) JIRA
2 261 (16.94%) Jenkins
3 260 (16.87%) Git
4 247 (16.03%) Selenium
5 179 (11.62%) GitLab
6 147 (9.54%) Cucumber
7 112 (7.27%) Cypress.io
8 109 (7.07%) Postman
9 88 (5.71%) JUnit
10 64 (4.15%) REST Assured
11 62 (4.02%) JMeter
12 50 (3.24%) Bitbucket
13 49 (3.18%) SonarQube
14 47 (3.05%) Maven
15 31 (2.01%) Mockito
16 30 (1.95%) Appium
17 28 (1.82%) Gatling
18 27 (1.75%) SpecFlow
19 26 (1.69%) Sonatype Nexus
19 26 (1.69%) WebDriver
General
1 448 (29.07%) Social Skills
2 283 (18.36%) Finance
3 201 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
4 159 (10.32%) Public Sector
5 133 (8.63%) Banking
6 32 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.82%) Front Office
9 27 (1.75%) Manufacturing
10 25 (1.62%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.56%) Telecoms
12 18 (1.17%) Financial Institution
12 18 (1.17%) Retail
13 17 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (0.97%) Electronics
14 15 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
14 15 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
15 14 (0.91%) Marketing
15 14 (0.91%) Retail Banking
16 13 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 343 (22.26%) Developer
2 223 (14.47%) Senior
3 192 (12.46%) Tester
4 132 (8.57%) Test Engineer
5 125 (8.11%) Lead
6 103 (6.68%) Automation Tester
7 102 (6.62%) Java Developer
8 86 (5.58%) Analyst
9 83 (5.39%) Software Engineer
10 65 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
11 64 (4.15%) Test Analyst
12 55 (3.57%) QA Engineer
13 53 (3.44%) Data Engineer
14 52 (3.37%) Test Manager
15 50 (3.24%) Senior Developer
16 48 (3.11%) Automation Engineer
17 43 (2.79%) Test Automation Engineer
17 43 (2.79%) Test Leader
18 36 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
19 33 (2.14%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (11.88%) REST
2 134 (8.70%) Playwright
3 128 (8.31%) React
4 116 (7.53%) RESTful
5 115 (7.46%) .NET
6 95 (6.16%) Spring
7 94 (6.10%) Kafka
8 90 (5.84%) Spring Boot
9 87 (5.65%) Node.js
10 83 (5.39%) JSON
11 80 (5.19%) HTML
11 80 (5.19%) SOAP
12 77 (5.00%) CSS
13 75 (4.87%) XML
14 52 (3.37%) AngularJS
15 43 (2.79%) Jest
15 43 (2.79%) Web Services
16 41 (2.66%) pytest
17 36 (2.34%) Gherkin
18 34 (2.21%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 125 (8.11%) Cloud Native
2 96 (6.23%) Product Ownership
3 48 (3.11%) Mobile App
4 37 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
5 35 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
5 35 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
6 34 (2.21%) Public Cloud
7 33 (2.14%) Virtual Team
8 31 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.01%) Security Posture
9 26 (1.69%) Algorithms
9 26 (1.69%) Onboarding
10 24 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 24 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
11 22 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 15 (0.97%) Data Structures
14 14 (0.91%) Reinsurance
15 13 (0.84%) Data Centre
15 13 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 176 (11.42%) Linux
2 76 (4.93%) Windows
3 58 (3.76%) Unix
4 49 (3.18%) Android
5 35 (2.27%) Apple iOS
6 19 (1.23%) Mac OS X
7 16 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (0.97%) Windows Server
9 9 (0.58%) CentOS
9 9 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.065%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.065%) Solaris
12 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.065%) VMS
12 1 (0.065%) Windows Embedded Compact
12 1 (0.065%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 749 (48.60%) CI/CD
2 747 (48.48%) Agile
3 590 (38.29%) DevOps
4 355 (23.04%) Problem-Solving
5 247 (16.03%) Microservices
6 221 (14.34%) Scrum
7 215 (13.95%) Test Strategy
8 212 (13.76%) TDD
9 203 (13.17%) Containerisation
10 196 (12.72%) Software Engineering
11 193 (12.52%) Continuous Improvement
12 180 (11.68%) Infrastructure as Code
13 173 (11.23%) SDLC
14 170 (11.03%) Test Scripting
15 165 (10.71%) Software Testing
16 157 (10.19%) BDD
17 138 (8.96%) Validation
18 136 (8.83%) Mentoring
19 124 (8.05%) Continuous Integration
20 119 (7.72%) AI
Programming Languages
1 421 (27.32%) Python
2 394 (25.57%) Java
3 269 (17.46%) SQL
4 207 (13.43%) JavaScript
5 155 (10.06%) C#
6 146 (9.47%) TypeScript
7 95 (6.16%) Bash
8 62 (4.02%) PowerShell
9 45 (2.92%) Go
10 34 (2.21%) C++
11 24 (1.56%) Kotlin
12 16 (1.04%) Bicep
12 16 (1.04%) Scala
13 14 (0.91%) PHP
13 14 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 12 (0.78%) Perl
14 12 (0.78%) Swift
15 10 (0.65%) C
15 10 (0.65%) Groovy
15 10 (0.65%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 312 (20.25%) Security Cleared
2 234 (15.18%) SC Cleared
3 102 (6.62%) Degree
4 58 (3.76%) ISTQB
5 52 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 49 (3.18%) DV Cleared
7 37 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (1.75%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.36%) Master's Degree
10 16 (1.04%) CISSP
11 14 (0.91%) CISM
11 14 (0.91%) OSCP
12 13 (0.84%) GPEN
13 12 (0.78%) CISA
13 12 (0.78%) MCP
14 11 (0.71%) Azure Certification
14 11 (0.71%) CEH
14 11 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
14 11 (0.71%) ISEB
14 11 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (21.61%) QA
2 122 (7.92%) Accessibility
3 63 (4.09%) Data Quality
4 34 (2.21%) NIST
4 34 (2.21%) WCAG
5 23 (1.49%) GDPR
6 21 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.17%) SEPA
8 15 (0.97%) EU AI Act
9 14 (0.91%) NCSC
9 14 (0.91%) NIST 800
10 11 (0.71%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.58%) PSD2
12 8 (0.52%) COBIT
13 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 6 (0.39%) ISO 20022
14 6 (0.39%) SLA
15 5 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
15 5 (0.32%) MiFID
15 5 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 281 (18.23%) Docker
2 21 (1.36%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.39%) Firmware
5 5 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.32%) zsh
6 3 (0.19%) QEMU
6 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) vSphere
8 1 (0.065%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.065%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 258 (16.74%) Kubernetes
2 178 (11.55%) Terraform
3 137 (8.89%) Ansible
4 70 (4.54%) Grafana
5 42 (2.73%) Prometheus
6 20 (1.30%) HP ALM
7 16 (1.04%) CSIRT
8 15 (0.97%) Argo
9 14 (0.91%) Nmap
10 13 (0.84%) NetBackup
11 12 (0.78%) Progress Chef
12 10 (0.65%) Puppet
13 8 (0.52%) Podman
14 6 (0.39%) HP Quality Center
14 6 (0.39%) Kibana
14 6 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
15 5 (0.32%) RSA Archer
16 4 (0.26%) Functional Safety
16 4 (0.26%) Nessus
16 4 (0.26%) WMI
Vendors
1 153 (9.93%) Microsoft
2 123 (7.98%) Oracle
3 61 (3.96%) Splunk
4 57 (3.70%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.50%) Salesforce
6 44 (2.86%) Databricks
7 43 (2.79%) Google
7 43 (2.79%) SAP
8 23 (1.49%) F5
9 21 (1.36%) Cisco
9 21 (1.36%) HP
10 19 (1.23%) UiPath
11 18 (1.17%) Talend
11 18 (1.17%) VMware
12 17 (1.10%) Red Hat
13 16 (1.04%) Denodo
14 15 (0.97%) Atlassian
15 14 (0.91%) IBM
15 14 (0.91%) MuleSoft
15 14 (0.91%) webMethods