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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 49 51
Rank change year-on-year +3 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,327 1,503 1,537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.34% 4.59% 3.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.13% 5.07% 4.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,511 1,038 1,017
10th Percentile £325 £313 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -1.67% -3.14%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £600
90th Percentile £663 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £475 £501
% change year-on-year -3.68% -5.09% +0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 34 24
10th Percentile £37.25 £31.68 £42.50
25th Percentile £60.00 £44.63 £49.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -9.09% -16.67%
75th Percentile - £65.00 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.00 £73.05 £81.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +31.90% -6.67% -10.00%

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 45,356 29,667 33,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 90.51% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,834 18,495 21,131
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% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,741 1,763
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%
75th Percentile £67.94 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -42.17% +12.54%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 +5 1,973 £475 -5.00% 629
UK excluding London -5 1,135 £458 -3.68% 519
London +5 907 £500 -2.44% 186
Work from Home -3 631 £475 - 283
North of England +5 392 £463 +0.54% 129
Midlands +4 253 £447 -0.67% 72
West Midlands +20 236 £450 -10.00% 49
South East -30 216 £459 -8.20% 153
Yorkshire -8 160 £466 -6.75% 36
North West -11 138 £492 +14.42% 64
South West -1 116 £475 +5.56% 97
North East +17 102 £450 +3.45% 30
East of England +17 77 £450 -1.91% 57
Scotland -30 72 £450 -10.00% 20
Wales -7 30 £488 +21.88% 5
Northern Ireland +15 17 £488 +323.91% 4
East Midlands -43 17 £421 +18.66% 23
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 (8.29%) Confluence
2 55 (2.36%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 43 (1.85%) SAS
4 43 (1.85%) SharePoint
5 24 (1.03%) Apache
6 14 (0.60%) CMS
7 12 (0.52%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.26%) Camunda
8 6 (0.26%) nginx
8 6 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
10 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.13%) Kentico
11 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.086%) ColdFusion
12 2 (0.086%) Mule
Applications
1 26 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.30%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.17%) Simulink
7 3 (0.13%) Trello
8 1 (0.043%) Mingle
8 1 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 27 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 22 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.64%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.34%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.21%) BambooHR
8 5 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
9 4 (0.17%) Shopify
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.086%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.086%) Oracle ERP
12 1 (0.043%) Maximo
12 1 (0.043%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 709 (30.47%) Azure
2 704 (30.25%) AWS
3 425 (18.26%) GitHub
4 335 (14.40%) Azure DevOps
5 259 (11.13%) GitHub Actions
6 175 (7.52%) Serverless
7 166 (7.13%) GCP
8 127 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
9 106 (4.56%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.21%) Amazon S3
11 80 (3.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 70 (3.01%) Amazon ECS
13 66 (2.84%) OpenShift
14 64 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
15 63 (2.71%) GitHub Copilot
16 61 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
17 60 (2.58%) dbt
18 58 (2.49%) Snowflake
19 53 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
20 43 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.07%) Firewall
2 22 (0.95%) HTTP
3 17 (0.73%) 4G
3 17 (0.73%) 5G
3 17 (0.73%) DNS
4 16 (0.69%) Network Security
4 16 (0.69%) WAN
5 15 (0.64%) 2G
5 15 (0.64%) 3G
5 15 (0.64%) Diameter Protocol
5 15 (0.64%) SIGTRAN
5 15 (0.64%) SS7
6 13 (0.56%) LAN
6 13 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.52%) SAN
7 12 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (0.39%) BGP
9 8 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
9 8 (0.34%) VXLAN
10 7 (0.30%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
2 134 (5.76%) Data Warehouse
3 118 (5.07%) MongoDB
4 110 (4.73%) NoSQL
5 96 (4.13%) SQL Server
6 89 (3.82%) Relational Database
7 85 (3.65%) Power BI
8 49 (2.11%) DynamoDB
8 49 (2.11%) Metadata
9 45 (1.93%) Oracle Reports
10 36 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
10 36 (1.55%) Data Lake
11 35 (1.50%) MySQL
11 35 (1.50%) Pentaho
12 34 (1.46%) Big Data
13 33 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
15 29 (1.25%) Redis
16 28 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
17 24 (1.03%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 470 (20.20%) Git
2 412 (17.71%) JIRA
3 378 (16.24%) Jenkins
4 309 (13.28%) GitLab
5 291 (12.51%) Selenium
6 171 (7.35%) Postman
7 146 (6.27%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.24%) Cypress.io
9 112 (4.81%) JUnit
10 101 (4.34%) REST Assured
11 100 (4.30%) JMeter
12 74 (3.18%) Zephyr
13 66 (2.84%) SonarQube
14 58 (2.49%) WebDriver
15 54 (2.32%) Gatling
16 53 (2.28%) Gradle
17 48 (2.06%) Maven
18 43 (1.85%) Bitbucket
19 41 (1.76%) Mockito
20 28 (1.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 632 (27.16%) Social Skills
2 432 (18.56%) Finance
3 332 (14.27%) Public Sector
4 314 (13.49%) Analytical Skills
5 200 (8.59%) Banking
6 72 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 44 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (1.89%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.68%) Front Office
9 35 (1.50%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.38%) Retail
12 27 (1.16%) Military
13 25 (1.07%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.82%) Back Office
15 17 (0.73%) Manufacturing
16 16 (0.69%) Legal
17 15 (0.64%) Law
17 15 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 501 (21.53%) Developer
2 386 (16.59%) Senior
3 249 (10.70%) Lead
4 226 (9.71%) Test Engineer
5 215 (9.24%) Tester
6 159 (6.83%) Java Developer
7 148 (6.36%) Data Engineer
8 123 (5.29%) Analyst
9 120 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 117 (5.03%) Software Engineer
11 109 (4.68%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.51%) Architect
12 105 (4.51%) Test Automation Engineer
13 95 (4.08%) QA Engineer
14 90 (3.87%) Automation Tester
15 84 (3.61%) Test Leader
16 83 (3.57%) Test Analyst
17 74 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
18 68 (2.92%) Test Manager
19 67 (2.88%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (15.43%) REST
2 335 (14.40%) Terraform
3 277 (11.90%) Playwright
4 220 (9.45%) RESTful
5 211 (9.07%) Kafka
6 210 (9.02%) React
7 202 (8.68%) Spring
8 170 (7.31%) Spring Boot
9 165 (7.09%) .NET
10 123 (5.29%) Node.js
11 118 (5.07%) HTML
12 101 (4.34%) CSS
13 98 (4.21%) AngularJS
14 76 (3.27%) OAuth
15 71 (3.05%) JSON
16 59 (2.54%) pytest
17 58 (2.49%) OAuth2
18 55 (2.36%) Jest
18 55 (2.36%) Middleware
18 55 (2.36%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 344 (14.78%) Cloud Native
2 184 (7.91%) Product Ownership
3 153 (6.57%) Distributed Systems
4 93 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
5 64 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
8 50 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
9 48 (2.06%) Mobile App
10 41 (1.76%) AI Agents
11 36 (1.55%) Virtual Team
12 25 (1.07%) Embedded Systems
13 24 (1.03%) NHS
14 23 (0.99%) Data Centre
15 22 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
15 22 (0.95%) Management Information System
15 22 (0.95%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.82%) Derivative
17 18 (0.77%) Fixed Income
18 17 (0.73%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 163 (7.00%) Linux
2 99 (4.25%) Unix
3 97 (4.17%) Windows
4 41 (1.76%) Android
4 41 (1.76%) Apple iOS
5 30 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.30%) Solaris
8 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
8 6 (0.26%) Mac OS X
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%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.17%) VMS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.086%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,368 (58.79%) CI/CD
2 1,081 (46.45%) Agile
3 891 (38.29%) DevOps
4 440 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
5 432 (18.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 427 (18.35%) Microservices
7 393 (16.89%) Software Engineering
8 388 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 366 (15.73%) Scrum
10 360 (15.47%) Validation
11 348 (14.95%) Test Strategy
12 336 (14.44%) AI
13 318 (13.67%) Containerisation
14 298 (12.81%) Observability
15 288 (12.38%) TDD
16 257 (11.04%) SDLC
17 250 (10.74%) End-to-End Testing
18 240 (10.31%) Software Testing
19 234 (10.06%) ETL
20 232 (9.97%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 626 (26.90%) Python
2 609 (26.17%) Java
3 580 (24.92%) SQL
4 331 (14.22%) JavaScript
5 251 (10.79%) TypeScript
6 203 (8.72%) C#
7 108 (4.64%) PowerShell
8 90 (3.87%) Bash
9 53 (2.28%) Bicep
10 51 (2.19%) Kotlin
11 49 (2.11%) C++
12 36 (1.55%) PL/SQL
13 31 (1.33%) C
14 30 (1.29%) Scala
15 28 (1.20%) Apex Code
15 28 (1.20%) Go
15 28 (1.20%) Shell Script
16 24 (1.03%) Ruby
17 17 (0.73%) Groovy
18 16 (0.69%) Swift
Qualifications
1 759 (32.62%) Security Cleared
2 647 (27.80%) SC Cleared
3 119 (5.11%) Degree
4 113 (4.86%) ISTQB
5 105 (4.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (3.01%) DV Cleared
7 65 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.59%) AWS Certification
9 33 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 26 (1.12%) Azure Certification
11 19 (0.82%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 13 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.56%) ISEB
12 13 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.47%) SAFe Agilist
15 10 (0.43%) CISSP
15 10 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.39%) CCNP
17 8 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 598 (25.70%) QA
2 188 (8.08%) Accessibility
3 167 (7.18%) Data Quality
4 83 (3.57%) WCAG
5 40 (1.72%) GDPR
6 18 (0.77%) ISO 20022
7 16 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.69%) SLA
8 14 (0.60%) NCSC
9 10 (0.43%) GRC
9 10 (0.43%) NIST
10 7 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.21%) Def Stans
12 5 (0.21%) FATCA
13 4 (0.17%) HL7
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
13 4 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 456 (19.60%) Docker
2 34 (1.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (1.29%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.60%) Firmware
6 5 (0.21%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.086%) SRDF
10 1 (0.043%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 445 (19.12%) Kubernetes
2 129 (5.54%) Ansible
3 123 (5.29%) Grafana
4 94 (4.04%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.76%) Argo
6 24 (1.03%) Puppet
7 23 (0.99%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.77%) HP ALM
9 14 (0.60%) Kibana
10 11 (0.47%) Control-M
10 11 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.43%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.30%) Istio
12 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.26%) Packer
14 5 (0.21%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
14 5 (0.21%) SCCM
15 4 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 223 (9.58%) Microsoft
2 208 (8.94%) Oracle
3 91 (3.91%) Salesforce
4 90 (3.87%) Databricks
5 66 (2.84%) Google
6 64 (2.75%) Red Hat
7 63 (2.71%) Talend
8 58 (2.49%) Splunk
9 55 (2.36%) ServiceNow
10 53 (2.28%) IBM
11 50 (2.15%) SAP
12 45 (1.93%) Denodo
13 43 (1.85%) Informatica
14 41 (1.76%) VMware
15 36 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 32 (1.38%) Cisco
17 30 (1.29%) MuleSoft
18 26 (1.12%) UiPath
19 25 (1.07%) HP
20 14 (0.60%) OpenAI