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 28 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 50 49
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,252 1,457 1,576
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 4.45% 3.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.02% 4.92% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,452 1,007 1,049
10th Percentile £325 £313 £363
25th Percentile £403 £384 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -7.77% -1.90%
75th Percentile £575 £582 £610
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £461 £509
% change year-on-year -0.49% -9.29% +1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 32 36
10th Percentile £38.08 £35.58 £47.75
25th Percentile £60.25 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -14.12%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.87
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -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 44,902 29,618 34,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.94% 90.44% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,798 18,592 22,057
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.10% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,679 1,619 2,026
10th Percentile £14.79 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.06 £17.33 £17.55
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.39 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +87.06% -41.25% -

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 1,913 £475 - 797
UK excluding London +4 1,116 £459 -0.49% 556
London +6 867 £500 - 332
Work from Home -2 626 £475 +3.94% 346
North of England +14 381 £465 +4.03% 154
Midlands +10 256 £449 +9.39% 72
West Midlands +32 238 £450 -2.44% 47
South East -37 201 £459 -8.20% 152
Yorkshire +8 152 £500 +5.26% 42
North West -13 142 £489 +18.63% 81
South West +5 113 £463 +7.25% 88
North East +12 97 £425 +6.25% 33
East of England +16 81 £450 - 56
Scotland -22 71 £445 -10.02% 32
Wales -3 36 £475 +13.43% 8
Northern Ireland +16 18 £475 +16.28% 13
East Midlands -40 18 £425 +30.37% 25
Channel Islands - 2 - -

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
1 201 (8.93%) Confluence
2 49 (2.18%) Apache Spark
2 49 (2.18%) SAS
3 46 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.20%) SharePoint
5 24 (1.07%) Apache
6 14 (0.62%) CMS
7 13 (0.58%) WebLogic
8 8 (0.36%) nginx
8 8 (0.36%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
11 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Appian
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 2 (0.089%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.089%) Mendix
13 2 (0.089%) Mule
Applications
1 23 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.36%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.18%) Simulink
6 4 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.13%) Trello
8 1 (0.044%) Mingle
8 1 (0.044%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 26 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
5 12 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.36%) Findur
7 6 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.27%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.27%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
10 3 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.089%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle EBS R12
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.089%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 671 (29.80%) Azure
2 669 (29.71%) AWS
3 406 (18.03%) GitHub
4 303 (13.45%) Azure DevOps
5 247 (10.97%) GitHub Actions
6 165 (7.33%) GCP
7 160 (7.10%) Serverless
8 109 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
9 96 (4.26%) Amazon S3
9 96 (4.26%) Power Platform
10 71 (3.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 68 (3.02%) OpenShift
12 64 (2.84%) Amazon ECS
13 58 (2.58%) AWS CloudFormation
14 51 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
14 51 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
15 50 (2.22%) GitHub Copilot
16 49 (2.18%) dbt
17 43 (1.91%) Snowflake
18 41 (1.82%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.02%) Firewall
2 22 (0.98%) HTTP
3 18 (0.80%) Network Security
4 15 (0.67%) SAN
5 13 (0.58%) WAN
6 12 (0.53%) 2G
6 12 (0.53%) 3G
6 12 (0.53%) 4G
6 12 (0.53%) 5G
6 12 (0.53%) Diameter Protocol
6 12 (0.53%) SIGTRAN
6 12 (0.53%) SS7
7 10 (0.44%) LAN
7 10 (0.44%) TCP/IP
8 9 (0.40%) DNS
8 9 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
9 8 (0.36%) VPN
10 7 (0.31%) BGP
11 6 (0.27%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.27%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (5.68%) PostgreSQL
2 119 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
2 119 (5.28%) MongoDB
3 104 (4.62%) NoSQL
4 90 (4.00%) SQL Server
5 80 (3.55%) Relational Database
6 75 (3.33%) Power BI
7 48 (2.13%) DynamoDB
8 43 (1.91%) Metadata
9 42 (1.87%) Oracle Reports
10 37 (1.64%) Pentaho
11 35 (1.55%) Big Data
12 34 (1.51%) MySQL
13 32 (1.42%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
14 28 (1.24%) Data Lake
15 26 (1.15%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (1.15%) Redis
16 24 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
17 21 (0.93%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 432 (19.18%) JIRA
2 422 (18.74%) Git
3 365 (16.21%) Jenkins
4 293 (13.01%) GitLab
5 284 (12.61%) Selenium
6 163 (7.24%) Postman
7 151 (6.71%) Cucumber
8 115 (5.11%) Cypress.io
8 115 (5.11%) JUnit
9 113 (5.02%) REST Assured
10 98 (4.35%) JMeter
11 71 (3.15%) Zephyr
12 63 (2.80%) WebDriver
13 60 (2.66%) SonarQube
14 51 (2.26%) Gatling
15 47 (2.09%) Gradle
16 44 (1.95%) Bitbucket
17 43 (1.91%) Mockito
18 41 (1.82%) Maven
19 34 (1.51%) SpecFlow
General
1 608 (27.00%) Social Skills
2 412 (18.29%) Finance
3 319 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 282 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
5 187 (8.30%) Banking
6 62 (2.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (1.64%) Front Office
9 35 (1.55%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 34 (1.51%) Telecoms
11 29 (1.29%) Military
11 29 (1.29%) Retail
12 23 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.75%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.71%) Back Office
15 16 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (0.67%) Legal
17 14 (0.62%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 484 (21.49%) Developer
2 371 (16.47%) Senior
3 241 (10.70%) Lead
4 223 (9.90%) Test Engineer
5 221 (9.81%) Tester
6 162 (7.19%) Java Developer
7 153 (6.79%) Data Engineer
8 121 (5.37%) Analyst
9 116 (5.15%) Software Engineer
10 113 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
11 106 (4.71%) Senior Developer
12 104 (4.62%) Architect
13 100 (4.44%) Test Automation Engineer
14 91 (4.04%) Automation Tester
15 87 (3.86%) QA Engineer
16 85 (3.77%) Test Leader
17 82 (3.64%) Test Analyst
18 72 (3.20%) Full-Stack Developer
19 60 (2.66%) Test Manager
20 57 (2.53%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (13.41%) REST
2 261 (11.59%) Playwright
3 199 (8.84%) React
4 191 (8.48%) RESTful
5 183 (8.13%) Spring
6 172 (7.64%) Kafka
7 155 (6.88%) .NET
8 150 (6.66%) Spring Boot
9 120 (5.33%) Node.js
10 92 (4.09%) AngularJS
10 92 (4.09%) HTML
11 85 (3.77%) CSS
12 69 (3.06%) OAuth
13 55 (2.44%) JSON
13 55 (2.44%) pytest
14 54 (2.40%) Jest
15 49 (2.18%) HTML5
16 48 (2.13%) Gherkin
17 47 (2.09%) OAuth2
18 46 (2.04%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 315 (13.99%) Cloud Native
2 163 (7.24%) Product Ownership
3 149 (6.62%) Distributed Systems
4 81 (3.60%) Enterprise Software
5 61 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
6 55 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
6 55 (2.44%) Onboarding
7 51 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 40 (1.78%) Mobile App
9 33 (1.47%) AI Agents
9 33 (1.47%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.38%) Distributed Architecture
11 28 (1.24%) NHS
12 27 (1.20%) Embedded Systems
12 27 (1.20%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.07%) Management Information System
14 21 (0.93%) Fixed Income
15 20 (0.89%) Data Centre
15 20 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.84%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 139 (6.17%) Linux
2 84 (3.73%) Windows
3 77 (3.42%) Unix
4 42 (1.87%) Android
5 41 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 24 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 21 (0.93%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.62%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.40%) Solaris
11 6 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
11 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
15 2 (0.089%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,312 (58.26%) CI/CD
2 1,067 (47.38%) Agile
3 841 (37.34%) DevOps
4 416 (18.47%) Microservices
4 416 (18.47%) Problem-Solving
5 398 (17.67%) Continuous Improvement
6 367 (16.30%) Scrum
7 354 (15.72%) Software Engineering
8 351 (15.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 338 (15.01%) Validation
10 337 (14.96%) Test Strategy
11 307 (13.63%) Containerisation
12 298 (13.23%) AI
13 297 (13.19%) TDD
14 291 (12.92%) Observability
15 232 (10.30%) SDLC
16 229 (10.17%) ETL
17 227 (10.08%) End-to-End Testing
18 225 (9.99%) Data Pipeline
19 217 (9.64%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 572 (25.40%) Python
2 571 (25.36%) Java
3 529 (23.49%) SQL
4 286 (12.70%) JavaScript
5 237 (10.52%) TypeScript
6 203 (9.01%) C#
7 83 (3.69%) Bash
8 81 (3.60%) PowerShell
9 54 (2.40%) Kotlin
10 48 (2.13%) C++
11 43 (1.91%) Bicep
12 36 (1.60%) PL/SQL
13 29 (1.29%) C
13 29 (1.29%) Scala
14 28 (1.24%) Apex Code
14 28 (1.24%) Go
15 23 (1.02%) Ruby
16 22 (0.98%) Shell Script
16 22 (0.98%) Swift
17 16 (0.71%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 712 (31.62%) Security Cleared
2 601 (26.69%) SC Cleared
3 107 (4.75%) BPSS Clearance
3 107 (4.75%) Degree
4 99 (4.40%) ISTQB
5 69 (3.06%) DV Cleared
6 53 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (1.29%) AWS Certification
8 28 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 22 (0.98%) Azure Certification
10 17 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 12 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.53%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.44%) CCNP
14 9 (0.40%) CISSP
14 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 543 (24.11%) QA
2 184 (8.17%) Accessibility
3 157 (6.97%) Data Quality
4 81 (3.60%) WCAG
5 41 (1.82%) GDPR
6 17 (0.75%) SLA
7 14 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.58%) NCSC
9 10 (0.44%) NIST
10 9 (0.40%) ISO 20022
11 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
12 6 (0.27%) GRC
12 6 (0.27%) Software Quality Assurance
13 5 (0.22%) FATCA
14 4 (0.18%) MiFID
15 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
15 3 (0.13%) HL7
15 3 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 416 (18.47%) Docker
2 32 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.15%) Active Directory
4 15 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.53%) Firmware
6 6 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.089%) SRDF
10 2 (0.089%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 419 (18.61%) Kubernetes
2 305 (13.54%) Terraform
3 116 (5.15%) Ansible
3 116 (5.15%) Grafana
4 97 (4.31%) Prometheus
5 42 (1.87%) Argo
6 21 (0.93%) HP ALM
7 19 (0.84%) Puppet
8 14 (0.62%) Kibana
9 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 11 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.36%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.31%) HP Quality Center
12 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.27%) Istio
13 6 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 206 (9.15%) Microsoft
2 191 (8.48%) Oracle
3 94 (4.17%) Salesforce
4 76 (3.37%) Databricks
5 66 (2.93%) Talend
6 63 (2.80%) Google
7 62 (2.75%) Red Hat
8 57 (2.53%) Splunk
9 50 (2.22%) ServiceNow
10 45 (2.00%) Denodo
11 43 (1.91%) IBM
12 40 (1.78%) SAP
13 39 (1.73%) Informatica
13 39 (1.73%) VMware
14 32 (1.42%) Dynatrace
15 28 (1.24%) HP
15 28 (1.24%) MuleSoft
15 28 (1.24%) UiPath
16 24 (1.07%) Cisco
17 13 (0.58%) Fortinet