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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 51 50
Rank change year-on-year +5 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,297 1,498 1,528
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.31% 4.52% 3.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.07% 4.99% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,480 1,044 1,016
10th Percentile £325 £313 £353
25th Percentile £405 £387 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -4.00% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £606
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £468 £503
% change year-on-year -1.92% -6.87% +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 32 24
10th Percentile £38.90 £35.58 £44.00
25th Percentile £60.17 £44.51 £50.94
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -11.11% -14.45%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £81.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +28.57% -8.70% -8.00%

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 45,268 29,990 33,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.46% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,764 21,291
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £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 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,826 1,696 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.89 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +13.33%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +3 1,960 £478 -4.40% 1,321
UK excluding London -3 1,139 £459 -1.92% 784
London +5 886 £500 -2.20% 649
Work from Home -2 627 £475 +3.26% 560
North of England +18 386 £465 +3.39% 188
Midlands +10 269 £450 +2.86% 106
West Midlands +28 253 £450 -11.11% 69
South East -32 211 £459 -8.20% 210
Yorkshire -3 156 £493 +3.68% 48
North West -9 139 £491 +16.35% 101
South West -5 112 £469 +8.70% 114
North East +14 99 £425 +1.19% 39
East of England +20 82 £450 -1.91% 71
Scotland -23 70 £440 -11.65% 62
Wales -6 31 £475 +16.92% 22
Northern Ireland +21 17 £488 -0.91% 31
East Midlands -41 16 £425 +25.00% 37
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
1 195 (8.49%) Confluence
2 52 (2.26%) Apache Airflow
2 52 (2.26%) SAS
3 50 (2.18%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.26%) SharePoint
5 25 (1.09%) Apache
6 14 (0.61%) CMS
7 13 (0.57%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.30%) nginx
8 7 (0.30%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.22%) Camunda
11 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
11 4 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 4 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.13%) Kentico
12 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.087%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.087%) Mendix
13 2 (0.087%) Mule
Applications
1 20 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 7 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.30%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.17%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.044%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 26 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.70%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
7 6 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.26%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.26%) Shopify
8 5 (0.22%) BambooHR
9 4 (0.17%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.17%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.17%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.087%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.087%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.087%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.044%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 694 (30.21%) Azure
2 688 (29.95%) AWS
3 427 (18.59%) GitHub
4 316 (13.76%) Azure DevOps
5 256 (11.14%) GitHub Actions
6 168 (7.31%) GCP
7 166 (7.23%) Serverless
8 115 (5.01%) AWS Lambda
9 98 (4.27%) Amazon S3
9 98 (4.27%) Power Platform
10 76 (3.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 70 (3.05%) Amazon ECS
12 64 (2.79%) OpenShift
13 62 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
14 60 (2.61%) GitHub Copilot
15 58 (2.53%) Amazon EKS
16 55 (2.39%) dbt
17 52 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
18 51 (2.22%) Snowflake
19 42 (1.83%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.00%) Firewall
2 22 (0.96%) HTTP
3 18 (0.78%) Network Security
4 16 (0.70%) 4G
4 16 (0.70%) 5G
5 14 (0.61%) 2G
5 14 (0.61%) 3G
5 14 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
5 14 (0.61%) SIGTRAN
5 14 (0.61%) SS7
6 13 (0.57%) DNS
6 13 (0.57%) SAN
6 13 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 13 (0.57%) WAN
7 10 (0.44%) LAN
8 9 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
9 8 (0.35%) BGP
10 6 (0.26%) Ethernet VPN
10 6 (0.26%) HTTPS
10 6 (0.26%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (5.66%) Data Warehouse
3 123 (5.35%) MongoDB
4 109 (4.75%) NoSQL
5 90 (3.92%) SQL Server
6 79 (3.44%) Relational Database
7 78 (3.40%) Power BI
8 49 (2.13%) DynamoDB
9 47 (2.05%) Metadata
10 46 (2.00%) Oracle Reports
11 42 (1.83%) Pentaho
12 36 (1.57%) Data Lake
13 35 (1.52%) MySQL
14 34 (1.48%) Big Data
15 33 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
16 28 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
16 28 (1.22%) Redis
17 27 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
18 23 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
19 20 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 464 (20.20%) Git
2 426 (18.55%) JIRA
3 382 (16.63%) Jenkins
4 312 (13.58%) GitLab
5 291 (12.67%) Selenium
6 165 (7.18%) Postman
7 153 (6.66%) Cucumber
8 121 (5.27%) JUnit
9 116 (5.05%) Cypress.io
10 102 (4.44%) REST Assured
11 97 (4.22%) JMeter
12 75 (3.27%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.79%) WebDriver
14 63 (2.74%) SonarQube
15 54 (2.35%) Gatling
16 51 (2.22%) Gradle
17 47 (2.05%) Maven
18 45 (1.96%) Mockito
19 43 (1.87%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.44%) SpecFlow
General
1 616 (26.82%) Social Skills
2 414 (18.02%) Finance
3 329 (14.32%) Public Sector
4 296 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
5 189 (8.23%) Banking
6 68 (2.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (1.74%) Telecoms
9 36 (1.57%) Front Office
9 36 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
9 36 (1.57%) Investment Banking
10 32 (1.39%) Retail
11 27 (1.18%) Military
12 25 (1.09%) Financial Institution
13 20 (0.87%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.78%) Back Office
15 16 (0.70%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (0.65%) Marketing
17 14 (0.61%) Legal
Job Titles
1 491 (21.38%) Developer
2 380 (16.54%) Senior
3 247 (10.75%) Lead
4 222 (9.66%) Test Engineer
5 215 (9.36%) Tester
6 164 (7.14%) Java Developer
7 159 (6.92%) Data Engineer
8 119 (5.18%) Software Engineer
9 116 (5.05%) Analyst
10 114 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
11 110 (4.79%) Senior Developer
12 107 (4.66%) Architect
13 100 (4.35%) Test Automation Engineer
14 95 (4.14%) QA Engineer
15 89 (3.87%) Automation Tester
16 86 (3.74%) Test Leader
17 77 (3.35%) Test Analyst
18 72 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
19 62 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
19 62 (2.70%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (14.41%) REST
2 274 (11.93%) Playwright
3 206 (8.97%) RESTful
4 204 (8.88%) React
5 195 (8.49%) Spring
6 194 (8.45%) Kafka
7 159 (6.92%) .NET
8 155 (6.75%) Spring Boot
9 125 (5.44%) Node.js
10 102 (4.44%) HTML
11 94 (4.09%) AngularJS
12 93 (4.05%) CSS
13 74 (3.22%) OAuth
14 64 (2.79%) JSON
15 56 (2.44%) Jest
15 56 (2.44%) pytest
16 54 (2.35%) OAuth2
17 52 (2.26%) HTML5
18 49 (2.13%) Gherkin
19 47 (2.05%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 333 (14.50%) Cloud Native
2 172 (7.49%) Product Ownership
3 154 (6.70%) Distributed Systems
4 83 (3.61%) Enterprise Software
5 61 (2.66%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 56 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
8 54 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
9 44 (1.92%) Mobile App
10 38 (1.65%) Virtual Team
11 37 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 30 (1.31%) Distributed Architecture
13 28 (1.22%) Embedded Systems
14 27 (1.18%) NHS
15 25 (1.09%) Security Posture
16 23 (1.00%) Management Information System
17 21 (0.91%) Data Centre
18 19 (0.83%) Derivative
18 19 (0.83%) Fixed Income
19 18 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 156 (6.79%) Linux
2 89 (3.87%) Unix
3 87 (3.79%) Windows
4 43 (1.87%) Apple iOS
5 41 (1.78%) Android
6 28 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.87%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.57%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.39%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.35%) Solaris
11 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
13 4 (0.17%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
14 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.087%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,356 (59.03%) CI/CD
2 1,085 (47.24%) Agile
3 879 (38.27%) DevOps
4 436 (18.98%) Microservices
5 434 (18.89%) Problem-Solving
6 427 (18.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 379 (16.50%) Scrum
8 376 (16.37%) Software Engineering
9 371 (16.15%) Infrastructure as Code
10 347 (15.11%) Validation
11 340 (14.80%) Test Strategy
12 318 (13.84%) AI
13 317 (13.80%) Containerisation
14 313 (13.63%) TDD
15 301 (13.10%) Observability
16 246 (10.71%) SDLC
17 242 (10.54%) ETL
18 239 (10.40%) End-to-End Testing
19 234 (10.19%) Data Pipeline
20 232 (10.10%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 603 (26.25%) Python
2 594 (25.86%) Java
3 542 (23.60%) SQL
4 306 (13.32%) JavaScript
5 240 (10.45%) TypeScript
6 212 (9.23%) C#
7 91 (3.96%) PowerShell
8 86 (3.74%) Bash
9 54 (2.35%) C++
10 53 (2.31%) Kotlin
11 49 (2.13%) Bicep
12 35 (1.52%) C
12 35 (1.52%) PL/SQL
13 31 (1.35%) Scala
14 28 (1.22%) Apex Code
15 27 (1.18%) Go
16 25 (1.09%) Shell Script
17 23 (1.00%) Ruby
18 21 (0.91%) Swift
19 18 (0.78%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 741 (32.26%) Security Cleared
2 628 (27.34%) SC Cleared
3 111 (4.83%) Degree
4 108 (4.70%) ISTQB
5 104 (4.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (2.92%) DV Cleared
7 59 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (1.52%) AWS Certification
9 28 (1.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.04%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 11 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (0.48%) CISSP
12 11 (0.48%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 11 (0.48%) Master's Degree
12 11 (0.48%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (0.39%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.35%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 566 (24.64%) QA
2 188 (8.18%) Accessibility
3 163 (7.10%) Data Quality
4 86 (3.74%) WCAG
5 44 (1.92%) GDPR
6 16 (0.70%) SLA
7 15 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.65%) NCSC
8 14 (0.61%) ISO 20022
9 9 (0.39%) NIST
10 7 (0.30%) Def Stans
10 7 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.26%) GRC
11 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
12 5 (0.22%) FATCA
12 5 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
13 4 (0.17%) MiFID
14 3 (0.13%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 447 (19.46%) Docker
2 32 (1.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.13%) Active Directory
4 16 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.61%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.087%) SRDF
10 1 (0.044%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 442 (19.24%) Kubernetes
2 324 (14.11%) Terraform
3 122 (5.31%) Ansible
3 122 (5.31%) Grafana
4 99 (4.31%) Prometheus
5 41 (1.78%) Argo
6 25 (1.09%) Puppet
7 19 (0.83%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.78%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.57%) Kibana
9 13 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
11 7 (0.30%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.30%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.26%) Istio
12 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (0.26%) Packer
13 5 (0.22%) Control-M
13 5 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
14 4 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 211 (9.19%) Microsoft
2 198 (8.62%) Oracle
3 94 (4.09%) Salesforce
4 81 (3.53%) Databricks
5 69 (3.00%) Talend
6 66 (2.87%) Red Hat
7 63 (2.74%) Google
8 58 (2.53%) Splunk
9 55 (2.39%) ServiceNow
10 49 (2.13%) Denodo
11 47 (2.05%) IBM
12 42 (1.83%) Informatica
13 41 (1.78%) SAP
14 39 (1.70%) VMware
15 35 (1.52%) Dynatrace
16 29 (1.26%) MuleSoft
17 26 (1.13%) Cisco
17 26 (1.13%) UiPath
18 25 (1.09%) HP
19 13 (0.57%) OpenAI