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 1 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 54
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,990 1,327 1,509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.21% 4.53% 3.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 4.99% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,316 917 984
10th Percentile £329 £326 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £623 £625
90th Percentile £669 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 17 57
10th Percentile £36.32 £33.10 £49.20
25th Percentile £54.55 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £77.50
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £61.25
% change year-on-year +22.73% -10.20% +4.26%

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 39,989 26,597 37,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.89% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,206 17,155 24,229
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,068 2,445
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.65 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
% change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1,698 £475 -5.00% 543
UK excluding London 0 913 £469 -1.26% 456
London +1 834 £500 -2.20% 161
Work from Home -4 573 £475 -5.00% 242
North of England +13 337 £470 +4.44% 123
Midlands -3 183 £450 -2.70% 69
South East -37 169 £500 -2.44% 120
West Midlands +17 157 £463 -6.57% 47
North West +13 147 £463 +2.78% 53
Yorkshire -6 143 £500 +2.56% 35
South West +7 91 £475 -5.00% 53
East of England +10 58 £522 +6.58% 58
North East +7 52 £413 +4.43% 35
Scotland -23 49 £425 -4.23% 28
Wales -1 28 £475 +20.25% 14
East Midlands -33 26 £400 -9.86% 22
Northern Ireland +20 18 £475 +16.28% 4
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
1 148 (7.44%) Confluence
2 43 (2.16%) Apache Spark
2 43 (2.16%) SAS
3 32 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (0.70%) Apache
5 12 (0.60%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.40%) Appian
7 7 (0.35%) nginx
7 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 5 (0.25%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
10 4 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
13 1 (0.050%) CICS
13 1 (0.050%) Solana
Applications
1 25 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) Mingle
7 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 19 (0.95%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.35%) Findur
4 7 (0.35%) Shopify
5 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
6 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
7 4 (0.20%) Workday HCM
8 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
8 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
8 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
8 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
8 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
8 3 (0.15%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 570 (28.64%) Azure
2 544 (27.34%) AWS
3 346 (17.39%) GitHub
4 264 (13.27%) Azure DevOps
5 198 (9.95%) GitHub Actions
6 153 (7.69%) GCP
7 138 (6.93%) Serverless
8 88 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
9 85 (4.27%) Amazon S3
10 70 (3.52%) Power Platform
11 61 (3.07%) OpenShift
12 60 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 59 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
14 56 (2.81%) Amazon ECS
15 39 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (1.96%) Azure AKS
15 39 (1.96%) Snowflake
16 35 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
16 35 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
17 30 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.31%) HTTP
2 23 (1.16%) Firewall
3 14 (0.70%) SAN
4 13 (0.65%) VPN
5 12 (0.60%) FTP
5 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.55%) SSL
7 10 (0.50%) WAN
8 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.45%) MPLS
8 9 (0.45%) SD-WAN
9 8 (0.40%) Wireshark
10 7 (0.35%) Network Security
11 6 (0.30%) 5G
11 6 (0.30%) DNS
11 6 (0.30%) Multicast
11 6 (0.30%) VLAN
12 5 (0.25%) AMQP
12 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
12 5 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.63%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (5.13%) NoSQL
3 98 (4.92%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.42%) SQL Server
5 70 (3.52%) Relational Database
6 69 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (2.56%) Power BI
8 47 (2.36%) DynamoDB
9 35 (1.76%) Metadata
9 35 (1.76%) MySQL
10 34 (1.71%) Pentaho
11 32 (1.61%) Big Data
12 26 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.31%) Tableau
13 25 (1.26%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.26%) Redis
14 24 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
15 23 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
16 21 (1.06%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 385 (19.35%) JIRA
2 372 (18.69%) Git
3 322 (16.18%) Jenkins
4 276 (13.87%) Selenium
5 271 (13.62%) GitLab
6 161 (8.09%) Postman
7 152 (7.64%) Cucumber
8 102 (5.13%) Cypress.io
9 101 (5.08%) JUnit
10 92 (4.62%) JMeter
11 88 (4.42%) REST Assured
12 60 (3.02%) WebDriver
13 49 (2.46%) SonarQube
14 47 (2.36%) Zephyr
15 35 (1.76%) Gradle
15 35 (1.76%) Mockito
16 34 (1.71%) Gatling
16 34 (1.71%) Maven
17 32 (1.61%) Bitbucket
17 32 (1.61%) SpecFlow
General
1 517 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 345 (17.34%) Finance
3 296 (14.87%) Public Sector
4 225 (11.31%) Analytical Skills
5 164 (8.24%) Banking
6 42 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.86%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.71%) Front Office
8 34 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Legal
11 22 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (0.85%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (0.80%) Military
14 14 (0.70%) Financial Institution
15 13 (0.65%) Back Office
15 13 (0.65%) Publishing
15 13 (0.65%) Retail
Job Titles
1 432 (21.71%) Developer
2 310 (15.58%) Senior
3 214 (10.75%) Test Engineer
4 210 (10.55%) Tester
5 206 (10.35%) Lead
6 115 (5.78%) Data Engineer
6 115 (5.78%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.28%) Analyst
8 101 (5.08%) Automation Tester
9 100 (5.03%) Test Automation Engineer
10 85 (4.27%) QA Engineer
11 84 (4.22%) Software Engineer
11 84 (4.22%) Test Leader
12 82 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
13 81 (4.07%) Architect
14 79 (3.97%) Senior Developer
15 66 (3.32%) Test Analyst
16 65 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
16 65 (3.27%) Test Manager
17 53 (2.66%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (11.96%) Playwright
2 232 (11.66%) REST
3 180 (9.05%) React
4 155 (7.79%) RESTful
5 148 (7.44%) Spring
6 142 (7.14%) Node.js
7 136 (6.83%) .NET
7 136 (6.83%) Kafka
8 123 (6.18%) Spring Boot
9 85 (4.27%) AngularJS
10 74 (3.72%) HTML
11 69 (3.47%) pytest
12 61 (3.07%) OAuth
13 59 (2.96%) CSS
14 58 (2.91%) Jest
15 44 (2.21%) Gherkin
16 43 (2.16%) JSON
17 42 (2.11%) OpenID
18 39 (1.96%) GraphQL
19 36 (1.81%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 219 (11.01%) Cloud Native
2 155 (7.79%) Product Ownership
3 102 (5.13%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.46%) Mobile App
5 48 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
6 46 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.86%) Onboarding
8 35 (1.76%) Virtual Team
9 32 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.61%) NHS
10 28 (1.41%) Algorithms
10 28 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
11 25 (1.26%) Data Centre
11 25 (1.26%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
14 20 (1.01%) Derivative
15 19 (0.95%) Data Structures
15 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
16 18 (0.90%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 131 (6.58%) Linux
2 81 (4.07%) Windows
3 46 (2.31%) Android
4 42 (2.11%) Unix
5 38 (1.91%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.01%) Windows Server
7 19 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
9 11 (0.55%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.40%) Solaris
11 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.15%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
16 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
16 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,060 (53.27%) CI/CD
2 921 (46.28%) Agile
3 719 (36.13%) DevOps
4 398 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
5 324 (16.28%) Continuous Improvement
6 318 (15.98%) Microservices
7 291 (14.62%) Scrum
8 290 (14.57%) Test Strategy
9 274 (13.77%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (13.32%) Containerisation
10 265 (13.32%) Validation
11 237 (11.91%) Software Engineering
12 230 (11.56%) Observability
13 222 (11.16%) AI
14 215 (10.80%) TDD
15 203 (10.20%) Test Scripting
16 201 (10.10%) Regression Testing
17 199 (10.00%) Analytics
18 196 (9.85%) User Acceptance Testing
19 195 (9.80%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 546 (27.44%) Python
2 500 (25.13%) Java
3 430 (21.61%) SQL
4 291 (14.62%) JavaScript
5 271 (13.62%) TypeScript
6 201 (10.10%) C#
7 72 (3.62%) PowerShell
8 67 (3.37%) Bash
9 52 (2.61%) C++
10 35 (1.76%) Kotlin
11 33 (1.66%) C
11 33 (1.66%) Scala
12 27 (1.36%) Bicep
12 27 (1.36%) PL/SQL
12 27 (1.36%) Ruby
13 26 (1.31%) Apex Code
14 22 (1.11%) Go
15 15 (0.75%) Swift
16 14 (0.70%) Groovy
16 14 (0.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 613 (30.80%) Security Cleared
2 487 (24.47%) SC Cleared
3 89 (4.47%) Degree
3 89 (4.47%) ISTQB
4 78 (3.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 61 (3.07%) DV Cleared
6 50 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
7 23 (1.16%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 17 (0.85%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 11 (0.55%) AWS Certification
12 10 (0.50%) CCNP
13 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 8 (0.40%) SAFe Agilist
15 6 (0.30%) CCIE
15 6 (0.30%) CISSP
15 6 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (22.46%) QA
2 143 (7.19%) Accessibility
3 118 (5.93%) Data Quality
4 62 (3.12%) WCAG
5 42 (2.11%) GDPR
6 18 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.75%) SLA
8 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.65%) NCSC
10 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
11 9 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.35%) NIST
13 7 (0.35%) SEPA
14 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.30%) PSD2
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
16 4 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 359 (18.04%) Docker
2 25 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.70%) Firmware
5 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
11 2 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.050%) HDFS
12 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.050%) KVM
12 1 (0.050%) Squid
12 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
12 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 348 (17.49%) Kubernetes
2 245 (12.31%) Terraform
3 112 (5.63%) Grafana
4 84 (4.22%) Prometheus
5 79 (3.97%) Ansible
6 29 (1.46%) Argo
7 24 (1.21%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.85%) Puppet
10 14 (0.70%) Kibana
11 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.40%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 170 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 162 (8.14%) Oracle
3 79 (3.97%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.37%) Databricks
5 66 (3.32%) ServiceNow
6 58 (2.91%) Google
6 58 (2.91%) Splunk
7 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
8 46 (2.31%) Talend
9 42 (2.11%) SAP
10 31 (1.56%) IBM
11 30 (1.51%) Denodo
12 27 (1.36%) HP
13 24 (1.21%) VMware
14 21 (1.06%) Cisco
15 20 (1.01%) Dynatrace
16 19 (0.95%) UiPath
17 18 (0.90%) Informatica
18 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism
18 16 (0.80%) MuleSoft