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 30 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 47 54
Rank change year-on-year -1 +7 -9
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,973 1,334 1,548
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.44% 4.55% 3.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.19% 5.04% 4.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,321 920 1,038
10th Percentile £331 £325 £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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £675 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £498
% change year-on-year -0.21% -4.32% -5.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 9 58
10th Percentile £33.54 £41.66 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.50 £56.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -1.30% -8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £76.25
90th Percentile - £75.84 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +18.94% -5.42% -4.00%

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 38,014 26,489 38,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.44% 86.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,062 17,216 24,858
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.72% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,249 972 2,349
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% - -12.26%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 30 March 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 -1 1,691 £487 -2.55% 674
UK excluding London +3 912 £475 -0.21% 573
London +3 828 £500 - 183
Work from Home -6 574 £475 -5.00% 333
North of England +8 336 £478 +6.22% 162
Midlands +7 192 £475 +0.32% 83
South East -29 176 £500 -9.09% 145
West Midlands +15 163 £480 -3.52% 57
North West +4 150 £450 - 82
Yorkshire -12 142 £500 +5.26% 41
South West -2 79 £488 -7.14% 72
East of England +1 61 £570 +16.33% 65
North East +7 47 £425 +8.97% 39
Scotland -15 40 £415 -7.83% 30
Wales +1 34 £509 +27.25% 27
East Midlands -27 29 £400 +8.55% 26
Northern Ireland +15 20 £475 -3.01% 7
Channel Islands - 2 - - 1

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
1 138 (6.99%) Confluence
2 64 (3.24%) SAS
3 32 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 20 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.25%) Camunda
10 5 (0.25%) CMS
11 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
13 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
13 2 (0.10%) Mendix
13 2 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
13 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.12%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.30%) Findur
4 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.25%) Maximo
5 5 (0.25%) Shopify
5 5 (0.25%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.20%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.15%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 581 (29.45%) Azure
2 506 (25.65%) AWS
3 355 (17.99%) GitHub
4 270 (13.68%) Azure DevOps
5 192 (9.73%) GitHub Actions
6 181 (9.17%) GCP
7 139 (7.05%) Serverless
8 79 (4.00%) OpenShift
9 78 (3.95%) Power Platform
10 74 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
11 69 (3.50%) Amazon S3
12 50 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 48 (2.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 44 (2.23%) Azure AKS
15 40 (2.03%) Snowflake
16 39 (1.98%) Amazon ECS
17 35 (1.77%) SaaS
18 34 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
19 33 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
20 32 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.37%) Firewall
2 26 (1.32%) HTTP
3 17 (0.86%) TCP/IP
3 17 (0.86%) VPN
4 14 (0.71%) SSL
5 13 (0.66%) Network Security
5 13 (0.66%) SD-WAN
5 13 (0.66%) WAN
6 11 (0.56%) Wireshark
7 10 (0.51%) DNS
7 10 (0.51%) FTP
8 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.46%) HTTPS
8 9 (0.46%) SAN
9 8 (0.41%) MPLS
9 8 (0.41%) Multicast
10 7 (0.35%) 5G
11 5 (0.25%) AMQP
11 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.58%) PostgreSQL
2 88 (4.46%) NoSQL
3 80 (4.05%) SQL Server
4 77 (3.90%) MongoDB
5 62 (3.14%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
7 45 (2.28%) Power BI
8 41 (2.08%) DynamoDB
9 32 (1.62%) MySQL
9 32 (1.62%) Pentaho
10 30 (1.52%) BigQuery
11 25 (1.27%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.17%) Metadata
12 23 (1.17%) Tableau
13 22 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
13 22 (1.12%) Redis
14 19 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
14 19 (0.96%) Big Data
15 17 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
16 16 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 379 (19.21%) Git
1 379 (19.21%) JIRA
2 361 (18.30%) Jenkins
3 291 (14.75%) Selenium
4 285 (14.45%) GitLab
5 168 (8.51%) Cucumber
6 160 (8.11%) Postman
7 117 (5.93%) JUnit
8 107 (5.42%) Cypress.io
9 106 (5.37%) JMeter
10 99 (5.02%) REST Assured
11 53 (2.69%) WebDriver
12 46 (2.33%) SonarQube
13 42 (2.13%) SpecFlow
14 39 (1.98%) Zephyr
15 38 (1.93%) Gatling
16 34 (1.72%) Maven
16 34 (1.72%) TestRail
17 33 (1.67%) Bitbucket
17 33 (1.67%) Mockito
General
1 519 (26.31%) Social Skills
2 330 (16.73%) Finance
3 289 (14.65%) Public Sector
4 206 (10.44%) Analytical Skills
5 155 (7.86%) Banking
6 36 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.62%) Investment Banking
8 30 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 28 (1.42%) Front Office
10 24 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 18 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 17 (0.86%) Legal
14 17 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
15 16 (0.81%) Military
16 14 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.56%) Publishing
18 10 (0.51%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 419 (21.24%) Developer
2 326 (16.52%) Senior
3 220 (11.15%) Test Engineer
4 218 (11.05%) Tester
5 213 (10.80%) Lead
6 117 (5.93%) Automation Tester
7 101 (5.12%) Java Developer
8 99 (5.02%) Analyst
9 97 (4.92%) Data Engineer
10 95 (4.82%) Test Automation Engineer
11 86 (4.36%) Test Leader
12 85 (4.31%) Software Engineer
13 82 (4.16%) QA Engineer
14 78 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
15 76 (3.85%) Senior Developer
16 71 (3.60%) Architect
17 64 (3.24%) Test Analyst
18 62 (3.14%) Test Manager
19 59 (2.99%) Automation Engineer
20 52 (2.64%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (13.13%) REST
2 238 (12.06%) Playwright
3 169 (8.57%) React
4 161 (8.16%) RESTful
5 149 (7.55%) Node.js
6 148 (7.50%) Spring
7 140 (7.10%) .NET
8 131 (6.64%) Kafka
9 118 (5.98%) Spring Boot
10 90 (4.56%) pytest
11 83 (4.21%) AngularJS
12 67 (3.40%) HTML
13 62 (3.14%) OAuth
14 58 (2.94%) Jest
15 55 (2.79%) CSS
16 51 (2.58%) Web Services
17 46 (2.33%) JSON
18 43 (2.18%) GraphQL
19 41 (2.08%) OpenID
20 40 (2.03%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 206 (10.44%) Cloud Native
2 143 (7.25%) Product Ownership
3 97 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (2.48%) Mobile App
5 46 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
6 44 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
7 42 (2.13%) Algorithms
8 36 (1.82%) Onboarding
9 35 (1.77%) Virtual Team
10 31 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
10 31 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
11 29 (1.47%) NHS
12 27 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 23 (1.17%) Data Structures
14 22 (1.12%) Equities
15 21 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
15 21 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 20 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.96%) Data Centre
17 19 (0.96%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 140 (7.10%) Linux
2 89 (4.51%) Windows
3 49 (2.48%) Android
4 39 (1.98%) Apple iOS
5 35 (1.77%) Unix
6 22 (1.12%) Windows Server
7 18 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 9 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.35%) Kali Linux
10 7 (0.35%) Solaris
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
13 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
14 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
15 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
15 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,046 (53.02%) CI/CD
2 931 (47.19%) Agile
3 742 (37.61%) DevOps
4 439 (22.25%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 309 (15.66%) Test Strategy
7 301 (15.26%) Microservices
8 283 (14.34%) Scrum
9 275 (13.94%) Containerisation
10 257 (13.03%) Validation
11 250 (12.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 235 (11.91%) AI
13 233 (11.81%) Software Engineering
14 223 (11.30%) Analytics
15 221 (11.20%) Test Scripting
16 218 (11.05%) Observability
17 216 (10.95%) TDD
18 205 (10.39%) Regression Testing
19 203 (10.29%) SDLC
20 196 (9.93%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 604 (30.61%) Python
2 473 (23.97%) Java
3 409 (20.73%) SQL
4 294 (14.90%) JavaScript
5 272 (13.79%) TypeScript
6 211 (10.69%) C#
7 81 (4.11%) PowerShell
8 79 (4.00%) Bash
9 51 (2.58%) C++
10 31 (1.57%) C
11 30 (1.52%) Kotlin
12 29 (1.47%) Go
12 29 (1.47%) Ruby
13 27 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.32%) Bicep
15 25 (1.27%) Apex Code
16 23 (1.17%) Scala
17 18 (0.91%) Swift
18 17 (0.86%) Groovy
19 15 (0.76%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 583 (29.55%) Security Cleared
2 452 (22.91%) SC Cleared
3 102 (5.17%) Degree
4 97 (4.92%) ISTQB
5 79 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (2.99%) DV Cleared
7 57 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 23 (1.17%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.51%) CISSP
13 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 10 (0.51%) OSCP
14 9 (0.46%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) ISEB
15 8 (0.41%) CEH
15 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (22.50%) QA
2 148 (7.50%) Accessibility
3 111 (5.63%) Data Quality
4 55 (2.79%) WCAG
5 40 (2.03%) GDPR
6 29 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.06%) NIST
8 16 (0.81%) NCSC
8 16 (0.81%) SLA
9 14 (0.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 11 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
11 10 (0.51%) EU AI Act
11 10 (0.51%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) PSD2
13 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.30%) SEPA
13 6 (0.30%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 388 (19.67%) Docker
2 30 (1.52%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.56%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.051%) HDFS
11 1 (0.051%) KVM
11 1 (0.051%) Squid
11 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.051%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 370 (18.75%) Kubernetes
2 227 (11.51%) Terraform
3 116 (5.88%) Grafana
4 97 (4.92%) Ansible
5 89 (4.51%) Prometheus
6 29 (1.47%) Argo
7 25 (1.27%) HP ALM
8 22 (1.12%) Puppet
9 16 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.66%) NetBackup
12 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
12 10 (0.51%) Nmap
13 9 (0.46%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 9 (0.46%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 7 (0.35%) Kibana
14 7 (0.35%) Podman
15 6 (0.30%) Rancher
16 5 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
16 5 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 170 (8.62%) Microsoft
2 155 (7.86%) Oracle
3 73 (3.70%) Databricks
3 73 (3.70%) Salesforce
4 65 (3.29%) Google
5 61 (3.09%) ServiceNow
6 60 (3.04%) Splunk
7 50 (2.53%) Red Hat
7 50 (2.53%) SAP
8 37 (1.88%) Talend
9 28 (1.42%) Denodo
9 28 (1.42%) HP
9 28 (1.42%) VMware
10 26 (1.32%) IBM
11 23 (1.17%) Cisco
12 21 (1.06%) Dynatrace
13 16 (0.81%) MuleSoft
13 16 (0.81%) Workday
14 15 (0.76%) UiPath
15 14 (0.71%) OpenAI