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 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 48 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -4 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,612 1,537 1,581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.73% 4.63% 4.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.58% 5.12% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,697 1,063 1,063
10th Percentile £325 £320 £338
25th Percentile £405 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £485 £494
% change year-on-year -7.22% -1.82% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 34 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £41.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.63 £45.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -8.70% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.60 £80.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £60.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% +4.35% -22.03%

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 46,826 30,024 32,246
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.50% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,144 18,679 19,408
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,407 1,886 1,245
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.72 £65.07 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 +9 2,196 £475 -5.00% 2,464
UK excluding London +2 1,283 £450 -7.22% 1,431
London +9 990 £500 -2.44% 1,248
Work from Home +3 712 £480 -2.44% 1,111
North of England -3 445 £450 -5.26% 382
Midlands +11 288 £450 -2.96% 150
West Midlands +23 269 £450 -13.46% 106
South East -8 243 £450 -5.26% 310
Yorkshire -6 185 £463 -9.76% 122
North West -12 165 £492 +22.24% 197
Scotland -12 112 £470 -6.00% 201
South West -8 111 £450 -16.67% 146
North East +1 100 £425 -11.69% 63
East of England +6 95 £367 -17.30% 136
Wales -7 24 £413 -13.16% 32
East Midlands -41 19 £418 +15.97% 44
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 79
Channel Islands - 1 £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
1 205 (7.85%) Confluence
2 63 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (1.99%) Apache Spark
4 50 (1.91%) SharePoint
5 39 (1.49%) SAS
6 38 (1.45%) Apache
7 17 (0.65%) CMS
8 14 (0.54%) Camunda
8 14 (0.54%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.23%) nginx
11 5 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.15%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.15%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.11%) Kentico
14 2 (0.077%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 25 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.11%) Mingle
7 3 (0.11%) Trello
8 2 (0.077%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.038%) Simulink
9 1 (0.038%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.38%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.38%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.23%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.15%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.11%) Finacle
9 2 (0.077%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.077%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.077%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.077%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.077%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.038%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.038%) SAP PP
10 1 (0.038%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 820 (31.39%) AWS
2 784 (30.02%) Azure
3 486 (18.61%) GitHub
4 370 (14.17%) Azure DevOps
5 286 (10.95%) GitHub Actions
6 213 (8.15%) GCP
7 188 (7.20%) Serverless
8 140 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
9 127 (4.86%) Power Platform
10 116 (4.44%) Amazon S3
11 94 (3.60%) GitHub Copilot
12 90 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 82 (3.14%) OpenShift
14 77 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
15 76 (2.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 73 (2.79%) Amazon ECS
17 61 (2.34%) Snowflake
18 58 (2.22%) dbt
19 55 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
20 53 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 35 (1.34%) DNS
2 30 (1.15%) Firewall
2 30 (1.15%) TCP/IP
3 29 (1.11%) HTTP
4 27 (1.03%) Broadband
5 26 (1.00%) 4G
5 26 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (0.88%) 5G
7 21 (0.80%) Network Security
8 18 (0.69%) BGP
9 17 (0.65%) WAN
10 14 (0.54%) 2G
10 14 (0.54%) 3G
10 14 (0.54%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.54%) IPv4
10 14 (0.54%) IPv6
10 14 (0.54%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.54%) SS7
11 13 (0.50%) DHCP
11 13 (0.50%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (4.98%) MongoDB
3 126 (4.82%) Data Warehouse
3 126 (4.82%) Relational Database
4 111 (4.25%) SQL Server
5 106 (4.06%) NoSQL
6 88 (3.37%) Power BI
7 62 (2.37%) Metadata
8 46 (1.76%) Data Lake
9 44 (1.68%) MySQL
10 43 (1.65%) DynamoDB
11 36 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
11 36 (1.38%) Pentaho
12 35 (1.34%) Big Data
13 34 (1.30%) Oracle Database
14 33 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
14 33 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
14 33 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
15 32 (1.23%) Redis
16 28 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 622 (23.81%) Git
2 429 (16.42%) Jenkins
3 418 (16.00%) JIRA
4 365 (13.97%) GitLab
5 329 (12.60%) Selenium
6 197 (7.54%) Cucumber
7 179 (6.85%) Postman
8 172 (6.58%) JUnit
9 136 (5.21%) Cypress.io
10 117 (4.48%) REST Assured
11 105 (4.02%) JMeter
12 93 (3.56%) SonarQube
13 77 (2.95%) Gatling
14 73 (2.79%) Maven
15 68 (2.60%) Gradle
15 68 (2.60%) Mockito
16 67 (2.57%) Zephyr
17 50 (1.91%) WebDriver
18 45 (1.72%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 738 (28.25%) Social Skills
2 500 (19.14%) Finance
3 381 (14.59%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (13.51%) Public Sector
5 261 (9.99%) Banking
6 80 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 64 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 44 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 43 (1.65%) Front Office
10 37 (1.42%) Military
10 37 (1.42%) Retail
11 36 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (0.84%) Financial Institution
13 22 (0.84%) Marketing
14 21 (0.80%) Law
14 21 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 20 (0.77%) Aerospace
15 20 (0.77%) Back Office
16 17 (0.65%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 597 (22.86%) Developer
2 437 (16.73%) Senior
3 275 (10.53%) Lead
4 248 (9.49%) Test Engineer
5 191 (7.31%) Java Developer
6 190 (7.27%) Tester
7 169 (6.47%) Data Engineer
8 131 (5.02%) Analyst
8 131 (5.02%) Software Engineer
9 130 (4.98%) Senior Developer
10 123 (4.71%) Architect
11 110 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
12 109 (4.17%) QA Engineer
13 102 (3.91%) Test Automation Engineer
14 91 (3.48%) Test Analyst
15 88 (3.37%) Automation Tester
16 84 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
17 83 (3.18%) Automation Engineer
18 81 (3.10%) Test Leader
19 77 (2.95%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 475 (18.19%) REST
2 381 (14.59%) Terraform
3 317 (12.14%) Playwright
4 291 (11.14%) RESTful
5 278 (10.64%) Spring
6 275 (10.53%) Kafka
7 244 (9.34%) React
8 237 (9.07%) Spring Boot
9 194 (7.43%) .NET
10 160 (6.13%) HTML
11 149 (5.70%) Node.js
12 133 (5.09%) CSS
13 115 (4.40%) AngularJS
13 115 (4.40%) OAuth
14 97 (3.71%) JSON
15 80 (3.06%) Middleware
16 73 (2.79%) OAuth2
17 69 (2.64%) XML
18 68 (2.60%) OpenID
18 68 (2.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 409 (15.66%) Cloud Native
2 236 (9.04%) Product Ownership
3 198 (7.58%) Distributed Systems
4 123 (4.71%) Enterprise Software
5 89 (3.41%) Onboarding
6 80 (3.06%) AI Agents
7 69 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 60 (2.30%) Mobile App
9 58 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 57 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
11 38 (1.45%) Data Structures
12 36 (1.38%) Security Posture
13 35 (1.34%) Private Cloud
14 30 (1.15%) Virtual Team
15 29 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 28 (1.07%) Data Centre
17 26 (1.00%) Life Science
18 25 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
19 24 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
20 21 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 186 (7.12%) Linux
2 113 (4.33%) Windows
3 95 (3.64%) Unix
4 55 (2.11%) Apple iOS
5 49 (1.88%) Android
6 31 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.96%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.38%) VMS
9 9 (0.34%) macOS
10 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.23%) AIX
11 6 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.23%) zOS
12 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.15%) Solaris
14 3 (0.11%) CentOS
15 2 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.077%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,652 (63.25%) CI/CD
2 1,270 (48.62%) Agile
3 975 (37.33%) DevOps
4 534 (20.44%) Microservices
5 518 (19.83%) Continuous Improvement
6 504 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
6 504 (19.30%) Software Engineering
7 460 (17.61%) Validation
8 458 (17.53%) Infrastructure as Code
9 449 (17.19%) AI
10 444 (17.00%) Scrum
11 392 (15.01%) Containerisation
12 375 (14.36%) Test Strategy
13 354 (13.55%) Observability
14 342 (13.09%) TDD
15 336 (12.86%) Stakeholder Management
16 317 (12.14%) SDLC
17 316 (12.10%) Software Testing
18 274 (10.49%) End-to-End Testing
19 273 (10.45%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 755 (28.91%) Python
2 745 (28.52%) Java
3 682 (26.11%) SQL
4 409 (15.66%) JavaScript
5 311 (11.91%) TypeScript
6 228 (8.73%) C#
7 106 (4.06%) PowerShell
8 95 (3.64%) Bash
9 62 (2.37%) Bicep
10 57 (2.18%) Kotlin
11 50 (1.91%) Scala
12 47 (1.80%) C++
13 45 (1.72%) Go
14 35 (1.34%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.19%) Perl
15 31 (1.19%) PL/SQL
16 22 (0.84%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.80%) Swift
18 19 (0.73%) Ruby
19 18 (0.69%) C
Qualifications
1 823 (31.51%) Security Cleared
2 696 (26.65%) SC Cleared
3 158 (6.05%) BPSS Clearance
4 148 (5.67%) Degree
5 119 (4.56%) ISTQB
6 98 (3.75%) DV Cleared
7 84 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 51 (1.95%) AWS Certification
9 42 (1.61%) Azure Certification
10 37 (1.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.61%) ISEB
12 15 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.54%) CISSP
13 14 (0.54%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
17 7 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 683 (26.15%) QA
2 245 (9.38%) Accessibility
3 188 (7.20%) Data Quality
4 104 (3.98%) WCAG
5 48 (1.84%) GDPR
6 25 (0.96%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.61%) NIST
9 14 (0.54%) GRC
9 14 (0.54%) SLA
10 12 (0.46%) NCSC
11 9 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.31%) HL7
13 7 (0.27%) SEPA
13 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.19%) FATCA
15 5 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.15%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 539 (20.64%) Docker
2 47 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.53%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.46%) Firmware
5 12 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.038%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.038%) KVM
9 1 (0.038%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.038%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 531 (20.33%) Kubernetes
2 153 (5.86%) Ansible
3 139 (5.32%) Grafana
4 91 (3.48%) Prometheus
5 38 (1.45%) Argo
6 30 (1.15%) Kibana
7 27 (1.03%) Puppet
8 26 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.50%) Control-M
9 13 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.46%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.31%) SCCM
13 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.23%) Istio
15 5 (0.19%) Packer
15 5 (0.19%) Podman
15 5 (0.19%) WMI
16 4 (0.15%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 257 (9.84%) Microsoft
2 210 (8.04%) Oracle
3 111 (4.25%) Databricks
4 97 (3.71%) Google
5 69 (2.64%) IBM
5 69 (2.64%) Salesforce
6 63 (2.41%) SAP
7 62 (2.37%) ServiceNow
8 60 (2.30%) Splunk
9 58 (2.22%) VMware
10 56 (2.14%) Talend
11 55 (2.11%) Red Hat
12 53 (2.03%) Informatica
13 46 (1.76%) Dynatrace
14 38 (1.45%) Denodo
15 37 (1.42%) MuleSoft
16 36 (1.38%) Cisco
17 34 (1.30%) UiPath
18 29 (1.11%) Foundry
19 28 (1.07%) OpenAI