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 24 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 46 58
Rank change year-on-year -1 +12 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,963 1,354 1,478
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.22% 4.58% 3.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.98% 5.05% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,304 930 973
10th Percentile £330 £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 £618 £638
90th Percentile £667 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -1.22% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 17 55
10th Percentile £35.23 £33.10 £49.30
25th Percentile £54.89 £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 £83.75
90th Percentile - £71.30 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +8.70%

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 39,397 26,809 37,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 90.76% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,864 17,328 24,353
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £739 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,354 1,060 2,429
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.83 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £71.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.41% -20.00% -6.17%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 -5 1,675 £475 -5.00% 625
UK excluding London -3 896 £469 -1.22% 547
London -1 829 £500 - 197
Work from Home -7 566 £470 -6.10% 368
North of England +11 333 £473 +5.00% 121
Midlands +3 178 £447 -3.35% 73
South East -40 172 £500 -2.44% 153
West Midlands +13 152 £463 -8.19% 42
North West +16 144 £463 +2.78% 58
Yorkshire -11 140 £500 +5.26% 27
South West -2 87 £463 -9.31% 67
North East +11 54 £419 +7.37% 36
East of England -1 53 £600 +22.45% 89
Scotland -11 47 £425 -3.41% 30
Wales -4 29 £475 +18.75% 12
East Midlands -37 26 £400 -8.57% 30
Northern Ireland +18 19 £475 +16.28% 15
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
1 136 (6.93%) Confluence
2 44 (2.24%) SAS
3 40 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 30 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.56%) Apache
6 10 (0.51%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Appian
8 7 (0.36%) nginx
8 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.31%) Camunda
10 4 (0.20%) Anypoint
10 4 (0.20%) CMS
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 (0.051%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.051%) OpenStack
Applications
1 26 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.12%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.46%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.36%) Findur
4 7 (0.36%) Shopify
5 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
6 5 (0.25%) BambooHR
6 5 (0.25%) Maximo
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 S/4HANA
9 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
9 2 (0.10%) iTrent
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 562 (28.63%) Azure
2 524 (26.69%) AWS
3 338 (17.22%) GitHub
4 259 (13.19%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (9.88%) GitHub Actions
6 150 (7.64%) GCP
7 138 (7.03%) Serverless
8 85 (4.33%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (4.08%) Amazon S3
10 66 (3.36%) Power Platform
11 60 (3.06%) OpenShift
12 54 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
13 53 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 52 (2.65%) Amazon ECS
15 40 (2.04%) Snowflake
16 39 (1.99%) Azure AKS
17 36 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
18 34 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
19 32 (1.63%) SaaS
20 31 (1.58%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.43%) HTTP
2 24 (1.22%) Firewall
3 13 (0.66%) FTP
3 13 (0.66%) SAN
3 13 (0.66%) SSL
4 12 (0.61%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.61%) VPN
5 9 (0.46%) Ethernet
5 9 (0.46%) Network Security
6 8 (0.41%) MPLS
6 8 (0.41%) SD-WAN
6 8 (0.41%) WAN
7 7 (0.36%) Wireshark
8 6 (0.31%) 5G
8 6 (0.31%) DNS
8 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
8 6 (0.31%) Multicast
9 5 (0.25%) AMQP
9 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.04%) NoSQL
3 93 (4.74%) MongoDB
4 84 (4.28%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.36%) Data Warehouse
6 65 (3.31%) Relational Database
7 47 (2.39%) Power BI
8 45 (2.29%) DynamoDB
9 34 (1.73%) Metadata
9 34 (1.73%) MySQL
9 34 (1.73%) Pentaho
10 30 (1.53%) Big Data
11 27 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
12 26 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
12 26 (1.32%) Tableau
13 25 (1.27%) BigQuery
13 25 (1.27%) Redis
14 23 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
14 23 (1.17%) Amazon Aurora
15 19 (0.97%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 388 (19.77%) JIRA
2 365 (18.59%) Git
3 318 (16.20%) Jenkins
4 280 (14.26%) Selenium
5 261 (13.30%) GitLab
6 164 (8.35%) Postman
7 157 (8.00%) Cucumber
8 99 (5.04%) Cypress.io
8 99 (5.04%) JUnit
9 91 (4.64%) JMeter
10 88 (4.48%) REST Assured
11 58 (2.95%) WebDriver
12 52 (2.65%) Zephyr
13 45 (2.29%) SonarQube
14 37 (1.88%) SpecFlow
15 34 (1.73%) Gatling
15 34 (1.73%) Maven
15 34 (1.73%) TestRail
16 33 (1.68%) Mockito
17 31 (1.58%) Gradle
General
1 510 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 342 (17.42%) Finance
3 296 (15.08%) Public Sector
4 217 (11.05%) Analytical Skills
5 156 (7.95%) Banking
6 42 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.88%) Investment Banking
8 34 (1.73%) Front Office
9 33 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 27 (1.38%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.12%) Legal
12 21 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.71%) Military
15 12 (0.61%) Back Office
15 12 (0.61%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 425 (21.65%) Developer
2 297 (15.13%) Senior
3 213 (10.85%) Test Engineer
4 211 (10.75%) Tester
5 209 (10.65%) Lead
6 112 (5.71%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.55%) Data Engineer
8 105 (5.35%) Analyst
9 104 (5.30%) Automation Tester
10 99 (5.04%) Test Automation Engineer
11 88 (4.48%) QA Engineer
12 86 (4.38%) Test Leader
13 82 (4.18%) Architect
14 81 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
15 79 (4.02%) Software Engineer
16 71 (3.62%) Senior Developer
16 71 (3.62%) Test Analyst
17 64 (3.26%) Test Manager
18 60 (3.06%) Full-Stack Developer
19 53 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (12.43%) Playwright
2 234 (11.92%) REST
3 173 (8.81%) React
4 148 (7.54%) RESTful
5 147 (7.49%) Node.js
6 144 (7.34%) Spring
7 135 (6.88%) .NET
8 128 (6.52%) Kafka
9 119 (6.06%) Spring Boot
10 83 (4.23%) AngularJS
11 73 (3.72%) HTML
12 69 (3.52%) pytest
13 60 (3.06%) OAuth
14 58 (2.95%) CSS
15 57 (2.90%) Jest
16 45 (2.29%) JSON
17 42 (2.14%) Gherkin
18 41 (2.09%) GraphQL
18 41 (2.09%) OpenID
19 36 (1.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 208 (10.60%) Cloud Native
2 150 (7.64%) Product Ownership
3 97 (4.94%) Distributed Systems
4 48 (2.45%) Mobile App
5 47 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
6 44 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.88%) Onboarding
8 34 (1.73%) Virtual Team
9 33 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.63%) NHS
11 29 (1.48%) Algorithms
12 28 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 26 (1.32%) Security Posture
14 23 (1.17%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 21 (1.07%) Derivative
16 20 (1.02%) Data Structures
16 20 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
17 19 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 18 (0.92%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 130 (6.62%) Linux
2 86 (4.38%) Windows
3 46 (2.34%) Android
4 41 (2.09%) Unix
5 38 (1.94%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (1.02%) Windows Server
7 13 (0.66%) Mac OS X
8 10 (0.51%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.41%) Solaris
10 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
12 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.10%) AIX
13 2 (0.10%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.051%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,039 (52.93%) CI/CD
2 899 (45.80%) Agile
3 704 (35.86%) DevOps
4 397 (20.22%) Problem-Solving
5 320 (16.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 299 (15.23%) Microservices
7 283 (14.42%) Test Strategy
8 275 (14.01%) Scrum
9 268 (13.65%) Infrastructure as Code
10 265 (13.50%) Validation
11 253 (12.89%) Containerisation
12 224 (11.41%) Observability
12 224 (11.41%) Software Engineering
13 222 (11.31%) AI
14 220 (11.21%) TDD
15 210 (10.70%) Test Scripting
16 204 (10.39%) Regression Testing
17 201 (10.24%) Analytics
18 200 (10.19%) SDLC
19 194 (9.88%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 547 (27.87%) Python
2 495 (25.22%) Java
3 425 (21.65%) SQL
4 291 (14.82%) JavaScript
5 270 (13.75%) TypeScript
6 205 (10.44%) C#
7 74 (3.77%) PowerShell
8 70 (3.57%) Bash
9 53 (2.70%) C++
10 32 (1.63%) C
10 32 (1.63%) Kotlin
11 31 (1.58%) Scala
12 28 (1.43%) PL/SQL
12 28 (1.43%) Ruby
13 27 (1.38%) Apex Code
14 26 (1.32%) Bicep
15 20 (1.02%) Go
16 16 (0.82%) Swift
17 14 (0.71%) Groovy
18 12 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 597 (30.41%) Security Cleared
2 473 (24.10%) SC Cleared
3 95 (4.84%) ISTQB
4 87 (4.43%) Degree
5 83 (4.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (2.95%) DV Cleared
7 49 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 17 (0.87%) Master's Degree
10 13 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 11 (0.56%) AWS Certification
13 10 (0.51%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.46%) CCNP
14 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.46%) ISEB
14 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
16 7 (0.36%) CISSP
16 7 (0.36%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (22.57%) QA
2 139 (7.08%) Accessibility
3 117 (5.96%) Data Quality
4 58 (2.95%) WCAG
5 45 (2.29%) GDPR
6 19 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 15 (0.76%) SLA
8 14 (0.71%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.66%) NCSC
10 10 (0.51%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.51%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) NIST
13 7 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 7 (0.36%) PSD2
13 7 (0.36%) SEPA
14 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.25%) FATCA
15 5 (0.25%) HL7
15 5 (0.25%) PERC
System Software
1 349 (17.78%) Docker
2 27 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.71%) Firmware
5 9 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 7 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
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%) Hyper-V
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%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 335 (17.07%) Kubernetes
2 240 (12.23%) Terraform
3 111 (5.65%) Grafana
4 84 (4.28%) Prometheus
5 73 (3.72%) Ansible
6 28 (1.43%) Argo
7 25 (1.27%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.87%) Puppet
10 14 (0.71%) Kibana
11 10 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) HP Quality Center
11 10 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
11 10 (0.51%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.41%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.31%) Rancher
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
15 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 169 (8.61%) Microsoft
1 169 (8.61%) Oracle
2 79 (4.02%) Salesforce
3 72 (3.67%) Databricks
4 67 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 58 (2.95%) Splunk
6 55 (2.80%) Google
7 48 (2.45%) Red Hat
8 47 (2.39%) SAP
9 46 (2.34%) Talend
10 30 (1.53%) IBM
11 29 (1.48%) Denodo
12 28 (1.43%) HP
13 25 (1.27%) VMware
14 21 (1.07%) Dynatrace
15 20 (1.02%) Cisco
16 18 (0.92%) Informatica
17 17 (0.87%) UiPath
18 16 (0.82%) Blue Prism
18 16 (0.82%) MuleSoft