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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 49 51
Rank change year-on-year +5 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,269 1,490 1,534
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 4.53% 3.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.01% 5.00% 4.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,462 1,038 1,027
10th Percentile £325 £313 £357
25th Percentile £405 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £613
90th Percentile £663 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £468 £509
% change year-on-year -1.82% -8.20% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 32 25
10th Percentile £39.18 £35.58 £44.50
25th Percentile £60.25 £44.51 £51.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -9.09% -16.35%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.50 £71.88
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.35 £80.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £52.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +28.57% -6.67% -10.00%

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 45,262 29,771 33,475
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,917 18,660 21,435
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% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,788 1,660 1,878
10th Percentile £14.46 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.13
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.67% -43.09% +3.38%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,940 £477 -3.15% 1,216
UK excluding London -2 1,143 £459 -1.82% 721
London +5 863 £500 -1.96% 596
Work from Home -3 620 £475 +3.26% 509
North of England +16 388 £465 +3.39% 180
Midlands +5 270 £450 +5.88% 94
West Midlands +28 252 £450 -10.00% 63
South East -32 211 £459 -8.20% 202
Yorkshire -5 155 £496 +4.47% 52
North West -12 141 £490 +16.11% 96
South West -5 112 £469 +10.29% 107
North East +15 100 £425 +1.19% 32
East of England +16 82 £450 -1.91% 63
Scotland -21 69 £440 -12.00% 57
Wales -1 32 £475 +16.92% 19
East Midlands -37 18 £425 +25.00% 31
Northern Ireland +19 17 £488 +19.34% 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
1 198 (8.73%) Confluence
2 52 (2.29%) SAS
3 51 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
4 49 (2.16%) Apache Spark
5 27 (1.19%) SharePoint
6 24 (1.06%) Apache
7 14 (0.62%) CMS
8 13 (0.57%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.31%) nginx
9 7 (0.31%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.22%) Camunda
12 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.18%) Jupyter
12 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.13%) Kentico
13 3 (0.13%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.088%) Appian
14 2 (0.088%) Mendix
14 2 (0.088%) Mule
Applications
1 20 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.31%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.18%) Simulink
6 3 (0.13%) Trello
7 2 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.044%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 27 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.53%) 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 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite
9 4 (0.18%) Infor LN
9 4 (0.18%) Infor M3
10 3 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.088%) Advent Geneva
11 2 (0.088%) Loan IQ
11 2 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
11 2 (0.088%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.044%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 686 (30.23%) Azure
2 677 (29.84%) AWS
3 416 (18.33%) GitHub
4 313 (13.79%) Azure DevOps
5 250 (11.02%) GitHub Actions
6 166 (7.32%) Serverless
7 164 (7.23%) GCP
8 115 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
9 99 (4.36%) Power Platform
10 98 (4.32%) Amazon S3
11 76 (3.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 69 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
13 65 (2.86%) OpenShift
14 59 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
15 58 (2.56%) GitHub Copilot
16 57 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
17 55 (2.42%) dbt
18 52 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
19 48 (2.12%) Snowflake
20 41 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.01%) Firewall
1 23 (1.01%) HTTP
2 18 (0.79%) Network Security
3 16 (0.71%) 4G
3 16 (0.71%) 5G
4 14 (0.62%) 2G
4 14 (0.62%) 3G
4 14 (0.62%) Diameter Protocol
4 14 (0.62%) SIGTRAN
4 14 (0.62%) SS7
5 13 (0.57%) DNS
5 13 (0.57%) SAN
5 13 (0.57%) WAN
6 12 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 10 (0.44%) LAN
8 8 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (0.26%) BGP
9 6 (0.26%) HTTPS
10 5 (0.22%) Broadband
10 5 (0.22%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.64%) Data Warehouse
3 122 (5.38%) MongoDB
4 108 (4.76%) NoSQL
5 89 (3.92%) SQL Server
6 79 (3.48%) Power BI
7 78 (3.44%) Relational Database
8 49 (2.16%) DynamoDB
9 47 (2.07%) Metadata
10 45 (1.98%) Oracle Reports
11 42 (1.85%) Pentaho
12 35 (1.54%) Data Lake
12 35 (1.54%) MySQL
13 34 (1.50%) Big Data
14 33 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
15 28 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
15 28 (1.23%) Redis
16 27 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
18 20 (0.88%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 453 (19.96%) Git
2 429 (18.91%) JIRA
3 374 (16.48%) Jenkins
4 307 (13.53%) GitLab
5 283 (12.47%) Selenium
6 162 (7.14%) Postman
7 152 (6.70%) Cucumber
8 122 (5.38%) JUnit
9 115 (5.07%) Cypress.io
10 104 (4.58%) REST Assured
11 96 (4.23%) JMeter
12 74 (3.26%) Zephyr
13 64 (2.82%) SonarQube
14 62 (2.73%) WebDriver
15 53 (2.34%) Gatling
16 49 (2.16%) Gradle
17 45 (1.98%) Maven
17 45 (1.98%) Mockito
18 43 (1.90%) Bitbucket
19 33 (1.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 605 (26.66%) Social Skills
2 409 (18.03%) Finance
3 327 (14.41%) Public Sector
4 289 (12.74%) Analytical Skills
5 181 (7.98%) Banking
6 67 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 42 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (1.67%) Telecoms
9 36 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
10 34 (1.50%) Front Office
10 34 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 32 (1.41%) Retail
12 27 (1.19%) Military
13 25 (1.10%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.88%) Aerospace
15 16 (0.71%) Back Office
15 16 (0.71%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.66%) Marketing
16 15 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.62%) Legal
Job Titles
1 484 (21.33%) Developer
2 377 (16.62%) Senior
3 242 (10.67%) Lead
4 222 (9.78%) Test Engineer
5 212 (9.34%) Tester
6 163 (7.18%) Java Developer
7 158 (6.96%) Data Engineer
8 119 (5.24%) Analyst
9 118 (5.20%) Software Engineer
10 113 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
11 110 (4.85%) Senior Developer
12 105 (4.63%) Architect
13 100 (4.41%) Test Automation Engineer
14 92 (4.05%) QA Engineer
15 87 (3.83%) Automation Tester
16 84 (3.70%) Test Leader
17 80 (3.53%) Test Analyst
18 73 (3.22%) Full-Stack Developer
19 61 (2.69%) Automation Engineer
19 61 (2.69%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (14.24%) REST
2 274 (12.08%) Playwright
3 202 (8.90%) RESTful
4 200 (8.81%) React
5 190 (8.37%) Spring
6 180 (7.93%) Kafka
7 158 (6.96%) .NET
8 153 (6.74%) Spring Boot
9 126 (5.55%) Node.js
10 95 (4.19%) AngularJS
10 95 (4.19%) HTML
11 89 (3.92%) CSS
12 72 (3.17%) OAuth
13 60 (2.64%) JSON
14 56 (2.47%) Jest
14 56 (2.47%) pytest
15 52 (2.29%) HTML5
16 51 (2.25%) Gherkin
16 51 (2.25%) OAuth2
17 47 (2.07%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 328 (14.46%) Cloud Native
2 165 (7.27%) Product Ownership
3 155 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
4 82 (3.61%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 58 (2.56%) Onboarding
7 57 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
8 51 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 41 (1.81%) Mobile App
10 37 (1.63%) Virtual Team
11 35 (1.54%) AI Agents
12 30 (1.32%) Distributed Architecture
13 27 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
13 27 (1.19%) NHS
14 26 (1.15%) Security Posture
15 23 (1.01%) Management Information System
16 19 (0.84%) Data Centre
16 19 (0.84%) Derivative
16 19 (0.84%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.79%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 147 (6.48%) Linux
2 86 (3.79%) Windows
3 83 (3.66%) Unix
4 42 (1.85%) Apple iOS
5 41 (1.81%) Android
6 27 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 13 (0.57%) Mac OS X
9 10 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.35%) Solaris
11 6 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
13 4 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.13%) AIX
14 3 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.088%) CentOS
16 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,333 (58.75%) CI/CD
2 1,072 (47.25%) Agile
3 866 (38.17%) DevOps
4 428 (18.86%) Microservices
5 423 (18.64%) Problem-Solving
6 417 (18.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 375 (16.53%) Scrum
8 367 (16.17%) Software Engineering
9 364 (16.04%) Infrastructure as Code
10 340 (14.98%) Validation
11 335 (14.76%) Test Strategy
12 312 (13.75%) TDD
13 310 (13.66%) AI
13 310 (13.66%) Containerisation
14 294 (12.96%) Observability
15 245 (10.80%) SDLC
16 241 (10.62%) ETL
17 235 (10.36%) Data Pipeline
18 232 (10.22%) End-to-End Testing
19 229 (10.09%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 578 (25.47%) Java
1 578 (25.47%) Python
2 531 (23.40%) SQL
3 290 (12.78%) JavaScript
4 238 (10.49%) TypeScript
5 208 (9.17%) C#
6 87 (3.83%) PowerShell
7 84 (3.70%) Bash
8 55 (2.42%) Kotlin
9 52 (2.29%) C++
10 49 (2.16%) Bicep
11 33 (1.45%) C
11 33 (1.45%) PL/SQL
12 30 (1.32%) Scala
13 28 (1.23%) Apex Code
13 28 (1.23%) Go
14 25 (1.10%) Shell Script
15 23 (1.01%) Ruby
16 22 (0.97%) Swift
17 18 (0.79%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 727 (32.04%) Security Cleared
2 613 (27.02%) SC Cleared
3 106 (4.67%) Degree
4 104 (4.58%) ISTQB
5 103 (4.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 56 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (1.54%) AWS Certification
9 28 (1.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 24 (1.06%) Azure Certification
11 17 (0.75%) 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%) SAFe Agilist
13 10 (0.44%) Master's Degree
13 10 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.35%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 562 (24.77%) QA
2 185 (8.15%) Accessibility
3 165 (7.27%) Data Quality
4 85 (3.75%) WCAG
5 44 (1.94%) GDPR
6 15 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.66%) NCSC
7 14 (0.62%) SLA
8 10 (0.44%) ISO 20022
8 10 (0.44%) NIST
9 7 (0.31%) Def Stans
9 7 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 7 (0.31%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.26%) GRC
10 6 (0.26%) Software Quality Assurance
11 5 (0.22%) FATCA
11 5 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.18%) MiFID
13 3 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.13%) HL7
System Software
1 432 (19.04%) Docker
2 31 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (1.19%) Active Directory
4 14 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (0.57%) Firmware
6 5 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.088%) SRDF
9 2 (0.088%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.044%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 432 (19.04%) Kubernetes
2 315 (13.88%) Terraform
3 121 (5.33%) Ansible
4 118 (5.20%) Grafana
5 97 (4.28%) Prometheus
6 42 (1.85%) Argo
7 23 (1.01%) Puppet
8 18 (0.79%) HP ALM
8 18 (0.79%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.48%) Kibana
11 10 (0.44%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.31%) Kustomize
12 7 (0.31%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.26%) Istio
13 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Intune
14 5 (0.22%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
14 5 (0.22%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 5 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 209 (9.21%) Microsoft
2 192 (8.46%) Oracle
3 94 (4.14%) Salesforce
4 79 (3.48%) Databricks
5 68 (3.00%) Talend
6 64 (2.82%) Red Hat
7 62 (2.73%) Google
8 57 (2.51%) Splunk
9 53 (2.34%) ServiceNow
10 49 (2.16%) Denodo
11 42 (1.85%) IBM
12 41 (1.81%) Informatica
13 40 (1.76%) SAP
14 38 (1.67%) VMware
15 34 (1.50%) Dynatrace
16 29 (1.28%) MuleSoft
17 27 (1.19%) UiPath
18 25 (1.10%) HP
19 24 (1.06%) Cisco
20 13 (0.57%) OpenAI