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

6 months to
16 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 1,999 1,351 1,484
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.35% 4.61% 3.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.12% 5.08% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,336 926 972
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 £622 £638
90th Percentile £675 £738 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 13 57
10th Percentile £34.57 £33.10 £37.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -5.42% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £82.50
90th Percentile - £74.10 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £56.75 £61.25
% change year-on-year +18.94% -7.35% -

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 39,056 26,574 37,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.05% 90.71% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,707 17,203 24,522
10th Percentile £316 £306 £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 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,310 1,024 2,401
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.93 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +31.90% -12.29% -8.47%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -1 1,702 £477 -4.70% 604
UK excluding London -1 912 £475 - 526
London 0 843 £500 - 178
Work from Home 0 589 £475 -5.00% 296
North of England +10 318 £475 +5.56% 122
Midlands +5 200 £465 -0.53% 77
South East -31 176 £505 -1.70% 141
West Midlands +16 172 £472 -6.99% 49
North West +16 142 £463 +2.78% 53
Yorkshire -13 135 £500 +2.56% 33
South West -3 85 £475 -8.21% 66
East of England -4 56 £600 +22.45% 66
North East +6 46 £419 +7.37% 36
Scotland -15 44 £425 -3.41% 42
Wales -3 35 £509 +28.86% 19
East Midlands -31 28 £400 -0.93% 28
Northern Ireland +17 20 £475 +16.28% 8
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
1 138 (6.90%) Confluence
2 72 (3.60%) SAS
3 37 (1.85%) Apache Spark
4 29 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.55%) Apache
6 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.40%) Appian
8 7 (0.35%) nginx
8 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.30%) Camunda
9 6 (0.30%) CMS
10 3 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
11 2 (0.10%) Mendix
11 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
11 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
8 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.050%) Mingle
9 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.10%) 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
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%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 568 (28.41%) Azure
2 517 (25.86%) AWS
3 348 (17.41%) GitHub
4 266 (13.31%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.65%) GitHub Actions
6 157 (7.85%) GCP
7 134 (6.70%) Serverless
8 82 (4.10%) AWS Lambda
9 79 (3.95%) Amazon S3
10 76 (3.80%) OpenShift
11 73 (3.65%) Power Platform
12 52 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 52 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
13 49 (2.45%) Amazon ECS
14 42 (2.10%) Snowflake
15 39 (1.95%) Azure AKS
16 34 (1.70%) Azure Data Factory
16 34 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
17 32 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
17 32 (1.60%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.25%) HTTP
2 23 (1.15%) Firewall
3 13 (0.65%) SSL
4 12 (0.60%) FTP
4 12 (0.60%) TCP/IP
4 12 (0.60%) VPN
5 11 (0.55%) Network Security
5 11 (0.55%) SAN
6 9 (0.45%) Ethernet
7 8 (0.40%) MPLS
7 8 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 8 (0.40%) WAN
8 7 (0.35%) Multicast
8 7 (0.35%) Wireshark
9 6 (0.30%) 5G
9 6 (0.30%) DNS
9 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
10 5 (0.25%) AMQP
10 5 (0.25%) Cisco IPT
10 5 (0.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.55%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (4.90%) NoSQL
3 90 (4.50%) MongoDB
4 83 (4.15%) SQL Server
5 66 (3.30%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
7 45 (2.25%) DynamoDB
7 45 (2.25%) Power BI
8 38 (1.90%) Pentaho
9 36 (1.80%) Metadata
10 33 (1.65%) MySQL
11 30 (1.50%) BigQuery
12 26 (1.30%) Big Data
12 26 (1.30%) Tableau
13 25 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
14 24 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
14 24 (1.20%) Redis
15 23 (1.15%) Amazon Athena
15 23 (1.15%) Oracle Database
16 21 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 391 (19.56%) JIRA
2 387 (19.36%) Git
3 344 (17.21%) Jenkins
4 310 (15.51%) Selenium
5 275 (13.76%) GitLab
6 170 (8.50%) Postman
7 156 (7.80%) Cucumber
8 114 (5.70%) JUnit
9 106 (5.30%) Cypress.io
10 98 (4.90%) JMeter
10 98 (4.90%) REST Assured
11 55 (2.75%) WebDriver
12 51 (2.55%) Zephyr
13 43 (2.15%) SonarQube
14 38 (1.90%) SpecFlow
15 34 (1.70%) Maven
15 34 (1.70%) Mockito
15 34 (1.70%) TestRail
16 33 (1.65%) Gatling
17 32 (1.60%) Gradle
General
1 521 (26.06%) Social Skills
2 338 (16.91%) Finance
3 301 (15.06%) Public Sector
4 213 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
5 154 (7.70%) Banking
6 41 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (1.70%) Front Office
8 32 (1.60%) Investment Banking
9 30 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 25 (1.25%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.05%) Legal
11 21 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
13 17 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 14 (0.70%) Military
14 14 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.60%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.55%) Back Office
16 11 (0.55%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 427 (21.36%) Developer
2 318 (15.91%) Senior
3 221 (11.06%) Tester
4 209 (10.46%) Test Engineer
5 208 (10.41%) Lead
6 111 (5.55%) Analyst
6 111 (5.55%) Automation Tester
7 108 (5.40%) Data Engineer
7 108 (5.40%) Java Developer
8 93 (4.65%) Test Automation Engineer
9 84 (4.20%) QA Engineer
10 82 (4.10%) Test Leader
11 81 (4.05%) Architect
12 79 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
12 79 (3.95%) Software Engineer
13 75 (3.75%) Test Analyst
14 74 (3.70%) Senior Developer
15 61 (3.05%) Test Manager
16 60 (3.00%) Full-Stack Developer
17 54 (2.70%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (12.56%) REST
2 237 (11.86%) Playwright
3 180 (9.00%) React
4 155 (7.75%) RESTful
5 148 (7.40%) Node.js
6 145 (7.25%) Spring
7 139 (6.95%) .NET
8 130 (6.50%) Kafka
9 118 (5.90%) Spring Boot
10 88 (4.40%) pytest
11 83 (4.15%) AngularJS
12 72 (3.60%) HTML
13 60 (3.00%) CSS
14 59 (2.95%) Jest
14 59 (2.95%) OAuth
15 47 (2.35%) Web Services
16 44 (2.20%) JSON
17 42 (2.10%) GraphQL
18 41 (2.05%) Gherkin
19 40 (2.00%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 211 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 148 (7.40%) Product Ownership
3 92 (4.60%) Distributed Systems
4 51 (2.55%) Mobile App
5 46 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
6 43 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.85%) Onboarding
8 36 (1.80%) Virtual Team
9 35 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 32 (1.60%) Algorithms
10 32 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
11 31 (1.55%) NHS
12 29 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 23 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 21 (1.05%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.05%) Data Structures
15 20 (1.00%) Derivative
15 20 (1.00%) Distributed Architecture
15 20 (1.00%) Equities
16 19 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 129 (6.45%) Linux
2 88 (4.40%) Windows
3 50 (2.50%) Android
4 42 (2.10%) Apple iOS
4 42 (2.10%) Unix
5 21 (1.05%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.65%) Mac OS X
8 9 (0.45%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.40%) Solaris
10 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.20%) CentOS
12 4 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.15%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.050%) FreeRTOS
14 1 (0.050%) Robot Operating System
14 1 (0.050%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.050%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,056 (52.83%) CI/CD
2 941 (47.07%) Agile
3 721 (36.07%) DevOps
4 426 (21.31%) Problem-Solving
5 327 (16.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 309 (15.46%) Test Strategy
7 297 (14.86%) Microservices
8 290 (14.51%) Scrum
9 266 (13.31%) Containerisation
9 266 (13.31%) Validation
10 264 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
11 236 (11.81%) AI
12 233 (11.66%) Analytics
13 227 (11.36%) Test Scripting
14 223 (11.16%) Software Engineering
15 220 (11.01%) Observability
15 220 (11.01%) TDD
16 214 (10.71%) Regression Testing
17 204 (10.21%) SDLC
18 197 (9.85%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 580 (29.01%) Python
2 487 (24.36%) Java
3 435 (21.76%) SQL
4 297 (14.86%) JavaScript
5 273 (13.66%) TypeScript
6 211 (10.56%) C#
7 74 (3.70%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.40%) Bash
9 54 (2.70%) C++
10 33 (1.65%) C
11 32 (1.60%) Kotlin
12 31 (1.55%) Scala
13 29 (1.45%) Ruby
14 28 (1.40%) PL/SQL
15 26 (1.30%) Apex Code
16 25 (1.25%) Bicep
17 21 (1.05%) Go
18 18 (0.90%) Swift
19 12 (0.60%) Shell Script
20 11 (0.55%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 620 (31.02%) Security Cleared
2 489 (24.46%) SC Cleared
3 100 (5.00%) ISTQB
4 94 (4.70%) Degree
5 82 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 62 (3.10%) DV Cleared
7 52 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (1.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 18 (0.90%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 13 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 13 (0.65%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.45%) CCNP
12 9 (0.45%) CISSP
12 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
12 9 (0.45%) ISEB
12 9 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
14 7 (0.35%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (22.26%) QA
2 139 (6.95%) Accessibility
3 121 (6.05%) Data Quality
4 60 (3.00%) WCAG
5 45 (2.25%) GDPR
6 28 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (0.80%) SLA
8 14 (0.70%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 14 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.65%) NCSC
9 13 (0.65%) NIST
10 11 (0.55%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.50%) Def Stans
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) PSD2
14 7 (0.35%) SEPA
15 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.25%) HL7
16 5 (0.25%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 384 (19.21%) Docker
2 28 (1.40%) Active Directory
3 14 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (0.60%) Firmware
5 10 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 6 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
7 6 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.050%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.050%) HDFS
11 1 (0.050%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.050%) KVM
11 1 (0.050%) Squid
11 1 (0.050%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.050%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 358 (17.91%) Kubernetes
2 235 (11.76%) Terraform
3 109 (5.45%) Grafana
4 80 (4.00%) Prometheus
5 71 (3.55%) Ansible
6 26 (1.30%) Argo
7 25 (1.25%) HP ALM
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 16 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.70%) Kibana
11 11 (0.55%) Progress Chef
12 10 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 10 (0.50%) HP Quality Center
12 10 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 8 (0.40%) NetBackup
14 6 (0.30%) Dell DRAC
14 6 (0.30%) Nmap
14 6 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 5 (0.25%) Rancher
16 4 (0.20%) Istio
Vendors
1 175 (8.75%) Oracle
2 170 (8.50%) Microsoft
3 79 (3.95%) Salesforce
4 72 (3.60%) Databricks
5 67 (3.35%) ServiceNow
6 59 (2.95%) Google
7 57 (2.85%) Splunk
8 50 (2.50%) Talend
9 49 (2.45%) SAP
10 46 (2.30%) Red Hat
11 38 (1.90%) Denodo
12 30 (1.50%) IBM
13 29 (1.45%) VMware
14 28 (1.40%) HP
15 20 (1.00%) Cisco
16 19 (0.95%) Dynatrace
17 16 (0.80%) Blue Prism
17 16 (0.80%) Workday
18 15 (0.75%) OpenAI
19 14 (0.70%) MuleSoft