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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 45 53
Rank change year-on-year -1 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,913 1,371 1,583
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.51% 4.56% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.23% 5.05% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 941 1,086
10th Percentile £333 £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 £625
90th Percentile £675 £738 £702
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 7 65
10th Percentile £33.90 £38.81 £46.20
25th Percentile £50.94 £44.51 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +4.17%
75th Percentile £69.06 £76.35 £82.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £81.31 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £64.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% -11.33% +9.40%

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 36,580 27,136 38,678
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.31% 90.25% 86.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,208 17,123 25,158
10th Percentile £313 £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 £611 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.94% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,181 914 2,335
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.50 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £28.50 £32.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year -12.31% +1.20% -8.24%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.25 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.46 £31.64 £31.50
% change year-on-year -19.54% +0.44% -10.00%

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 8 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 8 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Test Automation in the UK

Test Automation
Top 17 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 8 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 1,643 £488 -2.50% 739
UK excluding London +1 877 £480 +1.05% 634
London +2 802 £500 -4.76% 212
Work from Home -3 556 £475 -5.00% 399
North of England +3 319 £488 +9.55% 155
Midlands 0 189 £477 +3.03% 78
South East -19 165 £500 -9.09% 182
West Midlands +11 156 £486 +0.54% 46
North West +10 140 £450 +0.56% 79
Yorkshire -13 135 £500 +5.26% 46
South West +3 82 £515 -1.90% 93
East of England +1 58 £570 +21.93% 79
North East +13 48 £488 +28.09% 30
Scotland -16 40 £440 -2.22% 43
East Midlands -20 33 £400 +7.38% 32
Wales 0 31 £475 +11.76% 15
Northern Ireland +13 20 £475 -2.56% 5

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
1 132 (6.90%) Confluence
2 63 (3.29%) SAS
3 34 (1.78%) Apache Spark
4 18 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.58%) Apache
7 8 (0.42%) Appian
8 6 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 6 (0.31%) nginx
8 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
9 5 (0.26%) CMS
9 5 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.21%) Camunda
10 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 3 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) Mendix
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 22 (1.15%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
4 5 (0.26%) Maximo
4 5 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
5 4 (0.21%) Shopify
6 3 (0.16%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
6 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
7 2 (0.10%) Infor CloudSuite
7 2 (0.10%) Infor LN
7 2 (0.10%) Infor M3
7 2 (0.10%) iTrent
7 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 559 (29.22%) Azure
2 489 (25.56%) AWS
3 334 (17.46%) GitHub
4 245 (12.81%) Azure DevOps
5 194 (10.14%) GCP
6 182 (9.51%) GitHub Actions
7 132 (6.90%) Serverless
8 83 (4.34%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.87%) OpenShift
10 62 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
11 60 (3.14%) Amazon S3
12 48 (2.51%) Azure AKS
13 45 (2.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 45 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.25%) Snowflake
15 35 (1.83%) Azure Data Factory
16 34 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
17 33 (1.73%) SaaS
18 32 (1.67%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.73%) Firewall
2 26 (1.36%) HTTP
3 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
4 19 (0.99%) TCP/IP
4 19 (0.99%) VPN
5 17 (0.89%) SSL
6 13 (0.68%) HTTPS
6 13 (0.68%) SD-WAN
7 12 (0.63%) Network Security
7 12 (0.63%) WAN
8 11 (0.58%) DNS
9 10 (0.52%) FTP
10 9 (0.47%) Ethernet
11 8 (0.42%) MPLS
11 8 (0.42%) SAN
12 7 (0.37%) AMQP
12 7 (0.37%) Multicast
12 7 (0.37%) VLAN
13 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
14 4 (0.21%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 91 (4.76%) NoSQL
3 77 (4.03%) MongoDB
4 76 (3.97%) SQL Server
5 61 (3.19%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
7 49 (2.56%) Power BI
8 34 (1.78%) Pentaho
9 31 (1.62%) BigQuery
10 30 (1.57%) DynamoDB
11 27 (1.41%) MySQL
11 27 (1.41%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.20%) Tableau
13 20 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
13 20 (1.05%) Big Data
14 19 (0.99%) Redis
15 18 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
15 18 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
16 17 (0.89%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.89%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 370 (19.34%) JIRA
2 364 (19.03%) Git
3 356 (18.61%) Jenkins
4 293 (15.32%) GitLab
5 285 (14.90%) Selenium
6 177 (9.25%) Cucumber
7 167 (8.73%) Postman
8 116 (6.06%) Cypress.io
9 111 (5.80%) JUnit
10 101 (5.28%) JMeter
10 101 (5.28%) REST Assured
11 47 (2.46%) WebDriver
12 42 (2.20%) SpecFlow
13 39 (2.04%) Gatling
13 39 (2.04%) Zephyr
14 38 (1.99%) SonarQube
15 36 (1.88%) Maven
16 32 (1.67%) Gradle
16 32 (1.67%) TestRail
17 31 (1.62%) Mockito
General
1 499 (26.08%) Social Skills
2 306 (16.00%) Finance
3 271 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 202 (10.56%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (7.63%) Banking
6 31 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (1.46%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.20%) Front Office
10 22 (1.15%) Pharmaceutical
11 21 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.05%) Telecoms
13 17 (0.89%) Military
13 17 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
15 14 (0.73%) Aerospace
15 14 (0.73%) Legal
16 13 (0.68%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.52%) Electronics
18 9 (0.47%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 398 (20.81%) Developer
2 313 (16.36%) Senior
3 225 (11.76%) Tester
4 219 (11.45%) Lead
5 213 (11.13%) Test Engineer
6 116 (6.06%) Automation Tester
7 101 (5.28%) Data Engineer
8 99 (5.18%) Java Developer
9 89 (4.65%) Analyst
10 87 (4.55%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.23%) Software Engineer
12 78 (4.08%) Test Leader
13 73 (3.82%) QA Engineer
14 71 (3.71%) DevOps Engineer
15 69 (3.61%) Senior Developer
16 65 (3.40%) Test Manager
17 63 (3.29%) Architect
18 57 (2.98%) Test Analyst
19 53 (2.77%) Automation Engineer
20 48 (2.51%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (12.70%) REST
2 240 (12.55%) Playwright
3 170 (8.89%) React
4 153 (8.00%) RESTful
5 149 (7.79%) .NET
5 149 (7.79%) Node.js
6 143 (7.48%) Spring
7 126 (6.59%) Kafka
8 118 (6.17%) Spring Boot
9 92 (4.81%) pytest
10 67 (3.50%) HTML
11 64 (3.35%) AngularJS
12 57 (2.98%) CSS
12 57 (2.98%) OAuth
13 56 (2.93%) Jest
14 52 (2.72%) Web Services
15 49 (2.56%) JSON
16 44 (2.30%) GraphQL
17 40 (2.09%) OpenID
18 39 (2.04%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 213 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 127 (6.64%) Product Ownership
3 77 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
4 46 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
4 46 (2.40%) Mobile App
5 42 (2.20%) Algorithms
5 42 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (1.99%) Security Posture
7 35 (1.83%) Onboarding
8 30 (1.57%) Virtual Team
9 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
10 25 (1.31%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.31%) NHS
10 25 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (1.15%) Equities
12 21 (1.10%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.05%) Derivative
13 20 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
13 20 (1.05%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 151 (7.89%) Linux
2 91 (4.76%) Windows
3 44 (2.30%) Android
4 41 (2.14%) Unix
5 39 (2.04%) Apple iOS
6 23 (1.20%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.84%) Mac OS X
8 15 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.58%) Kali Linux
10 9 (0.47%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.31%) CentOS
12 5 (0.26%) Solaris
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.10%) VMS
13 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.052%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.052%) Windows Embedded Compact
14 1 (0.052%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,022 (53.42%) CI/CD
2 917 (47.94%) Agile
3 720 (37.64%) DevOps
4 452 (23.63%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.47%) Continuous Improvement
6 303 (15.84%) Test Strategy
7 299 (15.63%) Microservices
8 279 (14.58%) Containerisation
9 271 (14.17%) Scrum
10 243 (12.70%) AI
11 242 (12.65%) Infrastructure as Code
11 242 (12.65%) Validation
12 229 (11.97%) Test Scripting
13 222 (11.60%) Software Engineering
14 216 (11.29%) Analytics
15 215 (11.24%) TDD
16 201 (10.51%) Observability
17 190 (9.93%) API Testing
17 190 (9.93%) Software Testing
18 187 (9.78%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 598 (31.26%) Python
2 458 (23.94%) Java
3 395 (20.65%) SQL
4 293 (15.32%) JavaScript
5 276 (14.43%) TypeScript
6 187 (9.78%) C#
7 84 (4.39%) Bash
8 78 (4.08%) PowerShell
9 47 (2.46%) C++
10 34 (1.78%) Go
11 28 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 25 (1.31%) Bicep
12 25 (1.31%) C
13 24 (1.25%) Kotlin
14 22 (1.15%) Ruby
14 22 (1.15%) Scala
15 19 (0.99%) Apex Code
16 16 (0.84%) Swift
17 15 (0.78%) Shell Script
18 13 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 547 (28.59%) Security Cleared
2 424 (22.16%) SC Cleared
3 109 (5.70%) Degree
4 89 (4.65%) ISTQB
5 71 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 59 (3.08%) DV Cleared
8 32 (1.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 28 (1.46%) Master's Degree
10 18 (0.94%) OSCP
11 15 (0.78%) AWS Certification
11 15 (0.78%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.68%) CISSP
13 13 (0.68%) GPEN
13 13 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (0.68%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 12 (0.63%) CEH
15 11 (0.58%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 426 (22.27%) QA
2 151 (7.89%) Accessibility
3 109 (5.70%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.51%) WCAG
5 38 (1.99%) GDPR
6 35 (1.83%) NIST
7 22 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.94%) EU AI Act
9 17 (0.89%) NCSC
10 15 (0.78%) SLA
11 11 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.47%) PSD2
14 8 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 7 (0.37%) SEPA
16 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 406 (21.22%) Docker
2 35 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
5 8 (0.42%) Firmware
6 7 (0.37%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.16%) ISA Server
9 3 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.10%) SRDF
11 1 (0.052%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.052%) HDFS
11 1 (0.052%) KVM
11 1 (0.052%) QEMU
11 1 (0.052%) Squid
11 1 (0.052%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.052%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.052%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 374 (19.55%) Kubernetes
2 223 (11.66%) Terraform
3 112 (5.85%) Ansible
4 109 (5.70%) Grafana
5 78 (4.08%) Prometheus
6 24 (1.25%) HP ALM
7 20 (1.05%) Puppet
8 19 (0.99%) Argo
9 17 (0.89%) Nmap
9 17 (0.89%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
11 13 (0.68%) NetBackup
12 10 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
13 7 (0.37%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 7 (0.37%) Kibana
13 7 (0.37%) Nessus
13 7 (0.37%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 7 (0.37%) Podman
14 6 (0.31%) CSIRT
15 4 (0.21%) Rancher
Vendors
1 172 (8.99%) Microsoft
2 157 (8.21%) Oracle
3 75 (3.92%) Databricks
4 69 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 66 (3.45%) Google
6 64 (3.35%) Splunk
7 60 (3.14%) Salesforce
8 47 (2.46%) SAP
9 38 (1.99%) Talend
10 36 (1.88%) Red Hat
11 30 (1.57%) Denodo
12 29 (1.52%) VMware
13 26 (1.36%) HP
14 24 (1.25%) IBM
15 23 (1.20%) Cisco
16 19 (0.99%) Workday
17 16 (0.84%) Atlassian
18 15 (0.78%) Dynatrace
18 15 (0.78%) MuleSoft
18 15 (0.78%) OpenAI