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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 45 52
Rank change year-on-year 0 +7 -8
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,948 1,358 1,579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.51% 4.60% 3.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.24% 5.09% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,325 945 1,083
10th Percentile £331 £328 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £625
90th Percentile £675 £736 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £498
% change year-on-year -0.99% -3.57% -5.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 8 61
10th Percentile £29.06 £40.23 £45.00
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% +6.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.92 £82.50
90th Percentile - £80.28 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +6.84%

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 37,150 26,655 38,571
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.07% 90.32% 86.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,527 17,023 25,087
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 £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 906 2,334
10th Percentile £14.88 £15.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year -15.38% +2.69% -9.57%

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 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 14 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 14 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 1,671 £483 -3.48% 693
UK excluding London +1 901 £475 -0.99% 599
London +1 816 £500 -1.96% 210
Work from Home -5 556 £475 -5.00% 357
North of England +5 328 £487 +9.49% 157
Midlands +9 192 £474 +1.28% 79
South East -26 166 £500 -13.04% 173
West Midlands +10 159 £480 -1.84% 45
North West +9 148 £450 - 78
Yorkshire -10 136 £500 +5.26% 46
South West +1 84 £515 -1.90% 83
East of England +3 61 £570 +19.06% 54
North East +9 48 £488 +28.09% 33
Scotland -11 41 £440 -2.22% 38
Wales 0 33 £502 +18.12% 27
East Midlands -20 33 £400 +7.38% 34
Northern Ireland +15 22 £475 -2.56% 6

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
1 135 (6.93%) Confluence
2 58 (2.98%) SAS
3 35 (1.80%) Apache Spark
4 17 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.67%) SharePoint
6 11 (0.56%) Apache
7 8 (0.41%) 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 (0.15%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.15%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.10%) Magnolia
12 2 (0.10%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.051%) Mingle
7 1 (0.051%) Simulink
7 1 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 24 (1.23%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
4 6 (0.31%) Loan IQ
5 5 (0.26%) Maximo
5 5 (0.26%) Shopify
5 5 (0.26%) Workday HCM
6 4 (0.21%) SAP HR
7 3 (0.15%) BambooHR
7 3 (0.15%) Infor CloudSuite
7 3 (0.15%) Infor LN
7 3 (0.15%) Infor M3
7 3 (0.15%) SAP BRIM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
8 2 (0.10%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.10%) iTrent
8 2 (0.10%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.10%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 574 (29.47%) Azure
2 506 (25.98%) AWS
3 352 (18.07%) GitHub
4 258 (13.24%) Azure DevOps
5 193 (9.91%) GCP
6 189 (9.70%) GitHub Actions
7 139 (7.14%) Serverless
8 83 (4.26%) Power Platform
9 74 (3.80%) OpenShift
10 68 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
11 66 (3.39%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 47 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
12 47 (2.41%) Azure AKS
13 43 (2.21%) Snowflake
14 36 (1.85%) Amazon ECS
15 35 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
15 35 (1.80%) Azure Data Factory
15 35 (1.80%) SaaS
16 34 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.69%) Firewall
2 25 (1.28%) HTTP
3 21 (1.08%) Wireshark
4 18 (0.92%) TCP/IP
5 17 (0.87%) SSL
5 17 (0.87%) VPN
6 13 (0.67%) HTTPS
6 13 (0.67%) Network Security
6 13 (0.67%) SD-WAN
6 13 (0.67%) WAN
7 10 (0.51%) DNS
7 10 (0.51%) FTP
8 8 (0.41%) Ethernet
8 8 (0.41%) MPLS
8 8 (0.41%) SAN
9 7 (0.36%) Multicast
10 6 (0.31%) AMQP
11 5 (0.26%) Cisco IPT
11 5 (0.26%) VLAN
12 4 (0.21%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
2 92 (4.72%) NoSQL
3 75 (3.85%) MongoDB
3 75 (3.85%) SQL Server
4 61 (3.13%) Relational Database
5 53 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
6 50 (2.57%) Power BI
7 35 (1.80%) DynamoDB
8 32 (1.64%) BigQuery
9 31 (1.59%) MySQL
10 29 (1.49%) Pentaho
11 25 (1.28%) Oracle Database
12 23 (1.18%) Tableau
13 21 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
14 20 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
14 20 (1.03%) Redis
15 19 (0.98%) Big Data
16 18 (0.92%) Metadata
16 18 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
17 17 (0.87%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 369 (18.94%) JIRA
2 367 (18.84%) Git
3 352 (18.07%) Jenkins
4 301 (15.45%) Selenium
5 296 (15.20%) GitLab
6 178 (9.14%) Cucumber
7 170 (8.73%) Postman
8 117 (6.01%) Cypress.io
9 116 (5.95%) JUnit
10 111 (5.70%) JMeter
11 104 (5.34%) REST Assured
12 52 (2.67%) WebDriver
13 41 (2.10%) SpecFlow
14 40 (2.05%) SonarQube
15 39 (2.00%) Gatling
16 38 (1.95%) Zephyr
17 34 (1.75%) Maven
18 33 (1.69%) TestRail
19 32 (1.64%) Gradle
19 32 (1.64%) Mockito
General
1 519 (26.64%) Social Skills
2 316 (16.22%) Finance
3 280 (14.37%) Public Sector
4 208 (10.68%) Analytical Skills
5 153 (7.85%) Banking
6 38 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (1.59%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.33%) Front Office
9 24 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (1.13%) Pharmaceutical
11 21 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
11 21 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 18 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.87%) Military
13 17 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (0.77%) Financial Institution
14 15 (0.77%) Legal
15 14 (0.72%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.51%) Electronics
17 9 (0.46%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 406 (20.84%) Developer
2 321 (16.48%) Senior
3 226 (11.60%) Tester
4 224 (11.50%) Lead
5 214 (10.99%) Test Engineer
6 118 (6.06%) Automation Tester
7 100 (5.13%) Data Engineer
8 96 (4.93%) Java Developer
9 93 (4.77%) Analyst
10 88 (4.52%) Test Automation Engineer
11 81 (4.16%) Software Engineer
11 81 (4.16%) Test Leader
12 79 (4.06%) QA Engineer
13 72 (3.70%) Architect
13 72 (3.70%) DevOps Engineer
14 67 (3.44%) Senior Developer
15 66 (3.39%) Test Manager
16 60 (3.08%) Test Analyst
17 58 (2.98%) Automation Engineer
18 49 (2.52%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (12.99%) REST
2 237 (12.17%) Playwright
3 171 (8.78%) React
4 153 (7.85%) RESTful
5 151 (7.75%) .NET
6 148 (7.60%) Node.js
7 147 (7.55%) Spring
8 131 (6.72%) Kafka
9 120 (6.16%) Spring Boot
10 91 (4.67%) pytest
11 68 (3.49%) AngularJS
11 68 (3.49%) HTML
12 64 (3.29%) OAuth
13 58 (2.98%) CSS
14 56 (2.87%) Jest
15 55 (2.82%) Web Services
16 50 (2.57%) JSON
17 45 (2.31%) GraphQL
18 42 (2.16%) Gherkin
18 42 (2.16%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 217 (11.14%) Cloud Native
2 129 (6.62%) Product Ownership
3 86 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (2.57%) Mobile App
5 48 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
6 43 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
7 42 (2.16%) Algorithms
8 37 (1.90%) Onboarding
9 33 (1.69%) Security Posture
10 31 (1.59%) Virtual Team
11 30 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
12 26 (1.33%) NHS
13 25 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 25 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 23 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
15 22 (1.13%) Equities
15 22 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 21 (1.08%) Distributed Architecture
17 20 (1.03%) Data Centre
17 20 (1.03%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 146 (7.49%) Linux
2 90 (4.62%) Windows
3 44 (2.26%) Android
4 39 (2.00%) Apple iOS
4 39 (2.00%) Unix
5 22 (1.13%) Windows Server
6 16 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.72%) Mac OS X
8 11 (0.56%) Kali Linux
9 9 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.31%) Solaris
11 5 (0.26%) CentOS
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.10%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.051%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.051%) VMS
13 1 (0.051%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,036 (53.18%) CI/CD
2 927 (47.59%) Agile
3 730 (37.47%) DevOps
4 447 (22.95%) Problem-Solving
5 322 (16.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 313 (16.07%) Test Strategy
7 302 (15.50%) Microservices
8 284 (14.58%) Containerisation
9 268 (13.76%) Scrum
10 257 (13.19%) Validation
11 247 (12.68%) AI
12 241 (12.37%) Infrastructure as Code
13 229 (11.76%) Test Scripting
14 228 (11.70%) Software Engineering
15 220 (11.29%) TDD
16 216 (11.09%) Analytics
17 208 (10.68%) Observability
18 199 (10.22%) API Testing
18 199 (10.22%) Software Testing
19 198 (10.16%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 610 (31.31%) Python
2 467 (23.97%) Java
3 406 (20.84%) SQL
4 303 (15.55%) JavaScript
5 277 (14.22%) TypeScript
6 196 (10.06%) C#
7 82 (4.21%) PowerShell
8 80 (4.11%) Bash
9 48 (2.46%) C++
10 32 (1.64%) Go
11 28 (1.44%) Kotlin
11 28 (1.44%) PL/SQL
12 27 (1.39%) Bicep
13 26 (1.33%) C
14 24 (1.23%) Ruby
15 23 (1.18%) Scala
16 20 (1.03%) Apex Code
17 17 (0.87%) Swift
18 15 (0.77%) Groovy
18 15 (0.77%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 556 (28.54%) Security Cleared
2 427 (21.92%) SC Cleared
3 107 (5.49%) Degree
4 99 (5.08%) ISTQB
5 74 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.93%) DV Cleared
8 35 (1.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 26 (1.33%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.77%) AWS Certification
10 15 (0.77%) Azure Certification
11 14 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
11 14 (0.72%) OSCP
12 13 (0.67%) CISSP
12 13 (0.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 12 (0.62%) CEH
13 12 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 11 (0.56%) ISEB
15 9 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (22.59%) QA
2 147 (7.55%) Accessibility
3 106 (5.44%) Data Quality
4 49 (2.52%) WCAG
5 38 (1.95%) GDPR
6 34 (1.75%) NIST
7 29 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.92%) EU AI Act
9 17 (0.87%) NCSC
10 16 (0.82%) SLA
11 13 (0.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 11 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 10 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 9 (0.46%) Def Stans
14 9 (0.46%) PSD2
15 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 8 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.36%) SEPA
17 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 407 (20.89%) Docker
2 32 (1.64%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.41%) Firmware
4 8 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.36%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
6 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.15%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.10%) SRDF
10 1 (0.051%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.051%) HDFS
10 1 (0.051%) KVM
10 1 (0.051%) Squid
10 1 (0.051%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.051%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 376 (19.30%) Kubernetes
2 227 (11.65%) Terraform
3 115 (5.90%) Grafana
4 106 (5.44%) Ansible
5 85 (4.36%) Prometheus
6 25 (1.28%) HP ALM
7 21 (1.08%) Argo
8 20 (1.03%) Puppet
9 16 (0.82%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.72%) Nmap
12 12 (0.62%) NetBackup
13 11 (0.56%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.41%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 8 (0.41%) NetIQ Identity Manager
14 8 (0.41%) Podman
15 7 (0.36%) Kibana
16 6 (0.31%) CSIRT
17 5 (0.26%) Rancher
18 4 (0.21%) Istio
Vendors
1 176 (9.03%) Microsoft
2 155 (7.96%) Oracle
3 76 (3.90%) Databricks
4 68 (3.49%) Google
5 65 (3.34%) Splunk
6 64 (3.29%) ServiceNow
7 61 (3.13%) Salesforce
8 48 (2.46%) SAP
9 40 (2.05%) Red Hat
10 33 (1.69%) Talend
11 28 (1.44%) HP
11 28 (1.44%) VMware
12 25 (1.28%) Denodo
12 25 (1.28%) IBM
13 23 (1.18%) Cisco
14 19 (0.98%) Workday
15 17 (0.87%) Dynatrace
16 16 (0.82%) Atlassian
16 16 (0.82%) MuleSoft
17 15 (0.77%) OpenAI