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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 49 44
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,509 1,549 1,594
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.57% 4.68% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.41% 5.16% 4.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,613 1,059 1,078
10th Percentile £325 £315 £350
25th Percentile £405 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 37 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £28.42 £42.00
25th Percentile £55.94 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -4.35% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.65 £70.20 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.43% - -22.03%

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 46,382 30,011 32,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.62% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,976 18,637 19,780
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £734 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,269 1,869 1,352
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -48.10% +1.18%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +6 2,104 £475 -5.00% 3,385
UK excluding London -2 1,216 £450 -5.26% 2,133
London +8 953 £500 - 1,604
Work from Home -3 669 £480 +0.52% 1,405
North of England 0 428 £453 -4.63% 508
Midlands +10 264 £450 -2.70% 254
West Midlands +24 249 £450 -13.34% 165
South East -15 224 £449 -5.53% 451
Yorkshire -4 178 £469 -6.25% 152
North West -13 155 £492 +16.23% 280
South West -4 116 £475 -12.84% 322
North East +6 102 £425 -11.69% 76
Scotland -17 102 £475 -5.00% 286
East of England +13 94 £375 -7.69% 215
Wales -7 24 £425 +3.03% 45
East Midlands -45 15 £418 +15.97% 88
Northern Ireland +5 7 £513 +345.65% 63
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 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
1 194 (7.73%) Confluence
2 67 (2.67%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.99%) Apache Spark
4 46 (1.83%) SharePoint
5 37 (1.47%) Apache
6 32 (1.28%) SAS
7 17 (0.68%) CMS
8 13 (0.52%) Camunda
9 11 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.20%) nginx
12 5 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 4 (0.16%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.16%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 4 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 3 (0.12%) Kentico
15 2 (0.080%) Mule
Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.28%) Chatbot
4 6 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Mingle
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 2 (0.080%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.040%) Simulink
8 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.52%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.40%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) SAP GRC
6 6 (0.24%) FLEXCUBE
6 6 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 6 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.16%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.12%) Finacle
9 2 (0.080%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.080%) Findur
9 2 (0.080%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.080%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.080%) Shopify
10 1 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.040%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 797 (31.77%) AWS
2 759 (30.25%) Azure
3 450 (17.94%) GitHub
4 352 (14.03%) Azure DevOps
5 265 (10.56%) GitHub Actions
6 196 (7.81%) GCP
7 183 (7.29%) Serverless
8 137 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
9 120 (4.78%) Power Platform
10 113 (4.50%) Amazon S3
11 90 (3.59%) GitHub Copilot
12 89 (3.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 79 (3.15%) OpenShift
14 75 (2.99%) Amazon EKS
15 72 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
16 71 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
17 61 (2.43%) dbt
18 60 (2.39%) Snowflake
19 54 (2.15%) Anthropic Claude
20 52 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.08%) DNS
2 26 (1.04%) Firewall
3 25 (1.00%) HTTP
4 24 (0.96%) 4G
5 22 (0.88%) TCP/IP
5 22 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
6 21 (0.84%) 5G
7 20 (0.80%) Broadband
8 18 (0.72%) Network Security
9 14 (0.56%) 2G
9 14 (0.56%) 3G
9 14 (0.56%) Diameter Protocol
9 14 (0.56%) SIGTRAN
9 14 (0.56%) SS7
9 14 (0.56%) WAN
10 13 (0.52%) BGP
10 13 (0.52%) LAN
11 12 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
11 12 (0.48%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.44%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (6.18%) PostgreSQL
2 130 (5.18%) MongoDB
3 129 (5.14%) Data Warehouse
4 116 (4.62%) Relational Database
5 107 (4.26%) NoSQL
6 100 (3.99%) SQL Server
7 88 (3.51%) Power BI
8 58 (2.31%) Metadata
9 43 (1.71%) Data Lake
9 43 (1.71%) DynamoDB
10 40 (1.59%) MySQL
10 40 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
11 37 (1.47%) Big Data
12 33 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
13 32 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
13 32 (1.28%) Pentaho
13 32 (1.28%) Redis
14 29 (1.16%) Oracle Database
15 27 (1.08%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 576 (22.96%) Git
2 410 (16.34%) Jenkins
3 404 (16.10%) JIRA
4 352 (14.03%) GitLab
5 322 (12.83%) Selenium
6 183 (7.29%) Cucumber
7 177 (7.05%) Postman
8 156 (6.22%) JUnit
9 126 (5.02%) Cypress.io
10 115 (4.58%) REST Assured
11 103 (4.11%) JMeter
12 87 (3.47%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.91%) Gatling
14 71 (2.83%) Maven
15 69 (2.75%) Zephyr
16 63 (2.51%) Mockito
17 61 (2.43%) Gradle
18 51 (2.03%) WebDriver
19 39 (1.55%) Bitbucket
20 33 (1.32%) TestNG
General
1 697 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 470 (18.73%) Finance
3 356 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
4 348 (13.87%) Public Sector
5 238 (9.49%) Banking
6 79 (3.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (2.39%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.59%) Front Office
9 39 (1.55%) Investment Banking
10 35 (1.39%) Military
10 35 (1.39%) Retail
11 32 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
13 24 (0.96%) Financial Institution
14 20 (0.80%) Law
14 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
14 20 (0.80%) Marketing
15 19 (0.76%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.68%) Back Office
17 14 (0.56%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 575 (22.92%) Developer
2 421 (16.78%) Senior
3 259 (10.32%) Lead
4 245 (9.76%) Test Engineer
5 193 (7.69%) Tester
6 184 (7.33%) Java Developer
7 166 (6.62%) Data Engineer
8 126 (5.02%) Software Engineer
9 122 (4.86%) Senior Developer
10 117 (4.66%) Analyst
11 114 (4.54%) Architect
12 110 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
13 104 (4.15%) Test Automation Engineer
14 103 (4.11%) QA Engineer
15 86 (3.43%) Automation Tester
16 82 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
17 79 (3.15%) Test Leader
18 77 (3.07%) Test Analyst
19 75 (2.99%) Automation Engineer
20 73 (2.91%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 439 (17.50%) REST
2 372 (14.83%) Terraform
3 294 (11.72%) Playwright
4 268 (10.68%) RESTful
5 264 (10.52%) Kafka
6 257 (10.24%) Spring
7 227 (9.05%) React
8 218 (8.69%) Spring Boot
9 180 (7.17%) .NET
10 154 (6.14%) HTML
11 139 (5.54%) Node.js
12 129 (5.14%) CSS
13 104 (4.15%) OAuth
14 103 (4.11%) AngularJS
15 88 (3.51%) JSON
16 75 (2.99%) Middleware
17 65 (2.59%) OAuth2
18 64 (2.55%) pytest
19 62 (2.47%) XML
20 61 (2.43%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 399 (15.90%) Cloud Native
2 218 (8.69%) Product Ownership
3 184 (7.33%) Distributed Systems
4 105 (4.18%) Enterprise Software
5 87 (3.47%) Onboarding
6 75 (2.99%) AI Agents
7 62 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
8 55 (2.19%) Mobile App
8 55 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 36 (1.43%) Security Posture
11 34 (1.36%) Data Structures
12 31 (1.24%) Virtual Team
13 30 (1.20%) Private Cloud
14 27 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 25 (1.00%) Data Centre
16 24 (0.96%) Life Science
17 23 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
18 21 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
19 20 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 183 (7.29%) Linux
2 109 (4.34%) Windows
3 99 (3.95%) Unix
4 52 (2.07%) Apple iOS
5 47 (1.87%) Android
6 32 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (1.00%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.32%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Mac OS X
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
12 4 (0.16%) zOS
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,551 (61.82%) CI/CD
2 1,211 (48.27%) Agile
3 928 (36.99%) DevOps
4 505 (20.13%) Microservices
5 486 (19.37%) Continuous Improvement
5 486 (19.37%) Problem-Solving
6 469 (18.69%) Software Engineering
7 450 (17.94%) Infrastructure as Code
8 429 (17.10%) AI
9 428 (17.06%) Scrum
10 425 (16.94%) Validation
11 371 (14.79%) Containerisation
12 367 (14.63%) Test Strategy
13 334 (13.31%) Observability
14 331 (13.19%) TDD
15 306 (12.20%) Software Testing
16 298 (11.88%) Stakeholder Management
17 297 (11.84%) SDLC
18 268 (10.68%) End-to-End Testing
19 252 (10.04%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 706 (28.14%) Java
1 706 (28.14%) Python
2 644 (25.67%) SQL
3 390 (15.54%) JavaScript
4 287 (11.44%) TypeScript
5 211 (8.41%) C#
6 102 (4.07%) PowerShell
7 93 (3.71%) Bash
8 56 (2.23%) Bicep
9 51 (2.03%) Kotlin
10 50 (1.99%) Scala
11 47 (1.87%) C++
12 42 (1.67%) Go
13 33 (1.32%) Shell Script
14 31 (1.24%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.16%) Perl
16 21 (0.84%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.84%) C
17 18 (0.72%) Swift
18 17 (0.68%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 795 (31.69%) Security Cleared
2 670 (26.70%) SC Cleared
3 145 (5.78%) BPSS Clearance
4 139 (5.54%) Degree
5 103 (4.11%) ISTQB
6 93 (3.71%) DV Cleared
7 80 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 48 (1.91%) AWS Certification
9 37 (1.47%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.56%) CISSP
13 14 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 13 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.52%) ISEB
15 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 654 (26.07%) QA
2 235 (9.37%) Accessibility
3 178 (7.09%) Data Quality
4 102 (4.07%) WCAG
5 45 (1.79%) GDPR
6 26 (1.04%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.64%) NIST
9 15 (0.60%) GRC
10 14 (0.56%) SLA
11 12 (0.48%) NCSC
12 8 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.24%) Software Quality Assurance
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 512 (20.41%) Docker
2 41 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.59%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.44%) Firmware
6 10 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.040%) KVM
10 1 (0.040%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.040%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 502 (20.01%) Kubernetes
2 147 (5.86%) Ansible
3 139 (5.54%) Grafana
4 93 (3.71%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.43%) Argo
6 33 (1.32%) Kibana
7 26 (1.04%) Puppet
8 25 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.52%) Control-M
10 13 (0.52%) HP ALM
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 243 (9.69%) Microsoft
2 195 (7.77%) Oracle
3 103 (4.11%) Databricks
4 83 (3.31%) Google
5 71 (2.83%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.71%) IBM
7 66 (2.63%) ServiceNow
8 58 (2.31%) SAP
8 58 (2.31%) Splunk
9 56 (2.23%) Talend
10 52 (2.07%) Red Hat
11 51 (2.03%) VMware
12 49 (1.95%) Informatica
13 43 (1.71%) Denodo
14 42 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 34 (1.36%) Cisco
15 34 (1.36%) MuleSoft
16 32 (1.28%) UiPath
17 26 (1.04%) OpenAI
18 23 (0.92%) Foundry