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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 48 45
Rank change year-on-year +6 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,547 1,559 1,593
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 4.70% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.52% 5.20% 4.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,651 1,075 1,071
10th Percentile £325 £313 £337
25th Percentile £406 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £496
% change year-on-year -5.26% -4.14% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 34 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.31 £47.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £56.25 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £74.50
90th Percentile £77.80 £72.60 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.50 £61.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +13.47% +6.52% -23.33%

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 46,102 30,004 32,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.46% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,718 18,629 19,703
10th Percentile £325 £294 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,326 1,885 1,303
10th Percentile £13.58 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.52 £65.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.25
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.02% -2.94%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 2,137 £475 -5.00% 3,293
UK excluding London 0 1,238 £450 -5.26% 1,928
London +9 971 £500 -2.44% 1,624
Work from Home +2 692 £485 -0.26% 1,349
North of England -2 433 £452 -4.95% 452
Midlands +14 271 £450 -2.70% 216
West Midlands +22 256 £450 -13.46% 143
South East -9 231 £450 -5.26% 421
Yorkshire -5 181 £463 -9.76% 146
North West -10 158 £492 +23.03% 230
South West -4 110 £456 -17.05% 233
Scotland -11 110 £475 -5.00% 287
North East +2 99 £425 -11.69% 76
East of England +8 92 £367 -11.03% 216
Wales -5 24 £419 +1.52% 36
East Midlands -48 15 £418 +19.29% 72
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 77
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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
1 196 (7.70%) Confluence
2 65 (2.55%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (2.04%) Apache Spark
4 47 (1.85%) SharePoint
5 38 (1.49%) Apache
6 30 (1.18%) SAS
7 17 (0.67%) CMS
8 14 (0.55%) Camunda
9 12 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.24%) 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 (0.079%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 21 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.27%) 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%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.12%) Trello
7 1 (0.039%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.039%) Simulink
7 1 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.39%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
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 (0.079%) Oracle ERP
9 2 (0.079%) SAP FI
9 2 (0.079%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.079%) SAP Payroll
10 1 (0.039%) Findur
10 1 (0.039%) SAP MM
10 1 (0.039%) SAP PP
10 1 (0.039%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 804 (31.57%) AWS
2 772 (30.31%) Azure
3 467 (18.34%) GitHub
4 358 (14.06%) Azure DevOps
5 276 (10.84%) GitHub Actions
6 206 (8.09%) GCP
7 184 (7.22%) Serverless
8 139 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
9 123 (4.83%) Power Platform
10 116 (4.55%) Amazon S3
11 90 (3.53%) GitHub Copilot
12 88 (3.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 80 (3.14%) OpenShift
14 76 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
15 75 (2.94%) Amazon ECS
15 75 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 59 (2.32%) Snowflake
17 58 (2.28%) dbt
18 53 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
18 53 (2.08%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.18%) DNS
2 28 (1.10%) Firewall
2 28 (1.10%) TCP/IP
3 26 (1.02%) HTTP
4 25 (0.98%) 4G
5 24 (0.94%) Broadband
5 24 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
6 22 (0.86%) 5G
7 20 (0.79%) Network Security
8 17 (0.67%) BGP
9 16 (0.63%) WAN
10 14 (0.55%) 2G
10 14 (0.55%) 3G
10 14 (0.55%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.55%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.55%) SS7
11 13 (0.51%) LAN
12 12 (0.47%) DHCP
12 12 (0.47%) IPv4
12 12 (0.47%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 162 (6.36%) PostgreSQL
2 129 (5.06%) MongoDB
3 125 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (4.87%) Relational Database
5 110 (4.32%) SQL Server
6 108 (4.24%) NoSQL
7 88 (3.46%) Power BI
8 64 (2.51%) Metadata
9 45 (1.77%) Data Lake
10 42 (1.65%) DynamoDB
10 42 (1.65%) MySQL
11 37 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
12 36 (1.41%) Big Data
12 36 (1.41%) Pentaho
13 35 (1.37%) Redis
14 33 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
14 33 (1.30%) Oracle Database
15 32 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
16 26 (1.02%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 597 (23.44%) Git
2 423 (16.61%) Jenkins
3 402 (15.78%) JIRA
4 354 (13.90%) GitLab
5 324 (12.72%) Selenium
6 188 (7.38%) Cucumber
7 178 (6.99%) Postman
8 162 (6.36%) JUnit
9 131 (5.14%) Cypress.io
10 113 (4.44%) REST Assured
11 104 (4.08%) JMeter
12 89 (3.49%) SonarQube
13 75 (2.94%) Gatling
14 69 (2.71%) Maven
14 69 (2.71%) Zephyr
15 64 (2.51%) Mockito
16 59 (2.32%) Gradle
17 50 (1.96%) WebDriver
18 41 (1.61%) Bitbucket
19 33 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 723 (28.39%) Social Skills
2 482 (18.92%) Finance
3 369 (14.49%) Analytical Skills
4 350 (13.74%) Public Sector
5 247 (9.70%) Banking
6 80 (3.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 61 (2.39%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.69%) Investment Banking
9 42 (1.65%) Front Office
10 37 (1.45%) Military
11 36 (1.41%) Retail
12 35 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
13 29 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
14 22 (0.86%) Financial Institution
14 22 (0.86%) Marketing
15 21 (0.82%) Law
16 20 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 19 (0.75%) Back Office
18 18 (0.71%) Aerospace
19 17 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 586 (23.01%) Developer
2 427 (16.76%) Senior
3 268 (10.52%) Lead
4 247 (9.70%) Test Engineer
5 187 (7.34%) Tester
6 185 (7.26%) Java Developer
7 170 (6.67%) Data Engineer
8 128 (5.03%) Software Engineer
9 123 (4.83%) Senior Developer
10 120 (4.71%) Architect
11 119 (4.67%) Analyst
12 110 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
13 108 (4.24%) QA Engineer
14 103 (4.04%) Test Automation Engineer
15 86 (3.38%) Automation Tester
15 86 (3.38%) Full-Stack Developer
16 82 (3.22%) Automation Engineer
17 80 (3.14%) Test Analyst
17 80 (3.14%) Test Leader
18 75 (2.94%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 459 (18.02%) REST
2 375 (14.72%) Terraform
3 308 (12.09%) Playwright
4 282 (11.07%) RESTful
5 267 (10.48%) Kafka
6 262 (10.29%) Spring
7 239 (9.38%) React
8 224 (8.79%) Spring Boot
9 186 (7.30%) .NET
10 162 (6.36%) HTML
11 147 (5.77%) Node.js
12 135 (5.30%) CSS
13 115 (4.52%) AngularJS
14 110 (4.32%) OAuth
15 93 (3.65%) JSON
16 77 (3.02%) Middleware
17 70 (2.75%) OAuth2
18 65 (2.55%) pytest
18 65 (2.55%) XML
19 64 (2.51%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 400 (15.70%) Cloud Native
2 230 (9.03%) Product Ownership
3 191 (7.50%) Distributed Systems
4 114 (4.48%) Enterprise Software
5 88 (3.46%) Onboarding
6 77 (3.02%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
8 58 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 56 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
10 53 (2.08%) Mobile App
11 38 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 36 (1.41%) Security Posture
13 33 (1.30%) Private Cloud
14 30 (1.18%) Management Information System
15 29 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 26 (1.02%) Data Centre
17 25 (0.98%) Life Science
18 24 (0.94%) Legacy Applications
19 21 (0.82%) Distributed Architecture
20 20 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 180 (7.07%) Linux
2 109 (4.28%) Windows
3 96 (3.77%) Unix
4 49 (1.92%) Apple iOS
5 45 (1.77%) Android
6 30 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.98%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.35%) VMS
9 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.20%) AIX
11 5 (0.20%) Mac OS X
11 5 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.20%) zOS
12 4 (0.16%) Solaris
13 3 (0.12%) CentOS
13 3 (0.12%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,599 (62.78%) CI/CD
2 1,237 (48.57%) Agile
3 950 (37.30%) DevOps
4 519 (20.38%) Microservices
5 507 (19.91%) Continuous Improvement
6 498 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
7 483 (18.96%) Software Engineering
8 449 (17.63%) Infrastructure as Code
9 439 (17.24%) AI
10 435 (17.08%) Validation
11 431 (16.92%) Scrum
12 379 (14.88%) Containerisation
13 366 (14.37%) Test Strategy
14 337 (13.23%) Observability
15 333 (13.07%) TDD
16 325 (12.76%) Stakeholder Management
17 310 (12.17%) SDLC
18 309 (12.13%) Software Testing
19 268 (10.52%) End-to-End Testing
20 266 (10.44%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 730 (28.66%) Python
2 719 (28.23%) Java
3 663 (26.03%) SQL
4 401 (15.74%) JavaScript
5 306 (12.01%) TypeScript
6 221 (8.68%) C#
7 103 (4.04%) PowerShell
8 92 (3.61%) Bash
9 57 (2.24%) Bicep
10 53 (2.08%) Kotlin
11 50 (1.96%) Scala
12 46 (1.81%) C++
13 44 (1.73%) Go
14 33 (1.30%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.22%) Perl
15 31 (1.22%) PL/SQL
16 21 (0.82%) Apex Code
17 18 (0.71%) C
17 18 (0.71%) Ruby
17 18 (0.71%) Swift
Qualifications
1 800 (31.41%) Security Cleared
2 675 (26.50%) SC Cleared
3 155 (6.09%) BPSS Clearance
4 144 (5.65%) Degree
5 106 (4.16%) ISTQB
6 94 (3.69%) DV Cleared
7 81 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 40 (1.57%) Azure Certification
10 28 (1.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 14 (0.55%) CISSP
12 14 (0.55%) ISEB
12 14 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 14 (0.55%) Master's Degree
13 12 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
16 7 (0.27%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 666 (26.15%) QA
2 244 (9.58%) Accessibility
3 184 (7.22%) Data Quality
4 103 (4.04%) WCAG
5 40 (1.57%) GDPR
6 25 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.63%) NIST
9 15 (0.59%) GRC
10 14 (0.55%) SLA
11 12 (0.47%) NCSC
12 8 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.27%) HL7
13 7 (0.27%) SEPA
13 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.20%) FATCA
15 5 (0.20%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) MiFID
System Software
1 524 (20.57%) Docker
2 46 (1.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.57%) Active Directory
4 19 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (0.43%) Firmware
7 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
8 6 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.039%) KVM
11 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.039%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 517 (20.30%) Kubernetes
2 152 (5.97%) Ansible
3 138 (5.42%) Grafana
4 90 (3.53%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.41%) Argo
6 32 (1.26%) Kibana
7 27 (1.06%) Puppet
8 26 (1.02%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.51%) Control-M
10 12 (0.47%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.31%) SCCM
13 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.24%) Istio
15 5 (0.20%) Packer
15 5 (0.20%) WMI
16 4 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
16 4 (0.16%) Rancher
Vendors
1 251 (9.85%) Microsoft
2 204 (8.01%) Oracle
3 107 (4.20%) Databricks
4 91 (3.57%) Google
5 69 (2.71%) IBM
6 68 (2.67%) Salesforce
7 64 (2.51%) ServiceNow
8 61 (2.39%) SAP
8 61 (2.39%) Splunk
9 58 (2.28%) Talend
10 57 (2.24%) VMware
11 53 (2.08%) Informatica
12 52 (2.04%) Red Hat
13 45 (1.77%) Dynatrace
14 38 (1.49%) Denodo
15 37 (1.45%) MuleSoft
16 36 (1.41%) Cisco
17 34 (1.33%) UiPath
18 27 (1.06%) Foundry
19 26 (1.02%) OpenAI