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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 45 52
Rank change year-on-year -4 +7 -12
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 1,691 1,419 1,652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.57% 4.40% 3.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.20% 4.97% 4.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,156 952 1,201
10th Percentile £340 £325 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -6.25%
75th Percentile £588 £607 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 4 46
10th Percentile £41.94 £41.63 £37.50
25th Percentile £44.75 £42.19 £52.19
Median hourly rate £60.00 £47.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.32% -38.71% +29.17%
75th Percentile £66.75 £61.25 £90.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £77.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £50.00 £77.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -35.48% +29.17%

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 32,541 28,533 37,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.91% 88.47% 87.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,569 17,345 24,861
10th Percentile £304 £308 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,000 921 1,535
10th Percentile £14.74 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £45.00
% change year-on-year -21.76% -32.33% +55.17%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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 1,462 £500 - 1,080
UK excluding London -2 768 £500 +2.56% 1,001
London -4 715 £500 -3.85% 207
Work from Home -1 506 £500 - 476
North of England +6 304 £488 +11.43% 215
Midlands +13 152 £495 -0.50% 117
Yorkshire -11 146 £507 +12.61% 95
South East -33 133 £500 -3.61% 296
North West +1 115 £425 +5.66% 85
West Midlands +9 114 £519 -5.73% 42
South West +5 72 £550 -3.51% 146
Scotland -27 49 £500 +7.82% 36
North East +19 45 £488 +41.82% 35
East of England -5 45 £570 +42.50% 147
East Midlands -1 38 £400 -13.51% 71
Wales +3 25 £509 -2.12% 47
Northern Ireland +2 12 £295 -43.13% 20

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 94 (5.56%) Confluence
2 55 (3.25%) SAS
3 24 (1.42%) Apache Spark
4 16 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (0.77%) Apache
5 13 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 6 (0.35%) CMS
6 6 (0.35%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.35%) Oracle Application Server
7 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.18%) Appian
8 3 (0.18%) nginx
8 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.12%) Camunda
9 2 (0.12%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 15 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.47%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.12%) Simulink
5 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.12%) Trello
5 2 (0.12%) Windchill
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 18 (1.06%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.24%) SAP HR
4 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.18%) SAP BRIM
4 3 (0.18%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.12%) Eagle PACE
5 2 (0.12%) Markit EDM
5 2 (0.12%) Maximo
5 2 (0.12%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.12%) SAP PLM
5 2 (0.12%) Shopify
6 1 (0.059%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.059%) CODA-Financials
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.059%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.059%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 478 (28.27%) Azure
2 425 (25.13%) AWS
3 265 (15.67%) GitHub
4 199 (11.77%) Azure DevOps
5 162 (9.58%) GCP
6 140 (8.28%) GitHub Actions
7 125 (7.39%) Serverless
8 60 (3.55%) OpenShift
9 57 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
10 53 (3.13%) Power Platform
11 49 (2.90%) Amazon S3
12 47 (2.78%) Azure AKS
13 44 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
14 43 (2.54%) Amazon EKS
15 39 (2.31%) SaaS
16 37 (2.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 35 (2.07%) Snowflake
18 30 (1.77%) Azure Functions
18 30 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
18 30 (1.77%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 43 (2.54%) Firewall
2 34 (2.01%) Wireshark
3 31 (1.83%) HTTP
4 26 (1.54%) HTTPS
5 25 (1.48%) SSL
6 21 (1.24%) TCP/IP
7 18 (1.06%) VPN
8 15 (0.89%) Network Security
8 15 (0.89%) SD-WAN
9 12 (0.71%) Ethernet
10 10 (0.59%) FTP
10 10 (0.59%) WAN
11 9 (0.53%) DNS
12 8 (0.47%) AMQP
12 8 (0.47%) Multicast
13 7 (0.41%) VLAN
14 5 (0.30%) Cisco IPT
14 5 (0.30%) Internet
14 5 (0.30%) MPLS
15 4 (0.24%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (6.62%) PostgreSQL
2 90 (5.32%) NoSQL
3 88 (5.20%) MongoDB
4 70 (4.14%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.96%) SQL Server
6 35 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
7 29 (1.71%) Pentaho
8 27 (1.60%) BigQuery
9 25 (1.48%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.42%) Power BI
11 23 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
11 23 (1.36%) MySQL
12 20 (1.18%) Oracle Database
12 20 (1.18%) Redis
13 19 (1.12%) Big Data
14 16 (0.95%) Apache Cassandra
15 15 (0.89%) Data Lake
15 15 (0.89%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 13 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
17 12 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 314 (18.57%) Jenkins
2 313 (18.51%) Git
3 293 (17.33%) JIRA
4 264 (15.61%) Selenium
5 248 (14.67%) GitLab
6 152 (8.99%) Cucumber
7 137 (8.10%) Postman
8 113 (6.68%) Cypress.io
9 89 (5.26%) JUnit
10 82 (4.85%) JMeter
11 79 (4.67%) REST Assured
12 44 (2.60%) Bitbucket
13 42 (2.48%) SonarQube
14 34 (2.01%) Mockito
14 34 (2.01%) SpecFlow
15 33 (1.95%) Gatling
16 31 (1.83%) Maven
16 31 (1.83%) TestRail
17 28 (1.66%) Gradle
17 28 (1.66%) WebDriver
General
1 447 (26.43%) Social Skills
2 281 (16.62%) Finance
3 245 (14.49%) Public Sector
4 176 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
5 116 (6.86%) Banking
6 34 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.48%) Telecoms
9 23 (1.36%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.36%) Pharmaceutical
10 20 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
11 19 (1.12%) Front Office
12 16 (0.95%) Financial Institution
12 16 (0.95%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.83%) Military
14 12 (0.71%) Marketing
15 11 (0.65%) Electronics
15 11 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.59%) Aerospace
17 9 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 381 (22.53%) Developer
2 284 (16.79%) Senior
3 197 (11.65%) Tester
4 182 (10.76%) Test Engineer
5 150 (8.87%) Lead
6 116 (6.86%) Automation Tester
7 109 (6.45%) Java Developer
8 83 (4.91%) Software Engineer
9 78 (4.61%) Test Automation Engineer
10 70 (4.14%) Data Engineer
10 70 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 70 (4.14%) QA Engineer
11 69 (4.08%) Senior Developer
12 67 (3.96%) Analyst
13 52 (3.08%) Automation Engineer
14 51 (3.02%) Test Leader
15 50 (2.96%) Test Manager
16 48 (2.84%) Test Analyst
17 43 (2.54%) Full-Stack Developer
18 40 (2.37%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (13.66%) REST
2 173 (10.23%) Playwright
3 140 (8.28%) React
4 139 (8.22%) .NET
5 137 (8.10%) RESTful
6 130 (7.69%) Node.js
7 125 (7.39%) Kafka
8 121 (7.16%) Spring
9 112 (6.62%) Spring Boot
10 74 (4.38%) pytest
11 72 (4.26%) JSON
12 65 (3.84%) HTML
13 63 (3.73%) AngularJS
14 60 (3.55%) CSS
14 60 (3.55%) XML
15 56 (3.31%) SOAP
16 49 (2.90%) Web Services
17 45 (2.66%) Jest
18 43 (2.54%) OAuth
19 39 (2.31%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 167 (9.88%) Cloud Native
2 122 (7.21%) Product Ownership
3 55 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
4 47 (2.78%) Mobile App
5 41 (2.42%) Security Posture
6 34 (2.01%) Algorithms
7 30 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
8 28 (1.66%) Onboarding
9 26 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
10 23 (1.36%) Public Cloud
11 22 (1.30%) Virtual Team
12 21 (1.24%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.24%) Management Information System
13 20 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
15 17 (1.01%) NHS
16 16 (0.95%) Derivative
16 16 (0.95%) Genomics
16 16 (0.95%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 163 (9.64%) Linux
2 79 (4.67%) Windows
3 53 (3.13%) Unix
4 40 (2.37%) Android
5 33 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 20 (1.18%) Mac OS X
7 19 (1.12%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.59%) Kali Linux
9 8 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.30%) CentOS
11 3 (0.18%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.12%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.12%) VMS
13 1 (0.059%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.059%) Solaris
13 1 (0.059%) Windows Embedded Compact
13 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 860 (50.86%) CI/CD
2 831 (49.14%) Agile
3 649 (38.38%) DevOps
4 427 (25.25%) Problem-Solving
5 273 (16.14%) Microservices
6 257 (15.20%) Containerisation
7 250 (14.78%) Continuous Improvement
8 240 (14.19%) Test Strategy
9 235 (13.90%) Scrum
10 221 (13.07%) Infrastructure as Code
11 210 (12.42%) Test Scripting
12 209 (12.36%) TDD
13 205 (12.12%) Software Engineering
14 179 (10.59%) AI
15 174 (10.29%) Validation
16 170 (10.05%) SDLC
17 164 (9.70%) BDD
18 159 (9.40%) Software Testing
19 152 (8.99%) API Testing
20 149 (8.81%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 507 (29.98%) Python
2 409 (24.19%) Java
3 322 (19.04%) SQL
4 241 (14.25%) JavaScript
5 207 (12.24%) TypeScript
6 170 (10.05%) C#
7 91 (5.38%) Bash
8 69 (4.08%) PowerShell
9 39 (2.31%) C++
10 34 (2.01%) Go
11 24 (1.42%) Bicep
11 24 (1.42%) Kotlin
12 23 (1.36%) PL/SQL
13 18 (1.06%) Ruby
14 14 (0.83%) PHP
14 14 (0.83%) Scala
15 12 (0.71%) Apex Code
15 12 (0.71%) Groovy
15 12 (0.71%) Rust
15 12 (0.71%) Swift
Qualifications
1 449 (26.55%) Security Cleared
2 345 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 98 (5.80%) Degree
4 69 (4.08%) ISTQB
5 56 (3.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 53 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 47 (2.78%) DV Cleared
8 23 (1.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 23 (1.36%) Master's Degree
9 22 (1.30%) AWS Certification
10 18 (1.06%) OSCP
11 17 (1.01%) CISSP
12 16 (0.95%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.83%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.83%) MCP
14 13 (0.77%) CEH
15 12 (0.71%) GPEN
15 12 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (22.24%) QA
2 136 (8.04%) Accessibility
3 74 (4.38%) Data Quality
4 44 (2.60%) WCAG
5 39 (2.31%) GDPR
5 39 (2.31%) NIST
6 28 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.24%) NCSC
8 18 (1.06%) EU AI Act
9 16 (0.95%) PCI DSS
10 14 (0.83%) PSD2
11 12 (0.71%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.59%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.53%) SEPA
14 8 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 5 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 5 (0.30%) MiFID
16 5 (0.30%) SLA
16 5 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 373 (22.06%) Docker
2 31 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.30%) Firmware
3 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.18%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
5 3 (0.18%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.18%) QEMU
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
5 3 (0.18%) zsh
6 2 (0.12%) vSphere
7 1 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.059%) HDFS
7 1 (0.059%) KVM
7 1 (0.059%) Squid
7 1 (0.059%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.059%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 325 (19.22%) Kubernetes
2 211 (12.48%) Terraform
3 121 (7.16%) Ansible
4 89 (5.26%) Grafana
5 55 (3.25%) Prometheus
6 17 (1.01%) Progress Chef
7 16 (0.95%) Argo
7 16 (0.95%) CSIRT
7 16 (0.95%) Nmap
8 14 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.77%) HP ALM
9 13 (0.77%) NetBackup
10 12 (0.71%) Puppet
11 7 (0.41%) Kibana
11 7 (0.41%) Nessus
11 7 (0.41%) Podman
12 4 (0.24%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 4 (0.24%) Rancher
12 4 (0.24%) SCCM
12 4 (0.24%) vRealize
Vendors
1 157 (9.28%) Microsoft
1 157 (9.28%) Oracle
2 68 (4.02%) Splunk
3 60 (3.55%) Databricks
4 56 (3.31%) SAP
5 55 (3.25%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.19%) Salesforce
7 42 (2.48%) Google
8 29 (1.71%) Denodo
8 29 (1.71%) Talend
9 27 (1.60%) VMware
10 25 (1.48%) Cisco
11 24 (1.42%) Red Hat
12 23 (1.36%) F5
13 21 (1.24%) webMethods
14 19 (1.12%) IBM
15 18 (1.06%) Atlassian
15 18 (1.06%) Dynatrace
16 17 (1.01%) MuleSoft
17 15 (0.89%) Workday