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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 47 45
Rank change year-on-year +4 -2 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,533 1,567 1,571
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.61% 4.75% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.45% 5.24% 4.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,633 1,074 1,059
10th Percentile £325 £313 £341
25th Percentile £406 £400 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 36 17
10th Percentile £40.00 £37.92 £42.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £45.94 £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 £77.75 £71.00 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +20.43% - -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 46,438 29,893 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.54% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,948 18,567 19,512
10th Percentile £325 £295 £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 £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,331 1,864 1,314
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.08 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.87 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.56% -39.40% -2.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.20 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.13 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +70.85% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +7 2,129 £475 -5.00% 3,207
UK excluding London +1 1,232 £450 -5.26% 1,926
London +4 963 £500 -2.44% 1,564
Work from Home +2 687 £485 +0.73% 1,315
North of England -4 431 £452 -4.95% 451
Midlands +14 267 £450 -2.70% 212
West Midlands +27 252 £450 -13.21% 146
South East -12 230 £450 -5.26% 451
Yorkshire -7 180 £463 -7.50% 141
North West -7 156 £492 +23.06% 237
South West -10 114 £450 -17.43% 243
Scotland -13 104 £475 -5.00% 270
North East +4 102 £425 -11.69% 73
East of England +13 97 £367 -8.25% 207
Wales -6 24 £419 +1.52% 36
East Midlands -46 15 £418 +19.29% 66
Northern Ireland +4 7 £513 +345.65% 66
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
1 195 (7.70%) Confluence
2 65 (2.57%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (2.01%) Apache Spark
4 48 (1.89%) SharePoint
5 38 (1.50%) Apache
6 30 (1.18%) SAS
7 18 (0.71%) CMS
8 14 (0.55%) Camunda
9 12 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.28%) 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%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 21 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.71%) 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%) 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%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.39%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.39%) SAP MDG
5 7 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
5 7 (0.28%) 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
1 806 (31.82%) AWS
2 770 (30.40%) Azure
3 459 (18.12%) GitHub
4 357 (14.09%) Azure DevOps
5 272 (10.74%) GitHub Actions
6 203 (8.01%) GCP
7 186 (7.34%) Serverless
8 138 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
9 123 (4.86%) Power Platform
10 114 (4.50%) Amazon S3
11 88 (3.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 87 (3.43%) GitHub Copilot
13 80 (3.16%) OpenShift
14 77 (3.04%) Amazon EKS
15 74 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
15 74 (2.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 60 (2.37%) Snowflake
17 59 (2.33%) dbt
18 53 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
18 53 (2.09%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.14%) DNS
2 27 (1.07%) Firewall
3 26 (1.03%) HTTP
4 25 (0.99%) 4G
5 24 (0.95%) TCP/IP
5 24 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (0.91%) Broadband
7 22 (0.87%) 5G
8 20 (0.79%) Network Security
9 15 (0.59%) WAN
10 14 (0.55%) 2G
10 14 (0.55%) 3G
10 14 (0.55%) BGP
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%) Ethernet VPN
12 12 (0.47%) IPv4
12 12 (0.47%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (5.05%) MongoDB
3 125 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (4.74%) Relational Database
5 106 (4.18%) NoSQL
6 104 (4.11%) SQL Server
7 89 (3.51%) Power BI
8 60 (2.37%) Metadata
9 45 (1.78%) Data Lake
10 42 (1.66%) MySQL
11 41 (1.62%) DynamoDB
12 37 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
13 36 (1.42%) Big Data
14 34 (1.34%) Pentaho
14 34 (1.34%) Redis
15 33 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
15 33 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
17 31 (1.22%) Oracle Database
18 26 (1.03%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 585 (23.10%) Git
2 420 (16.58%) Jenkins
3 405 (15.99%) JIRA
4 354 (13.98%) GitLab
5 320 (12.63%) Selenium
6 185 (7.30%) Cucumber
7 175 (6.91%) Postman
8 157 (6.20%) JUnit
9 127 (5.01%) Cypress.io
10 114 (4.50%) REST Assured
11 105 (4.15%) JMeter
12 88 (3.47%) SonarQube
13 73 (2.88%) Gatling
14 68 (2.68%) Maven
14 68 (2.68%) Zephyr
15 62 (2.45%) Mockito
16 58 (2.29%) Gradle
17 50 (1.97%) WebDriver
18 40 (1.58%) Bitbucket
19 33 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 709 (27.99%) Social Skills
2 475 (18.75%) Finance
3 360 (14.21%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (13.94%) Public Sector
5 241 (9.51%) Banking
6 80 (3.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 62 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 42 (1.66%) Front Office
8 42 (1.66%) Investment Banking
9 37 (1.46%) Military
10 35 (1.38%) Retail
11 33 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
13 23 (0.91%) Financial Institution
14 21 (0.83%) Law
14 21 (0.83%) Marketing
15 20 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 19 (0.75%) Aerospace
17 18 (0.71%) Back Office
18 16 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 583 (23.02%) Developer
2 424 (16.74%) Senior
3 264 (10.42%) Lead
4 248 (9.79%) Test Engineer
5 188 (7.42%) Tester
6 183 (7.22%) Java Developer
7 165 (6.51%) Data Engineer
8 130 (5.13%) Software Engineer
9 119 (4.70%) Analyst
9 119 (4.70%) Architect
9 119 (4.70%) Senior Developer
10 111 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
11 106 (4.18%) QA Engineer
12 103 (4.07%) Test Automation Engineer
13 86 (3.40%) Automation Tester
14 85 (3.36%) Full-Stack Developer
15 80 (3.16%) Test Leader
16 79 (3.12%) Test Analyst
17 77 (3.04%) Automation Engineer
18 72 (2.84%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (17.61%) REST
2 378 (14.92%) Terraform
3 304 (12.00%) Playwright
4 274 (10.82%) RESTful
5 264 (10.42%) Kafka
6 260 (10.26%) Spring
7 235 (9.28%) React
8 221 (8.72%) Spring Boot
9 183 (7.22%) .NET
10 158 (6.24%) HTML
11 150 (5.92%) Node.js
12 133 (5.25%) CSS
13 112 (4.42%) AngularJS
14 105 (4.15%) OAuth
15 87 (3.43%) JSON
16 78 (3.08%) Middleware
17 66 (2.61%) OAuth2
18 65 (2.57%) pytest
18 65 (2.57%) XML
19 62 (2.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 401 (15.83%) Cloud Native
2 223 (8.80%) Product Ownership
3 188 (7.42%) Distributed Systems
4 110 (4.34%) Enterprise Software
5 88 (3.47%) Onboarding
6 76 (3.00%) AI Agents
7 63 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 54 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
10 52 (2.05%) Mobile App
11 37 (1.46%) Data Structures
12 35 (1.38%) Security Posture
13 32 (1.26%) Private Cloud
14 30 (1.18%) Virtual Team
15 29 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 26 (1.03%) Data Centre
17 24 (0.95%) Legacy Applications
17 24 (0.95%) Life Science
18 21 (0.83%) Embedded Systems
19 20 (0.79%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 185 (7.30%) Linux
2 111 (4.38%) Windows
3 97 (3.83%) Unix
4 48 (1.89%) Apple iOS
5 44 (1.74%) Android
6 32 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.99%) Windows Server
8 9 (0.36%) VMS
9 7 (0.28%) 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
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 (0.079%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,580 (62.38%) CI/CD
2 1,231 (48.60%) Agile
3 943 (37.23%) DevOps
4 515 (20.33%) Microservices
5 497 (19.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 492 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
7 483 (19.07%) Software Engineering
8 451 (17.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 435 (17.17%) AI
10 432 (17.05%) Scrum
11 427 (16.86%) Validation
12 380 (15.00%) Containerisation
13 367 (14.49%) Test Strategy
14 330 (13.03%) Observability
14 330 (13.03%) TDD
15 310 (12.24%) Stakeholder Management
16 308 (12.16%) Software Testing
17 304 (12.00%) SDLC
18 268 (10.58%) End-to-End Testing
19 255 (10.07%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 719 (28.39%) Python
2 714 (28.19%) Java
3 646 (25.50%) SQL
4 396 (15.63%) JavaScript
5 301 (11.88%) TypeScript
6 217 (8.57%) C#
7 105 (4.15%) PowerShell
8 94 (3.71%) Bash
9 58 (2.29%) Bicep
10 50 (1.97%) Kotlin
11 49 (1.93%) Scala
12 47 (1.86%) C++
13 44 (1.74%) Go
14 34 (1.34%) Shell Script
15 31 (1.22%) PL/SQL
16 30 (1.18%) Perl
17 22 (0.87%) Apex Code
18 19 (0.75%) C
18 19 (0.75%) Ruby
19 17 (0.67%) Swift
Qualifications
1 804 (31.74%) Security Cleared
2 680 (26.85%) SC Cleared
3 153 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 141 (5.57%) Degree
5 102 (4.03%) ISTQB
6 96 (3.79%) DV Cleared
7 80 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 50 (1.97%) AWS Certification
9 39 (1.54%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 15 (0.59%) Master's Degree
13 14 (0.55%) CISSP
13 14 (0.55%) ISEB
13 14 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 12 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
17 8 (0.32%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 659 (26.02%) QA
2 242 (9.55%) Accessibility
3 180 (7.11%) Data Quality
4 101 (3.99%) WCAG
5 41 (1.62%) GDPR
6 25 (0.99%) 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 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 7 (0.28%) HL7
13 7 (0.28%) SEPA
13 7 (0.28%) 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
1 522 (20.61%) Docker
2 46 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.58%) Active Directory
4 18 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.47%) Firmware
6 11 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.039%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.039%) KVM
10 1 (0.039%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.039%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 514 (20.29%) Kubernetes
2 149 (5.88%) Ansible
3 139 (5.49%) Grafana
4 91 (3.59%) Prometheus
5 36 (1.42%) Argo
6 33 (1.30%) Kibana
7 27 (1.07%) Puppet
8 26 (1.03%) Progress Chef
9 13 (0.51%) Control-M
9 13 (0.51%) HP ALM
10 12 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.32%) SCCM
13 7 (0.28%) HP Fortify
13 7 (0.28%) Kustomize
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%) Podman
Vendors
1 249 (9.83%) Microsoft
2 193 (7.62%) Oracle
3 104 (4.11%) Databricks
4 89 (3.51%) Google
5 69 (2.72%) Salesforce
6 68 (2.68%) IBM
7 65 (2.57%) ServiceNow
8 59 (2.33%) SAP
9 57 (2.25%) Splunk
9 57 (2.25%) VMware
10 56 (2.21%) Talend
11 52 (2.05%) Red Hat
12 51 (2.01%) Informatica
13 44 (1.74%) Dynatrace
14 37 (1.46%) Denodo
14 37 (1.46%) MuleSoft
15 33 (1.30%) Cisco
16 32 (1.26%) UiPath
17 26 (1.03%) OpenAI
18 25 (0.99%) Foundry