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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 49 44
Rank change year-on-year +7 -5 +7
Contract jobs citing Test Automation 2,616 1,541 1,593
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.73% 4.63% 4.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.58% 5.12% 4.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,703 1,062 1,079
10th Percentile £322 £321 £340
25th Percentile £403 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £489 £494
% change year-on-year -7.93% -1.06% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 34 15
10th Percentile £40.00 £36.75 £41.75
25th Percentile £55.00 £44.63 £45.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -8.70% -23.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £71.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.60 £80.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £60.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +15.42% +4.35% -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 46,911 30,121 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.54% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,189 18,721 19,488
10th Percentile £325 £296 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
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 3,476 1,911 1,239
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.75 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.24 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.07% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.79 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.24 £22.27 £40.00
% change year-on-year +67.26% -44.34% -8.88%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +9 2,198 £475 -5.00% 531
UK excluding London +2 1,285 £450 -7.93% 417
London +11 989 £500 -2.44% 180
Work from Home +2 704 £475 -5.00% 293
North of England -1 451 £458 -3.68% 119
Midlands +12 281 £450 -5.26% 65
West Midlands +20 262 £450 -13.88% 41
South East -3 248 £448 -9.04% 85
Yorkshire -4 191 £475 -7.32% 32
North West -9 165 £492 +16.59% 70
South West -5 111 £450 -18.18% 74
Scotland -9 110 £470 -6.00% 22
North East 0 100 £425 -11.69% 17
East of England +6 95 £367 -17.30% 48
Wales -6 24 £413 -13.16% 7
East Midlands -28 19 £418 +19.29% 24
Northern Ireland +2 7 £513 +345.65% 3
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
1 197 (7.53%) Confluence
2 58 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (1.91%) SharePoint
4 45 (1.72%) Apache Spark
5 38 (1.45%) Apache
6 36 (1.38%) SAS
7 17 (0.65%) CMS
8 14 (0.54%) Camunda
8 14 (0.54%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Jupyter
9 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.23%) nginx
11 5 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.15%) Anypoint
12 4 (0.15%) ColdFusion
12 4 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
12 4 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.11%) Kentico
14 2 (0.076%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.11%) Mingle
7 3 (0.11%) Trello
8 2 (0.076%) Gliffy
9 1 (0.038%) Simulink
9 1 (0.038%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 31 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
1 31 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
3 10 (0.38%) Aladdin
3 10 (0.38%) SAP MDG
4 7 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
4 7 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 7 (0.27%) SAP GRC
5 6 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
5 6 (0.23%) SAP ERP
6 4 (0.15%) Temenos T24
7 3 (0.11%) Finacle
8 2 (0.076%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.076%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.076%) SAP HR
8 2 (0.076%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
8 2 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 1 (0.038%) SAP MM
9 1 (0.038%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 816 (31.19%) AWS
2 800 (30.58%) Azure
3 488 (18.65%) GitHub
4 378 (14.45%) Azure DevOps
5 288 (11.01%) GitHub Actions
6 213 (8.14%) GCP
7 183 (7.00%) Serverless
8 132 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
9 126 (4.82%) Power Platform
10 107 (4.09%) Amazon S3
11 95 (3.63%) GitHub Copilot
12 88 (3.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 82 (3.13%) OpenShift
14 77 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
14 77 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
15 66 (2.52%) Amazon ECS
16 61 (2.33%) Snowflake
17 58 (2.22%) dbt
18 57 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
19 56 (2.14%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 36 (1.38%) DNS
2 31 (1.19%) Firewall
2 31 (1.19%) TCP/IP
3 29 (1.11%) HTTP
4 27 (1.03%) Broadband
5 26 (0.99%) 4G
5 26 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
6 23 (0.88%) 5G
7 22 (0.84%) Network Security
8 18 (0.69%) BGP
9 17 (0.65%) WAN
10 14 (0.54%) 2G
10 14 (0.54%) 3G
10 14 (0.54%) Diameter Protocol
10 14 (0.54%) IPv4
10 14 (0.54%) IPv6
10 14 (0.54%) SIGTRAN
10 14 (0.54%) SS7
11 13 (0.50%) DHCP
11 13 (0.50%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (6.31%) PostgreSQL
2 125 (4.78%) Relational Database
3 123 (4.70%) MongoDB
4 117 (4.47%) Data Warehouse
5 111 (4.24%) SQL Server
6 99 (3.78%) NoSQL
7 85 (3.25%) Power BI
8 55 (2.10%) Metadata
9 44 (1.68%) MySQL
10 43 (1.64%) Data Lake
11 40 (1.53%) DynamoDB
12 34 (1.30%) Oracle Database
12 34 (1.30%) Redis
13 33 (1.26%) Pentaho
14 31 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
15 30 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
15 30 (1.15%) Big Data
16 28 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
16 28 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 624 (23.85%) Git
2 423 (16.17%) Jenkins
3 413 (15.79%) JIRA
4 362 (13.84%) GitLab
5 328 (12.54%) Selenium
6 197 (7.53%) Cucumber
7 175 (6.69%) Postman
8 174 (6.65%) JUnit
9 138 (5.28%) Cypress.io
10 119 (4.55%) REST Assured
11 107 (4.09%) JMeter
12 93 (3.56%) SonarQube
13 78 (2.98%) Gatling
14 74 (2.83%) Maven
15 69 (2.64%) Gradle
15 69 (2.64%) Mockito
16 61 (2.33%) Zephyr
17 50 (1.91%) WebDriver
18 45 (1.72%) Bitbucket
19 34 (1.30%) TestNG
General
1 744 (28.44%) Social Skills
2 505 (19.30%) Finance
3 375 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (13.49%) Public Sector
5 262 (10.02%) Banking
6 78 (2.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 64 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 43 (1.64%) Investment Banking
9 40 (1.53%) Front Office
10 38 (1.45%) Military
10 38 (1.45%) Retail
11 34 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (0.84%) Financial Institution
13 22 (0.84%) Manufacturing
13 22 (0.84%) Marketing
14 21 (0.80%) Law
15 20 (0.76%) Aerospace
16 18 (0.69%) Back Office
17 15 (0.57%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 598 (22.86%) Developer
2 441 (16.86%) Senior
3 275 (10.51%) Lead
4 249 (9.52%) Test Engineer
5 192 (7.34%) Java Developer
6 185 (7.07%) Tester
7 160 (6.12%) Data Engineer
8 132 (5.05%) Senior Developer
8 132 (5.05%) Software Engineer
9 126 (4.82%) Analyst
10 120 (4.59%) Architect
11 112 (4.28%) QA Engineer
12 110 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
13 103 (3.94%) Test Automation Engineer
14 87 (3.33%) Automation Tester
15 86 (3.29%) Test Analyst
16 83 (3.17%) Automation Engineer
17 82 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
18 80 (3.06%) Test Leader
19 79 (3.02%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 483 (18.46%) REST
2 376 (14.37%) Terraform
3 324 (12.39%) Playwright
4 295 (11.28%) RESTful
5 282 (10.78%) Spring
6 274 (10.47%) Kafka
7 244 (9.33%) React
8 239 (9.14%) Spring Boot
9 193 (7.38%) .NET
10 155 (5.93%) HTML
11 152 (5.81%) Node.js
12 128 (4.89%) CSS
13 117 (4.47%) OAuth
14 116 (4.43%) AngularJS
15 99 (3.78%) JSON
16 79 (3.02%) Middleware
17 73 (2.79%) OAuth2
18 69 (2.64%) Web Services
18 69 (2.64%) XML
19 68 (2.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 410 (15.67%) Cloud Native
2 235 (8.98%) Product Ownership
3 204 (7.80%) Distributed Systems
4 131 (5.01%) Enterprise Software
5 90 (3.44%) Onboarding
6 85 (3.25%) AI Agents
7 67 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 66 (2.52%) Mobile App
9 58 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 57 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
11 39 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 37 (1.41%) Security Posture
13 35 (1.34%) Private Cloud
14 31 (1.19%) Management Information System
15 30 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 28 (1.07%) Data Centre
17 24 (0.92%) Distributed Architecture
17 24 (0.92%) Legacy Applications
17 24 (0.92%) Life Science
18 21 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 185 (7.07%) Linux
2 114 (4.36%) Windows
3 91 (3.48%) Unix
4 58 (2.22%) Apple iOS
5 51 (1.95%) Android
6 31 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 25 (0.96%) Windows Server
8 10 (0.38%) VMS
9 9 (0.34%) macOS
10 7 (0.27%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.23%) AIX
11 6 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.23%) zOS
12 5 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.15%) Solaris
14 3 (0.11%) CentOS
15 2 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.076%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.076%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,664 (63.61%) CI/CD
2 1,275 (48.74%) Agile
3 988 (37.77%) DevOps
4 541 (20.68%) Microservices
5 527 (20.15%) Continuous Improvement
6 514 (19.65%) Software Engineering
7 505 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
8 467 (17.85%) Validation
9 456 (17.43%) AI
10 454 (17.35%) Infrastructure as Code
11 445 (17.01%) Scrum
12 395 (15.10%) Containerisation
13 376 (14.37%) Test Strategy
14 363 (13.88%) Observability
15 344 (13.15%) TDD
16 341 (13.04%) Stakeholder Management
17 322 (12.31%) SDLC
17 322 (12.31%) Software Testing
18 277 (10.59%) Deployment Automation
19 271 (10.36%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 749 (28.63%) Python
2 739 (28.25%) Java
3 678 (25.92%) SQL
4 406 (15.52%) JavaScript
5 315 (12.04%) TypeScript
6 232 (8.87%) C#
7 109 (4.17%) PowerShell
8 97 (3.71%) Bash
9 64 (2.45%) Bicep
10 58 (2.22%) Kotlin
11 47 (1.80%) C++
11 47 (1.80%) Go
12 44 (1.68%) Scala
13 36 (1.38%) Shell Script
14 31 (1.19%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.11%) Perl
16 23 (0.88%) Swift
17 21 (0.80%) Apex Code
18 18 (0.69%) C
18 18 (0.69%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 819 (31.31%) Security Cleared
2 692 (26.45%) SC Cleared
3 156 (5.96%) BPSS Clearance
4 153 (5.85%) Degree
5 122 (4.66%) ISTQB
6 98 (3.75%) DV Cleared
7 90 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 52 (1.99%) AWS Certification
9 45 (1.72%) Azure Certification
10 37 (1.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 16 (0.61%) ISEB
12 15 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 14 (0.54%) CISSP
13 14 (0.54%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
15 10 (0.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.31%) SAFe Agilist
17 6 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 688 (26.30%) QA
2 249 (9.52%) Accessibility
3 184 (7.03%) Data Quality
4 104 (3.98%) WCAG
5 48 (1.83%) GDPR
6 23 (0.88%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 16 (0.61%) NIST
9 14 (0.54%) GRC
9 14 (0.54%) SLA
10 12 (0.46%) NCSC
11 9 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.31%) HL7
13 7 (0.27%) SEPA
13 7 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 5 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
16 4 (0.15%) FATCA
16 4 (0.15%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 538 (20.57%) Docker
2 47 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (1.53%) Active Directory
4 20 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.46%) Firmware
5 12 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.27%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.038%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (0.038%) KVM
9 1 (0.038%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.038%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 535 (20.45%) Kubernetes
2 152 (5.81%) Ansible
3 133 (5.08%) Grafana
4 87 (3.33%) Prometheus
5 38 (1.45%) Argo
6 27 (1.03%) Puppet
7 26 (0.99%) Kibana
7 26 (0.99%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.50%) Control-M
8 13 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.46%) HP ALM
10 9 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.31%) SCCM
12 7 (0.27%) HP Fortify
12 7 (0.27%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.23%) Istio
13 6 (0.23%) Packer
14 5 (0.19%) Podman
14 5 (0.19%) WMI
15 4 (0.15%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 262 (10.02%) Microsoft
2 201 (7.68%) Oracle
3 112 (4.28%) Databricks
4 96 (3.67%) Google
5 68 (2.60%) IBM
5 68 (2.60%) Salesforce
6 62 (2.37%) SAP
7 60 (2.29%) ServiceNow
8 58 (2.22%) VMware
9 55 (2.10%) Red Hat
10 54 (2.06%) Informatica
11 53 (2.03%) Splunk
12 50 (1.91%) Talend
13 46 (1.76%) Dynatrace
14 36 (1.38%) Cisco
14 36 (1.38%) MuleSoft
15 35 (1.34%) Denodo
16 34 (1.30%) UiPath
17 31 (1.19%) Foundry
18 30 (1.15%) OpenAI